Writer, poet, and critic, born in Shillington, Pennsylvania, USA. He studied at Harvard (1954 BA) and the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Arts, Oxford (19545), and though he would not develop his youthful talents as an artist, he never lost his interest in art. He worked on the staff of the New Yorker for two years (19557), and while maintaining his relationship with that periodical, over the years he became a highly successful novelist, short-story writer, poet, and essayist, eventually settling in Georgetown, MA. His first novel, The Poorhouse Fair (1957), initiated the critical dispute about his writing: some critics would praise his wit, style, use of language, and his affinity for the middle class and their spiritual and sexual angst; others complain about his plots, the sexual content of his work, and the alleged lack of substance. For most readers, he became associated with such popular works as The Witches of Eastwick (1989) and his contemporary American Everyman, Harry Rabbit Angstron in Rabbit Run (1960), Rabbit Redux (1971), Rabbit is Rich (1981), and Rabbit at Rest (1990). Later novels include Brazil (1994), Seek My Face (2003), and Terrorist (2006). Some readers and critics feel that The Centaur (1963), an early mythic novel about a teacher in a small town, is his best work. He is also admired for his many reviews and essays on a wide range of writers, artists, and cultural issues.
Updike's most famous works are his Rabbit series (Rabbit, Run; Rabbit is Rich and Rabbit at Rest both won Pulitzer Prizes for Updike. Describing his subject as "the American small town, Protestant middle class," Updike is well known for his careful craftsmanship and prolific writing, having published 22 novels and more than a dozen short story collections as well as poetry, literary criticism and children's books. Hundreds of his stories, reviews, and poems have appeared in The New Yorker since the 1950s.Overview
As a child, Updike suffered from psoriasis and stammering, and he was encouraged by his mother to write. He served as president of the Harvard Lampoon before graduating summa cum laude (he wrote a thesis on George Herbert) in 1954 with a degree in English before joining The New Yorker as a regular contributor. In 1957, Updike left Manhattan and moved to Ipswich, Massachusetts, which served as the model for the fictional New England town of Tarbox in his 1968 novel, Couples. In 1959 he published a well-regarded collection of short stories, The Same Door, which included both "Who Made Yellow Roses Yellow?"
On occasion Updike abandons this setting, examples being The Witches of Eastwick (1984, later made into a movie of the same name); The Coup (1978, about a fictional Cold War-era African dictatorship), and in his 2000 postmodern novel Gertrude and Claudius (a prelude to the story of Hamlet illuminating three versions of the legend including William Shakespeare's). Other important novels include The Centaur (National Book Award, 1963), Couples (1968) and Roger's Version (1986). In addition to Harry 'Rabbit' Angstrom, a recurrent Updike alter-ego is the moderately well-known, unprolific Jewish novelist Henry Bech who is chronicled in three comic short story cycles, Bech: A Book (1970), Bech is Back (1981) and Bech At Bay: A Quasi-Novel (1998).
While Updike has continued to publish at the rate of about a book a year, critical opinion on his work since the early nineties has been generally muted, and sometimes damning.
A large anthology of short stories from his formative career, titled The Early Stories 1953–1975 (2003) won the 2004 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.
Updike is a well-known and practising critic (Assorted Prose 1965, Picked-Up Pieces 1975, Hugging the Shore 1983, Odd Jobs 1991, More Matter 1999), and is often in the center of critical wars of words. In retaliation for Updike's review of Tom Wolfe's novel A Man In Full, Wolfe called him one of "my Three Stooges" (the other two were John Irving and Norman Mailer).
Updike has worked in a wide array of literary genres, including fiction, poetry, essay, and memoir.
Updike has four children and currently lives in Beverly Farms, Massachusetts with his second wife, Martha.
Updike was the subject of a so-called "closed book examination" by Nicholson Baker, entitled U and I (Random House, 1991).
For two decades, as Updike was passed over for the Nobel Prize in favor of authors with a fraction of his reputation, but famous for some cause celebre, scandal has turned to amusement: Updike awarded his famously-blocked alter ego, Bech, the Nobel, in Bech's swan song novel. (The Witches of Eastwick) We all dream, and we all stand aghast at the mouth of the caves of our deaths; (The Witches of Eastwick) We wake at different times, and the gallantest flowers are those that bloom in the cold. (The Witches of Eastwick) An Irish temper makes you appreciate Lutherans.(Terrorist) Fenway Park, in Boston, is a lyric little bandbox of a ballpark. ("Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu," The New Yorker, 1960) Gods do not answer letters. ("Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu," The New Yorker, 1960) My mother had dreams of being a writer and I used to see her type in the front room. (Brazil)
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