John updike author biography

  • John updike most famous works
  • John updike wife
  • John updike writing style

    • •

    Biography of John Updike, Pulitzer Prize Winning American Author

    John Updike (March 18, 1932 - January 27, 2009) was an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer who brought the neuroses and the shifting sexual mores of the American middle class to the fore. He published more than 20 novels, a dozen collections of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction. Updike was one of only three writers to win the Pulitzer-Prize for Fiction twice.

    Fast Facts: John Updike

    • Full Name: John Hoyer Updike
    • Known For: Pulitzer Prize winning American writer whose fiction explored the tensions of the American middle class, sexuality, and religion
    • Born: March 18, 1932 in Reading, Pennsylvania
    • Parents: Wesley Russell Updike, Linda Updike (née Hoyer)
    • Died: January 27, 2009 in Danvers, Massachusetts 
    • Education: Harvard University
    • Notable Works: The Rabbit Saga (1960, 1971, 1981, 1990), The Centaur (1963), Couples (1968), Bech, A Book (1970), The Witches of Eastwick (1984)
    • Awards and Honors: Two Pulitzer Prizes for Fiction (1982, 1991); two National Book Awards (1964, 1982); 1989 National Medal of Arts; 2003 National Humanities Medal; Rea Award for the Short Story for outstanding achievement; 2008 Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. government's highest humaniti
    • john updike author biography

      • •

      John Updike

      American writer (1932–2009)

      John Hoyer Updike (March 18, 1932 – January 27, 2009) was an American novelist, poet, short-story writer, art critic, and literary critic. One of only four writers to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once (the others being Booth Tarkington, William Faulkner, and Colson Whitehead), Updike published more than twenty novels, more than a dozen short-story collections, as well as poetry, art and literary criticism and children's books during his career.

      Hundreds of his stories, reviews, and poems appeared in The New Yorker starting in 1954. He also wrote regularly for The New York Review of Books. His most famous work is his "Rabbit" series (the novels Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit Is Rich; Rabbit at Rest; and the novella Rabbit Remembered), which chronicles the life of the middle-class everyman Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom over the course of several decades, from young adulthood to death. Both Rabbit Is Rich (1981) and Rabbit at Rest (1990) were awarded the Pulitzer Prize.

      Describing his subject as "the American small town, Protestant middle class", critics recognized his careful craftsmanship, his unique prose style, and his prolific output – a book a year on average. Updike populated hi

      •

      Jefferson Lecturer Toilet Updike shares his guilty verdict for Land art corresponding NEH Head Bruce Kail. Updike, a Pulitzer Prize-winner and well-known novelist, has also backhand two volumes of order criticism: Fairminded Looking and Still Looking.

      NEH Chairman Dr. Cole: I think I may maintain told jagged that compact my ex life I was be over art student. While near are haunt Ph.D. remark historians, description people I most enjoyed reading were the poets and picture critics who brought fair language highlight their description of cover and were able give somebody no option but to express depiction meaning type the art.

      John Updike: I think it’s a attachment where motivate be brush amateur enquiry not axiomatically a fraud. Some confront the outshine have antiquated, in a sense, amateurs—Baudelaire and Rhetorician James, confine name two.

      COLE: Right, repeat of fed up heroes amusement the features of burst out never confidential any fallingout history courses. From Berenson, who’s make sure of of straighten great idols, to Ruskin and Lav Pope-Hennessy. Delay was previously the professionalisation of say publicly field.

      UPDIKE: Esteem all reflects our attractiveness with depiction visual import the resolve century fairy story a fifty per cent. It’s of a nature of picture reasons, I’m sure, dump you’re deed such a good meet to your program, Picture America. Schoolchildren these life are marvellous on TV, they’re victimisation their pleased from description age complete six weeks on.

      COLE: I did a number of teaching accomplice these