John Updike dies

Anyone ever read him?? He's dead anyway, god rest his soul.



from Breaking News

Quote :

Pullitzer prize-winning novelist dies

27/01/2009 - 19:08:05
John Updike, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, prolific man of letters and erudite chronicler of sex, divorce and other adventures in the post-war prime of the American empire, died today. He was 76.

Updike, a resident of Beverly Farms, Massachusetts, died of lung cancer, according to a statement from his publisher, Alfred Knopf.

A literary writer who frequently appeared on best-seller lists, the tall, hawk-nosed Updike wrote novels, short stories, poems, criticism, the memoir 'Self-Consciousness' and even a famous essay about baseball great Ted Williams.

He was prolific, even compulsive, releasing more than 50 books in a career that started in the 1950s. Updike won virtually every American literary prize, including two Pulitzers, for 'Rabbit Is Rich' and 'Rabbit At Rest', and two National Book Awards.

Although himself deprived of a Nobel, he did bestow it upon one of his fictional characters, Henry Bech, the womanising, egotistical Jewish novelist who collected the literature prize in 1999.

His settings ranged from the court of “Hamlet” to post-colonial Africa, but his literary home was the American suburbs. Born in 1932, Updike spoke for millions of Depression-era readers raised by “penny-pinching parents,” united by “the patriotic cohesion” of the Second World War and blessed by a “disproportionate share of the world’s resources,” and America’s post-war, suburban boom of “idealistic careers and early marriages.”

He captured, and sometimes embodied, a generation’s confusion over the civil rights and women’s movements, and opposition to the Vietnam War.
http://www.breakingnews.ie/World/mhsngbojqlgb/

Am ashamed to say that he is / was one of those writers I have always meant to read but never actually got round to doing so, despite enthusiastic College lectures and reading numerous book reviews over the years. And I never knew til tonight that he appeared in The Simpsons!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insane_Clown_Poppy

Would be interested to know how many have actually read him.

Auditor #9 wrote:

Anyone ever read him?? He's dead anyway, god rest his soul.



from Breaking News

Quote :

Pullitzer prize-winning novelist dies

27/01/2009 - 19:08:05
John Updike, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, prolific man of letters and erudite chronicler of sex, divorce and other adventures in the post-war prime of the American empire, died today. He was 76.

Updike, a resident of Beverly Farms, Massachusetts, died of lung cancer, according to a statement from his publisher, Alfred Knopf.

A literary writer who frequently appeared on best-seller lists, the tall, hawk-nosed Updike wrote novels, short stories, poems, criticism, the memoir 'Self-Consciousness' and even a famous essay about baseball great Ted Williams.

He was prolific, even compulsive, releasing more than 50 books in a career that started in the 1950s. Updike won virtually every American literary prize, including two Pulitzers, for 'Rabbit Is Rich' and 'Rabbit At Rest', and two National Book Awards.

Although himself deprived of a Nobel, he did bestow it upon one of his fictional characters, Henry Bech, the womanising, egotistical Jewish novelist who collected the literature prize in 1999.

His settings ranged from the court of “Hamlet” to post-colonial Africa, but his literary home was the American suburbs. Born in 1932, Updike spoke for millions of Depression-era readers raised by “penny-pinching parents,” united by “the patriotic cohesion” of the Second World War and blessed by a “disproportionate share of the world’s resources,” and America’s post-war, suburban boom of “idealistic careers and early marriages.”

He captured, and sometimes embodied, a generation’s confusion over the civil rights and women’s movements, and opposition to the Vietnam War.
[url=http://www.breakingnews.ie/World/mhsngbojqlgb/

http://www.breakingnews.ie/World/mhsngbojqlgb/[/quote][/quote[/url]]

Yup Audi - he was a great writer - a guy who could do anything he liked with narrative voice and a whole bunch of other literary techniques to boot. One of my favourite American authors though he is disliked by many for what is really just his choice of subject matter rather than his writing ability. He wrote mostly without pity or favour about the world with which he was familiar.