JOHN UPDIKE

Over the course of his career as a novelist, short story writer, poet, essayist, and dramatist, John Updike (b. 1932) has been awarded every major American literary award; in 1998 he was awarded the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.  For one novel alone, Rabbit Is Rich (1981), he won the Pulitzer Prize, the American Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award.  Among over a dozen published novels, his recurring themes include religion, sexuality, and middle-class experience.  In his essays, Updike’s concerns range widely over literary and cultural issues.  One volume of his collected essays, Hugging the Shore: Essays and Criticism (1983), was awarded a National Book Critics Circle Award.  His most recent publications include Bech at Bay: A Quasi-Novel (1998), Toward the End of Time (1997), and More Matter: Essays and Criticism (1999).  “A & P” appears in Pigeon Feathers and Other Stories (1962).  Updike has said, “I began my writing career with a fairly distinct set of principles which, one by one, have eroded into something approaching shapelessness.”  He does maintain one principle, however:  “You should attempt to write things that you would like to read.”  Writing, he continues is a process of rendering “your vision of reality into the written symbol.  Out of this, living art will come.”

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