While thumbing through Conversations with John Updike (Edited by James Plath, University Press of Mississippi, 1994) I came upon an interview conducted by Christopher Lydon on “the Ten O’Clock News,” WGBH -TV Boston December 21, 1989. Updike’s speaking of his trio of illustrations that accompanied his September 5, 1985 New Yorker piece “At War With My Skin” and then says:
“But I’ve never had the wit to submit any successful cartoon ideas. In fact, that’s why I became a writer — you don’t need as many ideas as if you’re a cartoonist.”