Updike shares novel approaches with students

His latest, 'Terrorist,' crafted with a nod to realty, imagination

Friday, November 17, 2006

By Marcie Young
Charlotte Observer Staff Writer

HICKORY – John Updike has written about cheating couples in suburbia, an aging high school basketball star and America's obsession with religion and fame.

Now, five years after the World Trade Center fell, Updike has invented an Islamic teenager on a quest to bomb Manhattan's Lincoln Tunnel in his most recent novel, "Terrorist."

"`Terrorist' was an attempt to see the other side of the war on terror," the Pulitzer Prize winner told students at Lenoir-Rhyne College on Thursday.

Updike has been crafting prose for more than 50 years. In an open forum at the college, he talked with students about his newest novel and offered advice on how to write a book.

"Know the ending before you begin," he said. "A writer starting out can't know every page of detail (but) it's fun to steer your climactic theme."

That's how Updike started writing "Terrorist," his most recent work of fiction, he said. A longstanding fear of New York City's dark and seemingly unstable traffic tunnels combined with the national attention on terrorism initially helped him intertwine reality with fiction.

Updike, a 74-year-old Lutheran and self-proclaimed "small-town boy" from Pennsylvania, isn't representative of the stereotypical Islamic terrorist.

That detachment helped him tell Ahmad's story.

"You make little leaps in your head when you're writing fiction," he said. "You have to go with what you have learned and what you can guess."

Updike, who attended Harvard and wrote for The New Yorker magazine, said the mystery of creating realistic and complex characters excites him. "It's all a mixed bag," he said. "The fiction writer is someone who tries to detail that mixture."

Katie Lineberry, a 19-year-old sophomore, admitted that she doesn't enjoy reading much, but she said she liked "Terrorist." After hearing Updike speak, she said, she's looking forward to reading the book again.

"You can see where he came from," she said. "It's dark and dirty, but he makes it come to life."

Updike spoke Thursday night to a larger crowd at the college.

Said Rand Brandes, director of the Lenoir-Rhyne College Visiting Writer's Series: "He's the proverbial literary legend. He has contributed to the cultural identity of the entire country."


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