The most wonderful thing about John Updike, who died Tuesday of cancer at 76, was that there was an Updike for anyone who loved to read. If you craved realist fiction about the American middle class, you could go to his series of novels about Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, the small town Pennsylvania basketball star turned Toyota dealer. If you wanted quiet, beautifully written stories about married life, there were the stories about the Maples, a Massachusetts couple that Updike observed through a long string of short stories. Craving something steamier? Try "Couples," his 1968 bestseller about marital infidelities in suburban small towns. There were also comic novels about witches, a novel of social unrest in Africa, a novel about a Muslim terrorist, a retelling of the saga of Tristan and Isolde and a prequel to "Hamlet." There was a play about President James Buchanan and three novels about Updike's alter ego, a Jewish novelist named Bech. If you got tired of fiction, there were nine collections of poetry and goodness knows how many collections of his criticism—that would be literary criticism and art criticism. There were a couple of collections of just plain old essays, and a book about golf and a book about himself. He was, in other words, more literary conglomerate than author, something like General Motors in its heyday, turning out small cars, big cars, trucks and everything in between.
[From The Many Stylings of John Updike | Newsweek Culture | Newsweek.com]
-Noted by Paul Knue
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