Meet the Author
John Updike
American · 1932–2009 · Novelist and short story writer
The chronicler of American middle-class longing, who found sensual grandeur in the suburbs.
4 StoryBites Editions1 Short story
Why read John Updike?
Updike writes about ordinary men, marriage, faith, desire, aging, with dazzling, jeweled prose that makes the mundane shimmer. He's fascinated by restlessness: the itch beneath a comfortable life. Few writers have looked so closely at what postwar America wanted and couldn't quite name.
A life in six dates
- 1932Born in Reading, Pennsylvania
- 1960Publishes Rabbit, Run
- 1961Publishes the story A&P
- 1982Wins the Pulitzer Prize for Rabbit Is Rich
- 2009Dies in Danvers, Massachusetts
Themes across the collection
The StoryBites Editions
Context that actually matters
Suburban AmericaHe made the postwar suburb a serious literary landscape of yearning.
The Rabbit novelsHis decades-long portrait of Harry Angstrom tracks a whole era.
Faith and desireHis work wrestles constantly with the pull between the sacred and the sensual.