John Updike's Buchanan Dying
Welcome to the Web home of The Buchanan Dying Project. This introduction will provide you with some background on John Updike, on the play Buchanan Dying, and on James Buchanan (1791-1868), the fifteenth President of the United States and the subject of Updike's play. You can also understand the Project Goals, learn more about the Features of this site, read about the Project History, appreciate the Partnerships responsible for producing this project, and review Technical Information about the Web site's construction. Buchanan Dying with a new foreword by John Updike is available in hardcover for $21.95, plus shipping, from Stackpole Books, 800-732-3669, www.stackpolebooks.com.
John Updike (b. 1932) is a contemporary American writer who was born in Reading and lived for the first thirteen years of his life in Shillington, PA. Updike is truly a Pennsylvania writer, because many of his works draw on his rich Pennsylvania background. Amazingly prolific, Updike has written more than fifty volumes, including novels, short stories, poetry, non-fiction, children's literature, art criticism, and even a book on golf, Golf Dreams, Writings On Golf (1996). Most recently Gertrude and Claudius, Updike's novel tale of Gertrude's, King Hamlet's, and Claudius's lives before Hamlet, appeared to strong reviews. Updike is probably best known for his stories of middle-class life.
One of his most regarded works of that description, Rabbit, Run, began as a poem, then became a short story, and emerged as a novel. This Web home attempts to show the development of Buchanan Dying, which began as a novel and finished as a closet drama, a play intended to be read and not necessarily performed.
Even Updike fans may be unfamiliar with his play, Buchanan Dying. The play appeared in 1974 but received neither critical praise nor commercial success. Buchanan was, and perhaps still is, a fascination for Updike. Updike's later work, Memories of the Ford Administration, concerns Buchanan as well.
Like Updike, Buchanan was from Pennsylvania. In his Afterword, Updike admits,"In my Pennyslvania childhood, I knew him to be the only President our great and ancient stated had produced; but where were the monuments, the Buchanan Avenues, the extollatory juvenile volumes with titles like Jimmie Buchanan, Keystone Son in the White House or "Old Buck," the Hair-Splitter Who Preceded the Rail-Splitter? Lincoln and Washington were drummed into us but Buchanan went unmentioned."1
James Buchanan was a lawyer, a member of the House of Representatives, a minister to Russia, a Secretary of State to President James Polk, and in 1856 the fifteenth President of the United States. As President, Buchanan was a strong constitutionalist. Though Buchanan personally disapproved of slavery, he believed that the new United States territories had the right to decide for themselves whether to be slave or free. His political maneuvers were often misunderstood and were considered timid. Though he delayed the outbreak of full-scale civil war, he could not stop the secession of South Carolina. His actions (or inactions) during his Presidency were subsequently blamed for contributing to the outbreak of the Civil War. After leaving office, Buchanan retired for the last seven years of his life to his beloved home Wheatland.
Buchanan spent twenty years of his life at Wheatland, a federal-style mansion made in 1828 of orange-red brick. It is here, at Wheatland, where Buchanan Dying takes place. From his bed, a "sleigh bed" made of apple, cherry, and peach wood, Buchanan welcomes, sometimes reluctantly, visitors from his past.
One of his encounters is with Anne Coleman, who broke her engagement with him shortly before her mysterious death. Part of their last conversation has been scanned for this site.
