The Art of Fiction No. 43
“When I write, I aim in my mind not toward New York but toward a vague spot a little to the east of Kansas … ”
John Updike
John Updike
A chronicler of America’s suburbs par excellence, John Updike was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, on March 18, 1932. After graduating from Harvard University, he quickly achieved success, becoming a staff writer at The New Yorker in 1955 and publishing both a poetry collection and a novel in 1958. His first major book, Rabbit, Run, soon followed in 1960; the character of Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom would subsequently appear in Updike’s novels Rabbit Redux (1971), Rabbit Is Rich (1981), and Rabbit at Rest (1990), the latter two of which were awarded the Pulitzer Prize—making him one of three American writers to have won the Pulitzer Prize multiple times. Other notable works from his vast oeuvre include The Centaur (1963), Couples (1968), and The Witches of Eastwick (1984). He died of lung cancer in 2009.
Illustration by John Updike