As EW’s book review editor — and a passionate reader — I often tear through a book or more a day. (It helps that I have a long train commute.) But every year, usually during the summer, I set aside some time and meander, once again, through the books I love most, especially John Updike’s marvelous Rabbit novels, which capture the angst of a generation in lean, crisp, wonderfully evocative prose. So when I heard the news that Updike had died this morning at 76, from lung cancer, I felt a real pang: One of the loveliest, most prolific (and certainly the most wide-ranging) American authors of his time has died. Whether he was trying his hand at memoir, drama, essays, poetry (The Carpentered Hen), science fiction (Toward The End of Time), or short stories, whether he was revisiting Hamlet (Gertrude and Claudius), imagining an entertainment empire (In The Beauty of the Lilies) or reviewing books for The New Yorker, somehow the award-winning Updike always returned to the territory he knew best: sex and infidelity. (The New York Times once called him “the bard of the middle-class mundane, the chronicler of suburban anxiety,” an assessment he rather cheerfully agreed with.) His famous 1968 novel, Couples — about marriages in a small Massachusetts town — landed him on the best-seller list; his Rabbit novels followed Rabbit “Harry” Angstrom over the years through marriage, adultery, tragedy. There were authors whom I tired of, but I never tired of Updike, who, even as he grew older, continued to stretch and flex (one of his last novels, 2006′s Terrorist, was about a Muslim terrorist). I’ll miss him dreadfully. And I think I won’t wait until summer to pull about the Rabbit novels; I’ll go home and start tonight.
Please use the comments section below to share your thoughts and memories of this brilliant American author.
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Review: ‘The Widows of Eastwick’
Just started reading the widows of eastwick this weekend. So sad to hear the news.
I’ve been meaning to delve into the Rabbit novels for quite some time… perhaps now would be the time to begin.
amazing writer, my friend has told me about him for years maybe now i’ll start reading his books
he will be missed
I’ve read all the Rabbit novels, all the Bech novels, the ‘Scarlet Letter’ trilogy, and more.
So unexpected, and sad. Unfortunately, there won’t be another writer of his caliber ever again.
I just began reading the Rabbit series this summer. What a fabulous group of novels. I received the final two “Rabbit at Rest” and the “Rabbit Remembered” (the short story) for Christmas. I cannot wait to begin reading them. I was hopoing that in 2010 we would get another dose of the Rabbit, but, alas, it is not meant to be. I am so happy John Updike gave me just wonderful novels to read!
For me, he was, until this morning, the greatest living American writer, and one of the greatest writers of the 20th and 21st centuries. I have read every one of his novels and short stories, and most of his essays and book reviews. Even in his lesser works there are always passages of sublime beauty, and the best of his works, especially many of his short stories, are peerless, often literally breathtaking. The Rabbit novels are probably the most cogent portrait of middle-class American that you will ever find. He will be sorely missed.
I’ve been reading him since high school in the 70′s. I remember this TV movie on one of short stories with Blythe Danner and Michael Moriarty which was just amazing.
John Updike was and will remain THE
greatest author of our time. His death
marks a great loss for all who appreciated really fine writing, as well as real honesty in fiction.
I grew up in a small town in MA called Georgetown. My 2 best freinds where Jason and John. They where John Updikes step children. John Updike was like a father to me he allows the kind generous man with plenty of time for us boys. He taught me to golf and shoot arrows. I will miss him dearly.
moved to tears. who else knows the WASP soul and can write about us as if we are not a cultural joke? Don’t forget his wonderful art book- “Still Looking”. Oh how I wish he was still looking, and thinking, and sharing his beautiful mind.
I actually met Updike at a writing competition in Atlanta several years ago. He was judging the fiction and nonfiction categories, and I was an essay finalist. I spoke to him for quite a while at a luncheon, and he had cheese-and-chicken goop stuck in his teeth, which made me see him as just an ordinary guy instead of the literary god he’d always been to me. It’s one of my favorite memories.
It was a crime that John Updike never won a Nobel Prize, although it was more of a rejection of America than of Updike. When asked last summer why Americans never won anymore, one of the judges said “America is now out of the mainstream.” John Updike was a mainstream of human consciousness all by himself. People will read him centuries from now to know how we lived.
John Updike was in my mind America’s greatest stylist of the last 40 year. He and Phillip Roth are the our best writers during that time. I hope the Swedish award givers realize that Roth deserves it next year. They were too late for John Updike, unfortunately.
I will sorely miss John Updike. I had the pleasure of hearing him speak and went to a book signing. He signed my copy of “S” and a friend snapped our picture which I have in a frame. He spoke to me through his books in so many different ways. I am a fan forever.
It’s sad to hear of his passing. He was an immensely talented writer and a gem of a human. I met him when he spoke at my school; a nicer man you couldn’t find. Wish he had hung around a little longer.