Buchanan's failed romance with Anne Coleman is the centerpiece of the play and colors the rest of Buchanan's life. The story goes that Anne, from a wealthy and prominent Lancaster family, and Buchanan, by then a successful lawyer, from a large, rural family, were engaged, but in November 1819 Anne broke off the engagement after a misunderstanding between the two. This misunderstanding most likely concerned Buchanan's visit with the Hubley sisters, relatives of a Buchanan client. After hearing the news of his visit, Anne wrote Buchanan a letter ending their engagement. Anne then travels to Philadelphia, but Buchanan does not follow. Instead, he works out an out-of-court settlement for the Columbia Bridge case. Later that week, a messenger brings news of Anne's death to Lancaster. Updike talks about the mystery surrounding her death, and the central question: Did Anne, jealous and feeling Buchanan no longer loved her, commit suicide? 2
In the play, the differences in their backgrounds cause problems for Buchanan, who believes that Anne's family hates him. In the scene scanned for this Web site, Buchanan exclaims,"Your family does not love me." But Anne reassures him that once their engagement is announced, the family will "put a face on it." When Buchanan worries that they are being too hasty, Anne tells him that they have known each other for four years. Their conversation ends with Anne offering,"From this moment forward, I shall trust to your wisdom, and to your discretion," and reminding Buchanan of her constancy.3
Yet, it is not a question of Anne's constancy that causes their breakup. As mentioned earlier, one strong theory holds that Buchanan's extended visit with the Hubley sisters precipitated Anne's termination of their engagement. In the play, Buchanan's visit occurs shortly after Anne's and Buchanan's conversation in the forest. The meeting openings with this description: "Female laughter! MRS. MARY JENKINS and her sister GRACE HUBLEY are discovered by a change of light at Buchanan's bedside. The married sister is brunette; the unmarried, blonde. Both flirt automatically."4 Though Buchanan intends to visit only briefly after learning that Mr. Jenkins is not home, the sisters persuade Buchanan to stay. Eventually their conversation comes around to Buchanan's engagement to Anne Coleman. Perhaps realizing that he has gone too far in mentioning his relationship with Anne, Buchanan changes the topic of conversation and apologizes that he meant only to stay a moment. When Buchanan again attempts to leave, Grace implores him,"Oh stay!" and "BUCHANAN does not rise." From offstage, Anne's cry of "Traitor! Traitor!" is heard. 5
This site has been designed to be instructive, entertaining, and useful for students, Updike enthusiasts, and the curious.
The site has two major goals:
- to stimulate thinking about how an idea for a novel or a play becomes a novel or play or some final published form by showing and explaining aspects of this process
- to encourage visitors to look at the Updike materials in Special Collections and to become curious about other Special Collections holdings
The first goal is pedagogical. We hope that instructors will use this Web site to encourage their students to think about the process of book production. We are all familiar with a novel in its final form, but many of us may never have thought about the tremendous amount of work that goes into creating this final, published product. Included on the Web site are explanations of this "behind the scenes" work. The tour allows students to move through the Updike materials and provides some tools for exploring this area more. We hope instructors will talk with their students about book production. This Web site demystifies the process in some ways, but what is presented here suggests possibilities for explanation; it does not attempt to tell the definitive story of how Updike's idea became Buchanan Dying. We hope visitors to the site and to Special Collections will use these materials to imagine their own stories.
The second goal is to encourage interest in and use of the many resources in Special Collections. At a time when the push to digitize suggests to some the diminishing need for physical spaces like Special Collections, we use this technology, the technology supposedly supplanting certain functions of Special Collections departments, to emphasize Special Collections' importance. The images on this site provide a glimpse of the John Updike Papers, which are but a fraction of Special Collections' own holdings. These images are intended to stimulate thinking and a desire to look at The John Updike Papers. Seeing a page from an Updike manuscript on a computer screen does not compare to holding that page in one's hands and observing the texture of Updike's pencil markings on the page. In addition, a visitor to Special Collections can discover in the John Updike Papers many things not included on this Web site.
We hope that the features of this site allow us to achieve these two major goals.
The Web site's features have been designed with two goals in mind: to provide an apparatus for visitors to think about book production, and to encourage the community to visit Special Collections. The website provides many resources for looking at and thinking about the Updike materials, but a good starting point is the on-line tour that both explains how Special Collections acquired these materials and describes the elements of The John Updike Papers, including the novel drafts, the play drafts, the proofs, and associated correspondence. The tour is designed for those unfamiliar with textual criticism or analysis. Terms, such as "proof" and "galley", as well as the basic process of book production, are explained.
The visitor may also look at the manuscript materials, which represent a small portion of the materials included in the Updike Papers. We have scanned and traced a particular scene between Buchanan and Anne Coleman from the first draft of the play through to the third author's proof. We have also included transcriptions of these materials that include explanations of the many markings visitors will find on the pages, especially on the author's proofs, which contain proofreaders' and editors' as well as Updike's marks.
The Web site allows for parallel-viewing of the materials, so the viewer can look at, for example, the first draft and the third author's proof simultaneously. We hope this will facilitate thinking about the kinds of changes Updike made between versions. We also wish to show the intensity of Updike's revision process.
Bibliographies are available on-line so viewers can learn more about textual criticism or read more reviews of Updike's play, Buchanan Dying, and later novel, Memories of the Ford Administration, whose main character, Alf Clayton, has been involved in his own project on Buchanan.
