Orhan Pamuk über die Updike-Biographie von Adam Begley At first, he wanted to be a graphic artist. In 1954, John Updike — age 22, newly married and fresh out of Harvard, where he’d studied English literature and taken art courses — was awarded a fellowship to study abroad, and decided to apply to the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Arts in Oxford, England. Asked to explain this decision, Updike replied, “It’s always been my ambition to be the next Walt Disney.” This well-researched, considerate and almost affectionate biography illustrates how Updike was so fond of Mickey Mouse he could draw the character from memory even in old age — but it also reminds us that behind his youthful desire to be the next Walt Disney lay the fact that “Peter Pan” was the highest-grossing movie of the year when Updike was a junior at Harvard. “His elitist education hadn’t dimmed his enthusiasm for a medium with mass appeal,” Begley writes.