The Life and Writings of John Updike

John Updike is an amazing writer during his time. He wrote many short stories and poems. He is an American and is a literacy critic. He was widely praised as America's "last true man of letters", with a huge and far-reaching power on many writers. It is said that “John Updike has been called the most gifted writer of his generation; ‘Updike writes with the tongue of angels, and sees with the eye of a bird’” (Hamilton). Updike was well-recognized for his careful craftsmanship, and his unique prose style. He wrote on average a book a year. Despite in his books about characters, themes, and attitudes, John Updike based his writings on his life experiences because he wanted to put a personal feeling in his books.

John Updike was born on March 18, 1932 in Reading, Pennsylvania. He was raised in a small town of Shillington. He grew up being the only child. He lived with his father Wesley, his mother Linda and his grandparents. His father was a junior-high math teacher and his mother was a housewife and aspiring writer. He had psoriasis and was inspired by his mother to write. They moved from Shillington to his mother’s birthplace in Plowville, Pennsylvania.

He graduated from Shillington high school as the president and co-valedictorian of the senior class. He worked as a copy boy for Reading Eagle for a couple of summers. He received a tuition scholarship from Harvard University. He begins to write and draw cartoons for Harvard Lampoon. He meets and marries his first wife Mary E. Pennington, who was a fine art major at Radcliffe. He was elected the editor of Harvard Lampoon. As a senior, he wrote a thesis on Robert Herrick, the seventeenth-century English poet.

He graduated with an English literature major from Harvard. He sold his...

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...here are other things he put in his stories like religion, middle-class experiences, sexuality, and death. He could never take a break from his work because he would get nervous and feels unhappy if he didn’t write something after a little while. He lived a great life and he had fans that love his work. John Updike was the most considerable stylist among the writers of fiction in his American generation. He is in one of a group of contemporary novelists who get criticism by their conventional religious desires.

Works Cited

Schiff, James A. John Updike Revisited. New York: Twayne, 1998. Print.

Luscher, Robert M. John Updike: a Study of the Short Fiction. New York: Twayne, 1993. Print.

Hamilton, Alice, and Kenneth Hamilton. The Elements of John Updike. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1970. Print.

Bloom, Harold. John Updike. New York: Chelsea House, 1987. Print.