john updike

Some information, such as that pertaining to the circumstances of the person's death and surrounding events, may change rapidly as more facts become known. John Updike

John Updike in 1955. Born March 18, 1932(1932-03-18)

Reading, Pennsylvania, U.S.A. Died January 27, 2009 (aged 76)

Danvers, Massachusetts, U.S.A. Occupation novelist, short story writer, literary critic Genres Modernist literature Notable work(s) Rabbit Angstrom Influences[show] Ernest Hemingway, Henry Green, James Joyce, Søren Kierkegaard, Franz Kafka, Marcel Proust, Truman Capote, Vladimir Nabokov, John Barth, Arthur Schopenhauer, J. D. Salinger, William Shakespeare, James Thurber[1] Influenced[show] Ann Beattie, Ian McEwan, Rick Moody, Lloyd Kropp, Ceridwen Dovey

John Hoyer Updike (March 18, 1932 – January 27, 2009) was an American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic. Updike's most famous work is his Rabbit series (Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit Is Rich; Rabbit At Rest; and Rabbit Remembered). Both Rabbit is Rich and Rabbit at Rest received the Pulitzer Prize. Describing his subject as "the American small town, Protestant middle class," Updike was widely recognized for his careful craftsmanship, his highly stylistic writing, and his prolific output, having published more than twenty-five novels and more than a dozen short story collections, as well as poetry, art criticism, literary criticism and children's books. 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 work attracted a significant amount of critical attention and he was considered one of the most prominent contemporary American novelists.[2] Updike died of lung cancer on January 27, 2009.[3] Contents [hide] 1 Early life 2 Career 3 Criticism 4 Bibliography 5 Cultural references 6 References 7 External links //

Early life

Updike was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, to author Linda Grace Hoyer Updike and Wesley Russell Updike, a high school mathematics teacher.[4] John Updike was raised at 117 Philadelphia Avenue (now part of Route 724) in Shillington, Pennsylvania, until he was 11[5], when his family moved to a sandstone farmhouse in Plowville, Berks County, Pennsylvania, where he became interested in reading and writing.

Updike later recalled seeing his mother writing at her desk and feeling inspired. "One of my earliest memories is of seeing her at her desk," her son later said. "I admired the writer's equipment, the typewriter eraser, the boxes of clean paper. And I remember the brown envelopes that stories would go off in -- and come back in."[6]

These early years in Berks County would shape the environment of the Rabbit