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John Hoyer Updike (born March 18 1932 in Shillington, Pennsylvania ) is an American writer. Updike's most famous work is his Rabbit series ('' Rabbit, Run ''; '' Rabbit Redux ''; '' Rabbit Is Rich ''; '' Rabbit At Rest ''; and '' Rabbit Remembered ''). ''Rabbit is Rich'' and ''Rabbit at Rest'' both won Pulitzer Prizes for Updike. Describing his subject as "the American small town, Protestant Middle Class ," Updike is well known for his careful craftsmanship and prolific writing, having published 22 novels and more than a dozen short story collections as well as Poetry , Literary Criticism and children's books. Hundreds of his stories, reviews, and poems have appeared in '' The New Yorker '' since the 1950s. His works often explore sex, faith, and death, and their inter-relationships. EARLY LIFE As a teenager, Updike was encouraged by his mother to write while attending Shillington High School. Updike entered Harvard University on a full scholarship. He served as president of the Harvard Lampoon before graduating '' Summa Cum Laude '' (he wrote a thesis on George Herbert ) in 1954 with a degree in English before joining '' The New Yorker '' as a regular contributor. In 1957 , Updike left Manhattan and moved to Ipswich, Massachusetts , which served as the model for the fictional New England town of Tarbox in his 1968 novel, '' Couples ''. In 1959 he published a well-regarded collection of short stories, ''The Same Door'', which included both " Who Made Yellow Roses Yellow? " and " A Trillion Feet Of Gas ." Other classic stories include " A&P ," "Pigeon Feathers," "The Alligators," and "Museums and Women." His 1960 New Yorker essay "Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu," about Boston baseball legend Ted Williams ' last game, is regarded as being among the best examples of sportswriting. He favors Realism and Naturalism in his writing; for instance, the opening of ''Rabbit, Run'' spans several pages describing a pick-up basketball game in intricate detail. His writing typically focuses on relationships among people: friends, married couples, or those in extramarital affairs. ''Couples'' and the Rabbit tetralogy, in particular, follow this pattern. In the Rabbit books, the changing social, political, and economic history of America forms the background to the Angstroms' marriage and acts occasionally as a commentary on it - and vice versa. On occasion Updike abandons this setting, examples being ''). His stories involving the socially-conscious (and social-climbing) couple "The Maples" are widely considered to be Autobiographical , and several were the basis for a Television Movie entitled '' Too Far To Go '' starring Michael Moriarty and Blythe Danner which was broadcast on NBC . Updike stated that he chose this surname for the characters because he admired the beauty and resilience of the tree. While Updike has continued to publish at the rate of about a book a year, critical opinion on his work since the early nineties has been generally muted, and sometimes damning. Nevertheless, his novelistic scope in recent years has been wide: retellings of mythical stories ( Tristan and Isolde in ''Brazil'', 1994 ; a Hamlet prequel in ''Gertrude and Claudius'', 2000 ), generational saga ('' In The Beauty Of The Lilies '', 1996 ) and Science Fiction ('' Toward The End Of Time '', 1997 ). In ''Seek My Face'' ( 2002 ) he explored the post-war art scene; in ''Villages'' ( 2004 ), Updike returns to the familiar territory of infidelities in New England . His twenty-second novel, '' Terrorist '', the story of a fervent, eighteen-year-old Muslim in New Jersey, was published in June 2006. A large anthology of short stories from his formative career, titled ''The Early Stories 1953–1975'' ( 2003 ) won the 2004 PEN/Faulkner Award For Fiction . He wrote that his intention with the form was to "give the mundane its beautiful due." Updike is a well-known and practicing Critic (''Assorted Prose'' 1965 , ''Picked-Up Pieces'' 1975 , ''Hugging the Shore'' 1983 , ''Odd Jobs'' 1991 , ''More Matter'' 1999 ), and is often in the center of critical wars of words. In retaliation for Updike's review of Tom Wolfe 's novel ''A Man In Full'', Wolfe called him one of "my Three Stooges " (the other two were John Irving and Norman Mailer ). Updike has also been involved in critical disputes with Gore Vidal and John Gardner , authors renowned for their criticism of him and others. Updike has worked in a wide array of literary genres, including fiction, poetry, essay, and memoir. His lone foray into drama, , apparently constituted