John Updike

Birth: 1932-03-18 , Reading

Death: 2009-01-27 , Danvers

John Updike was an acclaimed American writer, known for his elegant prose and for exploring the lives of the American middle class, focusing on the complexities of human relationships, sexuality, and spirituality. His novels and short stories often portray suburban life and the existential dilemmas of his characters.

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In memory’s telephoto lens, far objects are magnified.

As I get older, my childhood self becomes more accessible to me, but selectively, in images as stylized and suspect as moments remembered from a novel read years ago.

We all begin life as parasites within the mother, and writers begin their existence imitatively, within the body of letters.

All men are mortal, and therefore all men are losers; our profoundest loyalty goes out to the failed.

So they provided jails called schools, equipped with tortures called an education.

[TJhose running tights the young women wear now, so they look like spacewomen, raspberry red and electric green so tight they show every muscle right into the crack between the buttocks, what is the point of them? Display. Young animals need to dis- play.

“I never made a decision in my life that wasn’t one hundred per cent selfish.”

If men do not keep on speaking terms with children, they cease to be men, and become merely machines for eating and for earning money.

The difference between a childhood and a boyhood must be this: our childhood is what we alone

Natural beauty is essentially temporary and sad; hence the impression of obscene mockery which artificial flowers give us.

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John Updike was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, on March 18, 1932. Throughout his prolific career, he published over twenty novels, ten short story collections, and several books of poetry and essays. He is particularly famous for his novel series about the character Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, which includes "Rabbit, Run" (1960), "Rabbit Redux" (1971), "Rabbit Is Rich" (1981), and "Rabbit at Rest" (1990). Updike received numerous literary awards, including two Pulitzer Prizes for Fiction. His detailed and lyrical writing established him as one of the great stylists of American literature. He died in Danvers, Massachusetts, on January 27, 2009.