Arts: A Conversation with John Updike - NYTimes.com/Video

In October 2008, John Updike spoke with Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of the Book Review, about the craft of fiction and the art of writing.

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[ForewordLateral]

beautiful writer, beautiful man, truly great american artist

[pakarpis]

Thank you Mr. Updike for the beautifully

crafted work all these years.

[jenniferashley99]

I would have loved to chat with him at the local library table..he's a rare jewel found far and few these days..we miss you Updike.

[klizmun1]

Certainly a talented writer and hardworking. I would not go as far as 'greatest writer that has ever lived' as someone put here. Maybe for the US... Some of the images are beautifully written. Moves with the time, is not shy to write a more populist prose when required. Always ready to be mean. Picks on and puts down Philip Roth in every interview. Says nasty things with the smile.

[misterbiggg69]

the dirtiest name i have ever heard, lol.

[poopscoop512]

when he says that ernest hemingway was a priest, well i thought that was brilliant and agree one hundred percent. hemingway's voice in his writing is so prolific and holy and measures up to christ.

[SuperFabiusmaximus]

Greatest writer that has ever lived. He formed his own reality with words and a scalpel pen. You read and the world bleeds before your eyes.

[TommyTomato93]

so i guess he never finished that novel? sad, he died a year later.

[Protagoras4444]

Nice guy.

[Nopartyforme1]

Rabbit run! One of the greatest pieces of work I have ever read.

[fuhmeregan]

master of the simile - the music of literature. but take away that 'special effect' (as rhyming is to poetry, as alliteration is to 'catchy' names) and you have a dull cynicism, an existential blandness of who we really are. Something no one wants to think about.