In Steve Martin’s 2010 novel “An Object of Beauty,” which I am currently reading, John Updike makes a cameo appearance as a gentleman fellow-traveler on a train from New York to Washington D.C. with the story’s protagonist and a Milton Avery painting.
![John Updike. By Dennis Kan, National Endowment for the Humanities [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons](http://www.legalnonfiction.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/updike.jpg)
John Updike. By Dennis Kan, National Endowment for the Humanities [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
He left the story as the train pulled into the station, but the encounter made me curious. When did Updike die? The answer: Five years ago today, January 27th in 2009.
My search also led me to this article and an interest read further on the man. It is a cool coincidence that the memory of a great fiction writer should be called to mind on the anniversary of his passing by his own (fictional) intervention in another author’s plot. I’d guess that Martin meant Updike’s appearance as a tribute, but today—from the reader’s point of view—it feels rather like a sort of literary reincarnation.
