Hurdles of a Major American Writer

At the end of an article in the New York Times, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt quotes John Updike, who died yesterday at age 76, on literary life in New York:

“Hemingway described literary New York as a bottle full of tapeworms trying to feed on each other. When I write, I aim in my mind not toward New York but toward a vague spot a little to the east of Kansas. I think of the books on library shelves, without their jackets, years old, and a countryish teenaged boy finding them, have them speak to him. The reviews, the stacks in Brentano’s, are just hurdles to get over, to place the books on that shelf.”