Updike, John

Updike, John, 1932–, American author, b. Shillington, Pa., grad. Harvard, 1954. His novels and stories, written in a well-modulated prose of extraordinary beauty and dazzling fluidity, usually treat the tensions and frustrations of middle-class life, often mingling the joys and sorrows of suburban life with a current of existential dread. The classic novel Rabbit Run (1961), set in Pennsylvania in the 1950s, concerns a young man who yearns for his days as a high school athlete and deserts his wife and child. In Rabbit Redux (1971), the same hero confronts racial tension, job obsolescence, sexual freedom, drugs, violence, and the alienation of the young. The quartet continues with Rabbit Is Rich (1981; Pulitzer Prize) and ends with Rabbit at Rest (1990; Pulitzer Prize). The Rabbit characters are brought up to date in Rabbit Remembered, a novella-sequel included in the volume Licks of Love (2000).

The remarkably prolific author's other works include the novels The Poorhouse Fair (1959), The Centaur (1962), Couples (1968), The Coup (1978), The Witches of Eastwick (1984), In the Beauty of the Lilies (1995), Seek My Face (2002), and Terrorist (2006) and volumes of poetry such as The Carpentered Hen (1958), Facing Nature (1985), and Americana (2001). Among his many short-story collections are Pigeon Feathers (1962), Museums and Women and Other Stories (1972), Problems (1979), The Afterlife and Other Stories (1994), and the linked stories that feature Updike's Jewish alter ego, Henry Bech: Bech: A Book (1970), Bech Is Back (1982), and Bech at Bay (1998). The Early Stories: 1953–1975, a compilation, was published in 2003. Updike has also written the play Buchanan Dying (1974); literary criticism, e.g., Hugging the Shore (1983), Odd Jobs (1991), and More Matter (1999); and art criticism, e.g., Just Looking (1989) and Still Looking (2005).

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2007, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

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