Weekend Spill: An Ilonka Karasz Updike Cover; The Tilley Watch Online, January 16-20, 2023; Some John Held, Jr. Dust Jackets

An Ilonka Karasz Updike Cover Last night, idly looking over the spines of John Updike books in the Spill library, I came upon his Olinger Stories, a 1964 paperback collection I’ve had for ages (and haven’t re-read for ages). As it’s a paperback, it never was slotted chronologically — I placed it horizontally, resting it on the hardcover Updike books.

Read more

Thurber Thursday: A “Restful” Thurber Dog

Back on the very last day of 2020  I wrote about John Updike’s Thurber dog. Here’re some edited excerpts:  _____________________________________________________________________________ For those of us who treasure Thurber’s art, there is I would suggest, nothing  more wonderful than a Thurber drawn dog. In Updike’s Introduction to Lee Lorenz’s The World of William Steig, he tells us that in 1944, when he

Read more

Tuesday Spill: A New Yorkery Summer Library

  For the past twenty-seven summers, my wife, Liza Donnelly, and I have gone to the same Downeast home, and over those years, have built a small library of books, some New Yorker-centric (but many having nothing to do with the magazine). Copies of all of The New Yorkery books in Maine are also in the Spill‘s library back home

Read more