But with an author whose career was so long-running and productive as that of John Updike, who died last week at 76, the paucity of adaptations seems downright head-scratching. For a guy with dozens of novels, and several hundred short stories, it's an embarrassing batting average. The only recognizable film made from one of his books is George Miller's "The Witches of Eastwick" (1987).

 

Part of what made it hard for Updike's work to translate to film was style: His writing is so visual, at the level of image and metaphor, it's almost redundant to put it into a visual medium.

 

Similarly, as Troy Patterson wrote in a ...