something of a reversal, since in a 1968 Interview Updike claimed that " {Link without Title} he unreality of painted people standing on a platform saying things they've said to each other for months is more than I can overlook." He further said: "From Twain to James and Faulkner to Bellow, the history of novelists as playwrights is a sad one." In 2006 Updike was awarded the Rea Award For The Short Story for outstanding achievement in that genre. Updike has four children and currently lives in Beverly Farms , Massachusetts with his second wife, Martha. His new book is a collection of Essay s on art, ''Still Looking'' (Knopf, 2005). Updike was the subject of a so-called "closed book examination" by Nicholson Baker , entitled ''U and I'' (Random House, 1991). In an episode of the animated television series '' The Simpsons '' ,entitled " Insane Clown Poppy ", John Updike is the author of a book that Krusty The Clown is promoting. The book's title is "YOUR SHOES TOO BIG TO KICKBOX GOD" which is 20 page book written by John Updike as a scam for Krusty the Clown to make money. QUOTATIONS :The great thing about the dead, they make space. ('' Rabbit Is Rich '') : {Link without Title} loves men, uncomplaining with their bellies and cross-hatched red necks, embarrassed for what to talk about when the game is over, whatever the game is. What a threadbare thing we make of life! Yet what a marvelous thing the mind is, they can't make a machine like it; and the body can do a thousand things there isn't a factory in the world can duplicate the motion. ('' Rabbit Is Rich '') :Tell your mother, if she asks, that maybe we'll meet some other time. Under the pear trees, in Paradise. ('' Rabbit At Rest '') :Of plants tomatoes seemed the most human, eager and fragile and prone to rot. ('' The Witches Of Eastwick '') :We all dream, and we all stand aghast at the mouth of the caves of our deaths; and this is our way in. Into the nether world. ('' The Witches Of Eastwick '') :We wake at different times, and the gallantest flowers are those that bloom in the cold. ('' The Witches Of Eastwick '') :An Irish temper makes you appreciate Lutherans.('' Terrorist '') : Fenway Park , in Boston, is a lyric little bandbox of a ballpark. ("Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu," '' The New Yorker '', 1960) :Gods do not answer letters. ("Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu," '' The New Yorker '', 1960) :My mother had dreams of being a writer and I used to see her type in the front room. The front room is also where I would go when I was sick so I would sit there and watch her.(2004 interview with Academy of Achievement (source: http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/upd0int-1)) :Black is a shade of brown. So is white, if you look. (''Brazil'') :Standing with her in the warming waterfall, soaping her skin so its yielding silk was overlaid with a white grease, and then letting her soap him [Tristão in turn, he felt his cashew become a banana, and then a rippled yam, bursting with weight. (''Brazil'') :Freedom is a blanket which, pulled up to the chin, uncovers the feet. (''The Coup'') :Fame is a mask that eats into the face. (''Self-Consciousness'') :Masturbation! Thou saving grace note upon the baffled chord of self. (''A Month of Sundays'') CRITICISM John Dolan called him a ''dotard'' when he praised Arundhati Roy 's novel ''"...who drove the populist ball straight onto the green by calling it 'a Tiger Woodsian debut'." '' Martin Amis' collection of reviews, ''The War Against Cliche'', includes a section focused on Updike's writing (pgs 369-388). Amis addresses ''Picked-Up Pieces'' ("Updike's view of twentieth-century literature is a levelling one. Talent, like life, should be available to all."), ''Roger's Version'', ("I sense the genius, but not the heavy impact of greatness, not yet."), ''Self-Consciousness: Memoirs'' ("The last section of the book, 'On Being a Self Forever', is to my knowledge the best thing yet written on what it is like to get older: age, and the only end of age."), ''Rabbit at Rest'' ("This novel is enduringly eloquent about weariness, age and disgust, in a prose that is always fresh, nubile and unwitherable."), and ''Odd Jobs: Essays and Criticism'' ("There is a trundling quality, increasingly indulged: too much trolley-car nostalgia and baseball-mitt Americana, too much ancestor worship, too much piety."). LITERARY WORKS Rabbit novels
Bech books
Buchanan books
Other novels
Short story collections
Poetry
Non-fiction, essays and criticism
Children's books
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