John Updike

Updike, John (Hoyer)

(1932–  ) writer, poet, critic; born in Shillington, Pa. He studied at Harvard (B.A. 1954) and the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Arts, Oxford (1954–55); although he would not develop his youthful talents as an artist, he never lost his interest in art. He worked on the staff of the New Yorker for two years; while maintaining his relationship with that periodical, he became, over the years, a highly successful novelist, short story writer, poet, and essayist, eventually settling in Georgetown, Mass. His first novel, The Poorhouse Fair (1957), initiated the critical dispute about his writing: some critics would praise his wit, style, use of language, and his affinity for the middle class and their spiritual and sexual angst; others complain about his plots, the sexual content of his work, and the alleged lack of substance. For most readers, Updike became associated with such popular works as The Witches of Eastwick (1989) and his contemporary American Everyman, Harry "Rabbit" Angstron in Rabbit Run (1960), Rabbit Redux (1971), Rabbit is Rich (1981), and Rabbit at Rest (1990). Some readers and critics feel that The Centaur (1963), an early mythic novel about a teacher in a small town, is his best work. He is also admired for his many reviews and essays on a wide range of writers, artists, and cultural issues.

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Updike, John

 

Born Mar. 18, 1932, in Shillington, Pennsylvania. American writer. Graduate of Harvard University.

Updike published a collection of poems in 1958 and the novella The Poorhouse Fair in 1959. These works were followed by the collection of short stories The Same Door (1959), the novels Rabbit, Run (1960) and The Centaur (1963, Russian translation, 1965), the collections of short stories Pigeon Feathers (1962) and The Music School (1966), the collection of poems Telephone Poles (1963), and the novella Of the Farm (1965, Russian translation, 1967). Inherent in Updike’s works is a constant attention to the spiritual make-up of his contemporaries, together with an unusual stylistic mastery in conveying the dreariness, emptiness, and egocentrism that characterize bourgeois existence. Updike’s short stories contain clear pictures of contemporary America.

WORKS

Verse. Greenwich [1965].
Assorted Prose. New York, 1965.
In Russian translation:
Kentavr.[Foreword by S. Markish. Afterword by R. Orlova.] Moscow, 1966.

REFERENCE

Landor, M. “Romany-kentavry.” Voprosy literatury, 1967, no. 2.

I. M. LEVIDOVA

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.