Today in 1932 the acclaimed American writer John Updike was born in Shillington, Pennsylvania. His childhood was plagued with sickness so he turned to art and writing as an escape. In high school he excelled in academics and graduated from Harvard with honors. He is most known for 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. John Updike is viewed as one of the best American writers during the twentieth century. Recently, January 27, 2009 Updike died of lung cancer at 76.
Beginning in 1954 Updike had hundreds of short stories, reviews, and poems published in The New Yorker and he also wrote for The New York Review of Books. His first published story was “Friends from Philadelphia”. After he graduated from Harvard he went to Oxford. In 1955 he returned to the United States and took a job as a staff writer at the New Yorker. This was his life time goal, however after two years he left New York City for Ipswich, Massachusetts so that he could devote himself full time to his own writing. (Ipswich is where I live!)
His third novel The Centaurwritten in 1963 won the National Book Award. He drew on his Pennsylvanian upbringing and used the myth of Chiron the centaur fusing it with the story of an adolescent boy and his father taking place in the winter of 1947. Critics are divided on whether he successfully integrated the myth with contemporary reality but the novel has a powerful meaning.
In 1958 he published his first volume of poems called The Carpentered Hen. His poetry has been collected in many volumes, such as Telephone Poles and Other Poems (1963); Midpoint (1969) and Tossing and Turning (1977). Tossing and Turning has had high reviews. Updike also wrote many major novels, aside from the Rabbit series like Couples (1965); A Month of Sundays (1975); The Witches of Eastwick (1984); Brazil (1993); and Bech at Bay (1998). He also publish short stores like Pigeon Feathers (1962) and Museums and Women (1972).
In 1999 he published More Matter: Essays and Criticism which is a collection of pieces, reviews, speeches and some personal reflection. He has received many awards and honors throughout his career like National Book Critics Circle Award, Pulitzer Prize, American Book Award and elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Our library has several of his works, including all that are pictured in this blog. Some titles Feinberg have include; The Widows of Eastwich, Due Considerations: Essays and Criticism, Terrorist, Villages, Seek My Face, Americana and other Stories, The Early Stories: 1953-1975, Toward the End of Time, Memories of the Ford Administration: A Novel, Of the Farm, Couples and all the books of the Rabbit series. We also have The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books.
