John Hoyer Updike is a famous American writer, and author of novels and books: collections of short stories, poems, and essays. He is the recipient of the Rea Award, a significant award for short story writers. Updike has written several collections of short stories that have become classics of American prose. Among John Updike’s many awards is the National Book Award for The Centaur. It is a landmark book without which modern, postmodern prose might not have found its final, familiar form. For the first time in English-language literature, it is a book that introduced the technique of “semantic complexity.” It transforms the humble teacher into the “mentor of heroes” of ancient mythology and the small town into a kaleidoscope of visions (Updike). The author did a brilliant thing: he turned an ordinary story into a legendary one and drew readers’ attention to many hidden and apparent problems. Updike made an essential contribution to the art of storytelling and has always remained faithful to the canons of the genre.
American author John Updike was born on 18 March 1932 in Pennsylvania. His father taught school, and Updike’s mother wrote short stories (Svoboda). The writer graduated from Harvard University in 1954, where he studied English literature while also taking art classes at the Reskin School. He once wanted to be a Walt Disney artist: like the hero of his autobiographical novel The Centaur, Peter Caldwell. The writer was very good at drawing, hesitated between creativity and art history, and studied for a year in Britain because America was too traditional in terms of painting – or, conversely, too avant-garde. Updike trained in Britain and graduated from Harvard, one of the most important universities: he was such an able boy that he was accepted without financial aid (Svoboda). He then developed a passion for literature, and for a long time, he chose between art, art history, and literature and eventually chose literature.
As a student, Updike married Mary Pennington, who became the mother of his four children. They divorced in 1974 after 21 years of marriage: a painful experience reflected in “Too Far to Go,” published in 1979. By then, Updike had married his old sweetheart Martha Bernard, raising her three children from a previous marriage. While at university, the writer was editing a local satirical print publication. After graduation, Updike returned to the United States to work for The New Yorker, where he published his first work (Heaman). Two years later, Updike became head of the magazine’s criticism department. Typical of him was an increased focus on the sensual side of gender relations and Christian themes. Updike died on 27 January at 76 in a US hospital in Beverly Farms (Heaman). The writer had lung cancer, which caused his death. Updike has been called the last classic of American literature; he gave everyday life its beauty in his novels.
John Updike is one of America’s most influential writers; he became a classic during his lifetime. Although he was never a cult writer, unlike his contemporary Jerome David Salinger: his death in 2009 did not have the same impact as Salinger’s a year later. Updike is indeed an exciting figure; the writer won every possible literary prize except the most important, the Nobel Prize. Nevertheless, he remains a significant, influential writer, about whom many books have already been written, and even more articles. Updike is a man who has developed an entire aesthetic. His aesthetic ideas didn’t change much – that is, in many ways, Updike’s weakness. His poetics changed, his language changed, but in general, his worldview did not change much. The writer had a reputation as one of the best stylists writing in English, with a rich vocabulary.
References
Heaman, Patricia B. “Updike, John.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature, 2017.
Svoboda, Frederic. Understanding John Updike. Univ of South Carolina Press, 2018.
Updike, John. The Centaur. Random House Trade Paperbacks, 1963.