Alison Flood 

Raiding John Updike’s rubbish – a trashy pursuit

Alison Flood: As well as being intrusive, bin diver Paul Moran has recovered very little for his alternative archive that was worth saving
  
  

John Updike
Rubbish collection … the 'other John Updikea archive'. Photograph: Michael Brennan/Corbis Photograph: Michael Brennan/Corbis

Did you know that there was a man who used to steal John Updike's bin bags? No, nor did I. But in the wake of the Great Naked Celebrity Photo Leak of 2014, this coolly played piece in the Atlantic, in which Adrienne LaFrance interviews the man who shall henceforth be known as the Updike bin diver, Paul Moran, becomes perhaps even more timely.

"Moran often rode by Updike's house on his scenic bike route. This time, as it turned out, the writer was ambling outside as Moran approached. In his hands were two bulky plastic bags with blue drawstrings. And as Moran cruised by, he began to wonder what Updike was throwing away," LaFrance writes. "He noticed that one of the garbage bags next to the bin had already been torn open – perhaps, he thought, by someone seeking aluminum cans or glass bottles, which can be returned for 5 cents apiece in Massachusetts. Spilling out of the bag, he saw smooth rectangles of red leather. Upon closer inspection, he realised Updike had thrown away a collection of honorary degrees from schools like Dartmouth College, Bates College, Emerson College, and Salem State College, all in pristine condition."

He took them, and since then, has kept "thousands of pieces of Updike's garbage – a trove that he says includes photographs, discarded drafts of stories, cancelled checks, White House invitations, Christmas cards, love letters, floppy disks, a Mickey Mouse flip book, and a pair of brown tasseled loafers. It is a collection he calls 'the other John Updike archive', an alternative to the official collection of Updike's papers maintained by Harvard's Houghton Library."

They're catalogued on his blog – notes, letters, phone books, photos, press clippings. And they are, according to Updike's biographer Adam Begley, quoted in the Atlantic piece, an "outrageous violation of privacy". Andrew Wylie, agent for the Updike estate, agrees, telling the Atlantic: "Anything he has is stolen. He was a dumpster digger. And he would steal the Updikes' trashbags every Wednesday … The family takes the situation very seriously."

Leslie Morris, curator of the official Updike archive , says the Updikes knew what Moran was doing and tried to stop him going through their rubbish. "They were rather horrified by the idea. Talk about invasion of privacy," he tells LaFrance.

Moran defends his actions – "It was disgusting, the actual pursuit of it," he says to the journalist, telling her: "I was sort of tormented by my activity, that it was dysfunction, that it said something bad about my character. It was sort of like a compulsion, an obsession. But I thought it was a justifiable one. I would have done the same thing if Picasso was living down the road … The immediacy made it seem so wrong, but long-term, if you flash back on virtually any major author or historical artist, you would think, 'I wish I had Mark Twain's stuff or Andy Warhol's stuff'. The only morality, as somebody said to me, is if you could focus more on the culture than the vulture aspect … I just hope that it enhances his legacy."

Begley calls the collection "completely worthless". James Plath, president of The John Updike Society, isn't quite so sure, telling the Atlantic that he would have done the same thing, "maybe". "I think he did the world's best dumpster diving."

As for me, I didn't spend long on Moran's blog – it felt sleazy, to be looking through such intimate pieces of a man's life – and Updike was a man who shared much with the world, through his fiction.

There is one picture, though, which Moran found and which the Atlantic published, which gives me reason to pause, briefly, in this decision. It's of Updike, on a basketball court, involved and lean, and it's so completely reminiscent of the start of Rabbit, Run that I can't stop gazing at it.

"Boys are playing basketball around a telephone pole with a backboard bolted to it. Legs, shouts. The scrape and snap of Keds on loose alley pebbles seems to catapult their voices high into the moist March air blue above the wires."

Just, well, brilliant, isn't he? But you know what – I think a reread of the Rabbit books might be a better way of sneaking a peak into the mind of their author, rather than rummaging around in what he threw out.

 

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