John Updike filed the literature with poetry, novels, short stories and literary criticism works. His most famous writing consists of the Rabbit series, among which he wrote “Rabbit, Run,” “Rabbit Redux,” “Rabbit Is Rich,” “Rabbit At Rest” and “Rabbit Remembered.” Updike received the Pulitzer Prize for two of them, “Rabbit Is Rich” and “Rabbit At Rest.”
His literary style involved describing the American small town and the middle class of the Protestants. Recognized for his classy and stylistic way of writing, Updike wrote as much as 25 novels and more than 12 short stories collections, among other works of poetry, art criticism and children’s books.
“The New Yorker” used to publish many of his stories, reviews and poetry writing starting from 1954. Also “The New York Review of Books” hosted many of Updike’s works, which gained a lot of critical acclaim, the writer being considered one of America’s most prominent contemporary novelists.
The subject of the suburban adultery had chased Updike in many of his novels. At that time, he used to say that if he hadn’t had the time to exhaust the subject, this had surely exhausted him. Yet, he wrote “The Witches of Eastwick” in 1984, and proved that the family’s subjects aren’t all that interested him.
“The Coup,” a novel published in 1987 spoke about the fictional Cold War period during the African dictatorship, and was quickly regarded as a best-seller. “The Centaur” (1963), “Couples” (1968) and “Roger’s Version” from 1986 were also among his most famous novels.
When Updike gained enough experience in writing, he announced his intentions to publish one book each year. In 1994 he rewrote the tale of Isolde and Tristan under the name of “Brazil.”
“The Early Stories 1953-1975” was published in 2003 and a year later it won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. The preface of the book hosted one of Updike’s intentions for his career, that of giving the “mundane its beautiful due.” He managed to revolve around many literary areas and leave a beautiful mark on each of them.
Updike was awarded the Rea Award for the Short Story for outstanding achievement in 2006. Last year, the National Endowment for the Humanities picked Updike to present the Jefferson Lecture, this being the United States federal government’s highest humanities honor.
In his memoir, entitled “Self Consciousness,” Updike also wrote a letter for his two grandsons, Anoff and Kwame, telling them about the family history of the Updikes and asking them not to be ashamed of their skin. Anoff and Kwame are half black due to their father’s African place of birth. During the last period of his life, the writer spent more time with his four children and his second wife, Martha. Updike also had other two grandsons, Trevor and Sawyer.
He died of lung cancer on January 27, 2009 after he had suffered from psoriasis. The disease was connected to his abilities as a writer and in his memoir, Updike wrote that his creativity is strongly linked to his "skin's embarrassing overproduction." Updike died in a hospital in Beverly Farms, Massachusetts.