Project History
Just as some Updike fans and even scholars may be unaware or unfamiliar with Updike's play, some members of the Penn State University community are probably unaware of The John Updike Papers in Special Collections. This Project hopes to change that by encouraging the community to visit Special Collections.
In the summer of 1999, Digital Resources Consultant Marianne Cotugno met with Roberta Astroff and Amanda Maple to discuss possible new projects for the Digital Resources Center (DRC). The possibility of working with Special Collections was raised, and consequently Marianne Cotugno spoke with Sandra Stelts and Sue Hamburger, both from Special Collections, about a collaborative project between Special Collections and the DRC. Sue Hamburger suggested developing a web-based Pennsylvania Authors Series that would showcase Special Collections' holdings. Marianne Cotugno expressed an interest in working with John Updike's Buchanan Dying materials, which she had learned about through the work done by Alan Janesch on Buchanan Dying. Janesch, who recently earned a Master of Arts degree in English at Penn State, used some of the materials for an edition project in English 501. Later, Janesch wrote an (as yet) unpublished article about Updike's play. Soon after these meetings, Marianne Cotugno submitted a proposal for this project.
After receiving approval for this project, the decision about what to scan was made after carefully reviewing all of the material in the collection. We decided to trace the development of the scene between James Buchanan and Anne Coleman from the novel draft until the final author's proof, because of the scene's significance in the story and the way it dramatizes Updike's revision process. It is interesting that this conversation, which takes place early in the play, comes to Updike at the end of his novel draft. Writing the draft of the novel seems to have allowed Updike to discover the cornerstone of his story.
This project is a result of the cooperation and support of many members of the Pennsylvania State University community. The project coordinators wish to thank:
- Roberta Astroff, Digital Resources Coordinator
- Don Bialostosky, Head of the Department of English
- Marianne Cotugno, Ph.D. candidate in English
- William Joyce, Head of Special Collections
- Amanda Maple, Head of the Arts and Humanities Library
- Sandra Stelts, Rare Books Specialist
A special thank you to the late Kim Fisher, Paterno Family Librarian in Literature, for his support and encouragement; to Larry Wentzel in Preservation for his helpful assistance with scanning; and to Alan Janesch for the insightful and thorough material provided in his unpublished article on Buchanan Dying.
Once the decision of which materials to scan was made, the materials were scanned in the DRC using a Hewlett Packard ScanJet 3c. Oversized materials were scanned using an oversized scanner with the help of Larry Wentzel, a Digital Preservation Specialist. The images were initially scanned in color at 200 dpi. Thumbnails were made as well. The materials were not scanned for preservation purposes, so no TIFFS have been made. L View Pro was used to edit the images.
The selected pages from the manuscript have been transcribed using information from The Chicago Manual of Style and using conventions discussed in Mary-Jo Kline's A Guide to Documentary Editing (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998). Many Web sites were looked at as models for this project.
All site design and HTML markup was done by Marianne Cotugno. Javascript has been used to create the "flip" effect on the main page.
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Manuscript Materials
First Draft | Second Draft | Setting
Copy
Author's Proof #1 | Author's Proof
#2 | Author's Proof #3
Those wishing to make a side-by-side comparison of the materials may do so using this link to a Parallel View of Materials.
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N.B. Clicking on a page will open a new browser window.
Visitors to the Rare Books and Manuscripts Division
of the Special Collections Library are encouraged to examine the John Updike
Papers, which include:
- two complete typed drafts of the play with typed and handwritten revisions
- handwritten notes by Updike
- handwritten draft of the novel
- three author's proofs of the play with revisions and notes
- galleys of the play
- an acting copy of the play
- news clippings about the play and its production
- correspondence between Updike and Phillip S. Klein, author of President James Buchanan: A Biography, published in 1962
- correspondence between Updike and Charles Mann about acquiring the materials
- assorted correspondence related to the writing of the play, including one letter each from C. Vann Woodward (June 18, 1974) and Malcolm Cowley (Apr. 19, 1973)
- other materials include several printed poems by Updike; a typescript of his poem "Erotic Epigrams;" and a complete run of The John Updike Newsletter (1977-1980).
For more information, please visit the catalog entry for this material. Information about the acquisition of this
materials can be learned by taking an online
tour.
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Works Cited
1 John Updike Buchanan Dying (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1974): 252.Return to text
2 Updike 185-189.Return to text
3 Updike 49.Return to text
4 Updike 57.Return to text
5 Updike 62.Return to text
