(Bloomberg) — John Updike, the Pulitzer Prize- winning author who chronicled middle-class life in small town and suburban America through the prism of such issues as sexuality, adultery, mortality and loss, died today. He was 76.
Updike died after a battle with lung cancer, according to an e-mail from his publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House.
A prolific writer, he authored more than 50 novels and volumes of short stories, poems, essays and criticism. Updike captured “the whole mass of middling, hidden, troubled America,” most notably in the four-book Rabbit series, which follows Everyman Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom through the second half of the 20th century. He won the Pulitzer Prize for two novels in the tetralogy: “Rabbit Is Rich” (1981) and “Rabbit at Rest” (1990).
Some critics, like John Cheever, considered Updike “the most brilliant and versatile writer of his generation.” He was called America’s greatest poetic novelist, who skillfully wove metaphor, lyricism and detail into his narratives. Others say that his prose is superficial and overly descriptive to hide the fact that his work is about nothing.
Many of his books centered on middle-class domestic life, including marriage, adultery and divorce. Updike often peppered these novels with graphic descriptions of sexual intercourse –to the point of gratuitousness, said some critics. Source: Bloomberg
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