Updike fans, scholars gather in eastern Pa.

Associated Press

READING, Pa.

Rabid fans of the “Rabbit” novels from all over the world have been meeting over the weekend in the author’s former eastern Pennsylvania stomping grounds in the first international conference of the John Updike Society.

The organization meeting at Alvernia University studies the life and work of the acclaimed chronicler of American suburbia who was born in Reading and raised in nearby Shillington. Updike wrote more than 60 books include “Rabbit, Run,” and won two Pulitzers, for “Rabbit Is Rich” and “Rabbit at Rest,” and two National Book Awards.

James Plath, professor of English at Illinois Wesleyan University and president of the Updike Society, said the idea of such a group was nixed by the author himself while he was alive.

“I first proposed the idea to him in 2000, and he sent me a note back saying gently but unmistakably, ‘Please, no.’ That’s how modest he was,” Plath told The Philadelphia Inquirer. But after Updike’s death last year at age 76, the idea took off as a way to make sure that Updike remains part of the literary conversation.

“People think reputations just happen,” Plath said. “But that wasn’t the case for Herman Melville or William Faulkner. They needed champions. It took readers and critics to get the ball moving.”

“By holding this conference,” he said, “we guarantee papers will be written, then more papers, then more teachers will teach more Updike texts in their classes. We hope to encourage more anthologies, too, getting into them more Updike stories and poems we feel have been overlooked.”