While I was corresponding with John Updike he would usually reply to my letters using a manual typewriter and typing on the back of a postcard. The letter that I wrote him in Mar., 2006, mentions several things: (1) I had just read the Updike novel "Toward the End of Time." I jokingly mentioned that Updike deserved an award for being the first to use the word "opisthognathous" since Melville in 1850. I commented on my distaste for the main female character Gloria and wondered who wrote the jacket copy describing her as the "vibrant wife Gloria" (2) I mentioned that I had written letters to Nabokov and had received replies (3) I commented on the encroachment of political correctness into the English language, the insistence that "blonde" must now be "blond" and that the word "actress" can no longer be used.
