John Updike, the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction novels capturing the mood and emotions of small-town, middle-class America, passed away on Tuesday at 76. The great writer who lived in Beverly Farms, Mass., was kneeled by lung cancer and his death was announced by his publisher, Nicholas Latimer of Alfred A. Knopf.
Updike’s novels, short stories and poetry were exposed in more than 50 books, praised by some critics and minimized by others throughout his half a century long career. In recent years, he dedicated his genius in writing art criticism and essays.
A review of Toni Morrison’s novel “A Mercy” was his last published piece, issued by The New Yorker on the 3rd of November 2008.
Robert Silvers, editor of the New York Review of Books, who published much of Updike’s art criticism, stated for The Times on Tuesday that the writer had a remarkably wide range of literary interests which were never superficially or casually treated.
In spite of that, critical views of his fiction were often mixed. For instance, in 2003, Lorrie Moore stated that it was quite possible for Updike to be American literature's greatest short story writer and probably America’s greatest writer of all times. But Harold Bloom disagreed, saying that he lacked depth, which is an essential requirement of great fiction in his opinion. For him, Updike was "a minor novelist with a major style."
Even if there were many critical misunderstandings regarding his work, two of Updike's most memorable fictional characters, Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom and Henry Bech, became emblems of the American male that fascinated him as a writer. Angstrom, a man he considered to be his alter-ego, is the middle-class drifter in Updike's four-book series about "Rabbit." On the other hand, Bech is the Jewish American novelist, breaking away from his cultural roots to become a real American. Each character reflects in its own way the author's major themes.
At the beginning of his career, Updike said he wrote mostly about the world he came from, "the American Protestant small-town middle class."
When he was 20, in 1960, his second novel, "Rabbit Run," brought him national recognition. The book’s main character quickly became an icon of his generation.
Updike’s "lean and lapidary prose" was admired in his first collection of short stories, “The Same Door,” published in 1959.
"Widows of Eastwick," the writer’s final novel was published last year, and like other several novels, was made into a movie. Written in 1984, "Widows of Eastwick" is the proof that realism can turn into fantasy by showing what happens when bored suburban women who are capable of witchery meet one devilish man.
Late in his career, Updike’s male characters, despite their different names, seemed to be the same person at various stages of life: a mid-20th century middle-class American boy, teenager, bachelor, husband, father, and eventually a divorcé.
Robert Silvers considered Updike one of the most brilliant and talented art critics. And it is not surprising at all, since Updike took great interest in art throughout his entire career.
In addition to his two Pulitzers, for "Rabbit Is Rich" and "Rabbit at Rest," the writer also won the American Book Award and the National Book Award for "Rabbit Is Rich."
John Hoyer Updike was born in Shillington, a suburb of Reading, Pa., on the 18th of March 1932. As a child he had a stammer, asthma and psoriasis, which later kept him from military service. He describes all his conditions in "Self-Consciousness."
By the time he graduated, summa cum laude, from Harvard University, where he took creative-writing classes, he had already decided to be a professional writer. During college, he wrote short stories, light verse and essays.
"Writing makes you more human" – John Updike.
