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Scott Timberg on Creative Destruction

John Updike vs. Witches of Eastwick

September 21, 2009 by Scott Timberg


FOR a not terribly good book, “the witches of eastwick” has had quite an afterlife. not only did it become a popular, if faintly cheesy, movie involving cher, and a briefly lived stage show, but it’s now set to become a television series. no, not a miniseries — but a show that could run for years and years.

why? i’m still a bit confused about the whole thing. but HERE is my new piece on the book’s unlikely journey.
for the story, i spoke to a producer on the show named maggie friedman, who pointed out that “men and women and sex” are important ingredients to making the book — and her show — work.
and i discussed the original novel’s impact and sexual politics — is it feminist? misogynist? an indictment of the counterculture — with scholars quentin miller and sam cohen. the latter has a new book coming soon called “after the end of history: american fiction in the 1990s.”
what do people make of the program of “eastwick?” i’m eager to hear from viewers. the show kicks of wednesday.

Filed Under: "witches of eastwick", books, film, new england, television, updike

Comments

  1. Sapna says

    May 8, 2014 at 8:46 pm

    Signs and signage – road signs, movie marquees, newspaper headlines real and imaginary, municipal signs, electronic message boards, storefronts, etc. – function as important indicators of the shifts, changes, and developments in Angstrom’s consciousness as he grows older throughout the decades chronicled in Updike’s ‘Rabbit’ series.
    http://postmoderndeconstructionmadhouse.blogspot.com/2013/12/signs-and-signage-in-updikes-rabbit.html#.UyN2cj9dXxA

Scott Timberg

I'm a longtime culture writer and editor based in Los Angeles; my book "CULTURE CRASH: The Killing of the Creative Class" came out in 2015. My stories have appeared in The New York Times, Salon and Los Angeles magazine, and I was an LA Times staff writer for six years. I'm also an enthusiastic if middling jazz and indie-rock guitarist. (Photo by Sara Scribner) Read More…

Culture Crash, the Book

My book came out in 2015, and won the National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Award. The New Yorker called it "a quietly radical rethinking of the very nature of art in modern life"

I urge you to buy it at your favorite independent bookstore or order it from Portland's Powell's.

Culture Crash

Here is some information on my book, which Yale University Press published in 2015. (Buy it from Powell's, here.) Some advance praise: With coolness and equanimity, Scott Timberg tells what in less-skilled hands could have been an overwrought horror story: the end of culture as we have known … [Read More...]

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