Seeing the Extraordinary in the Ordinary

Your first assigned short story, The Lucid Eye in Silver Town, is a partially autobiographical account of its author, the young John Updike. Jay, the young boy in the story, was from some "hick town" in PA, as his father said in his sad, self-deprecating manner; Updike himself hailed from Shillington, a small town close to Reading, PA. Even at 73, Updike is reading and writing as much as ever. However, his first artistic dream was to become a cartoonist. After finding that career had reached a "ceiling," he tried his hand at fiction. His description of his first effort to write should encourage those of you who are intimidated or insecure in your own ability: "It's like sort of a horse you don't know is there, but if you jump on the back there is something under you that begins to move and gallop. So it's clearly a wonderful imaginary world that you enter when you begin to write fiction."

Visit this webpage and read the Updike interview. Pay special attention to his belief in the American Dream, his advice to would-be writers, and his theory that writing about ordinary people fits perfectly well into a democratic society.