LIFE AND LETTERS in which the author describes an encounter following the loss and recovery of his hat. One day, while wintering in the Southwest, the …
John Updike
In canonical works, including the four Rabbit Angstrom novels, the Henry Bech stories, “ Couples ,” and “ The Centaur, ” John Updike documented what he called “the American Protestant small-town middle class.” Born in Berks County, Pennsylvania, in 1932, he studied to be a cartoonist before beginning his long association with The New Yorker , in 1954, as a contributor of Talk of the Town pieces, fiction, and poetry. Updike, whom George Saunders called “a once-in-a-generation phenomenon, if that generation is lucky,” published more than a hundred and forty stories in the magazine, exploring family, marriage, infidelity, mortality, and faith, and won both the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the National Book Award twice, in addition to the National Medal of Arts, in 1989, and the National Humanities Medal, in 2003. His career at The New Yorker began with a poem , published in 1954, and ended with a poem , published in 2009, a few weeks after his death.
Read more on The New Yorker →29 picks · 1957–2008
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Short story in which a man recalls his first real, though unconsummated, sexual encounter in a car on a deserted road in Pennsylvania in the 1950s… …
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Short story about the ramifications of an affair between two married people, Veronica Horst, who’s health later becomes delicate (she comes down with …
John Updike, Jonathan Franzen, Denis Johnson, Roger Angell, Aharon Appelfeld, Rebecca Mead, Susan Sontag, Amitav Ghosh, and Donald Antrim respond to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
John Updike on the future of faith.
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After the death of his elderly mother, the adult Joey returns to the farmhouse in rural Pennsylvania, where she had been born and spent most of her life. …
A CRITIC AT LARGE about the life & career of cartoonist Ralph Barton, who committed suicide at age 39, in 1931. Barton's drawings, like his signature, …
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Harrison, age 60, woke up one morning as a not quite slight earthquake shook the room. His wife did not stir. She was much younger than he, and found his …
John Updike, in a piece from 1982, writes on the career of Herman Melville, and how slowing down preserved his communion with literary greatness.
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Parody of the fact that 'something' about a close and reverent 'exposure' to the work of Henry James seems to lead his commentators into a …
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All Venezuela, except for the negligible middle class, is divided between the Indians (los indios) and the rich (los ricos). The Indians are very poor and …
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Ferguson, a divorced, middle-aged man, discovered in the blue ground of his midnight brain certain bright moments that never failed to make him feel …
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Tod and Pumpkin are lovers who have recently left their spouses, Lulu and Roger. The lovers are both seeing psychiatrists; Tod, whose name is also a word …
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As the Maples at last decided to part, the Puritan Commonwealth in which they lived passed a no-fault amendment to its creaking, overworked body of divorce…
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The writer, who keeps a journal, is a leper. He earns his
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In 1999, space explorers discovered life within Jupiter on a planet they dubbed, Minerva. The inhabitants, known as Minervans, were cylindrically shaped …
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Erica Jong’s “Fear of Flying” belongs to, and hilariously extends, the tradition of “Catcher in the Rye” and “Portnoy’s Complaint,” John Updike writes in this 1973 review of the novel.
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A series of reflections on the father-son relationship. The first one describes the author's own son. He wishes for perfection. He would be a better …
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It is night. The eleven o'clock news is in progress. A commercial for natural gas comes on. It includes a GRANDMOTHERLY WOMAN and a SMALL BOY. Their …
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"Marriages, like chemical unions, release upon dissolution packets of the energy locked up in their bonding." Story about the break-up of a marriage. …
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Author reminisces about his college roommate of 20 yrs. ago, Ed Popper, who had read everything, it seemed. Ed came fron Nebraska, & his companions in …
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Lou and Tom Brideson are moving from New York City, their home of 10 yrs,, to Texas. At a farewell party for them in Conn. Lou gravitates to the kitchen. …
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The story of one early morning in the writer's life, pains takingly described. He is a teen-ager, very reluctant to get up on this cold winter day. His…
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In moving from Olinger to Firetown, David Kern, fourteen, tries to work off some of his disorientation by arranging books. In "An Outline of History," by …
John Updike writes about Ted Williams’s last game with the Boston Red Sox.
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John Updike on the discovery that many popular TV game shows were rigged.
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Writer sees a subway poster indicating how a letter should be addressed, using postal zone numbers. It is to Mr. Henry Smith, 901 State Street, Anywhere 3,…