“...This is a hideous thing. None of us will ever be the same.”
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John Updike
John Hoyer Updike was an American novelist, poet, short-story writer, art critic, and literary critic. One of only four writers to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once, Updike published more than twenty novels, more than a dozen short-story collections, as well as poetry, art and literary criticism and children's books during his career.
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culture · American writer (1932–2009) · poet · writer · novelist · essayist · playwright · art critic · author · literary critic · science fiction writer · children's writer · also John Updike, John Hoyer Updike, Updike
Born 18 March 1932 · Died 27 January 2009 · Q105756
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John updike bbc radio4 front row 31 10 2008 b00f3b6t
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2026· 17 entries
“I know... But you have to have faith. You've taught me that.”
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“Because we don't have any discipline! We're drowning in debt! We don't even own our own country any more!”
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“Tell me, Nelson, I'm just curious. How does it feel to have smoked up your parents' house in crack?”
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“Just middle-aged. Ideas used to grab me too. It's not that you get better ideas, the old ones just get tired. After a while, you see that even dollars and cents are just an idea. Finally the only thing that matters is putting some turds in the toilet bowl once a day. They stay real, somehow. Somebody came up to me and said, 'I'm God,' I'd say, 'Show me your badge.'”
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“Whenever somebody tells me to do something my instinct's always to do the opposite. It's got me into a lot of trouble, but I've had a lot of fun.”
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“Yeah, well, it is long. And then when you've gone the distance, where's the happiness?”
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“...If you could ever get the poor to vote in this country, you'd have socialism. But people want to think rich. That's the genius of the capitalist system: either you're rich, or you want to be, or you think you ought to be.”
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“Who wants to fish, if you're halfway civilised? Dangling some dead meat in front of some poor brainless thing and then pulling him up by a hook in the roof of his mouth? Cruellest thing people do is fish.”
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“The papers exaggerate. They exaggerate everything, just to sell papers. The government exaggerates, to keep our minds off what morons they are.”
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“The usual thing, ma'am. It's tired and stiff and full of crud. It's a typical American heart, for his age and economic status et cetera.”
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“Maybe he did. You don't get to see what a bastard I can be.”
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“to give the mundane its beautiful due”
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“and not chop them down to what you think is the right size.”
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“a ticket to the America all around me. What I saw through Rabbit”
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“As to critics, it seems to be my fate to disappoint my theological friends by not being Christian enough, while I”
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Observer: David Foster Wallace on John Updike: A Legacy of One
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2025· 3 entries
The Guardian: John Updike’s best books – Ranked!
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Yahoo: John Updike Wrote It All Down
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The Guardian: John Updike: A Life in Letters review – the man incapable of writing a bad sentence
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2023· 1 entry
Wall Street Journal: The John Updike Childhood Home Review: Rabbit’s Roots
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2022· 1 entry
And 2023, Bryce Pinkham played Updike in episodes of the TV show Julia
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2021· 2 entries
The Guardian: John Updike’s Rabbit, Run reviewed – archive, 15 September 1961
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Publishers Weekly: Books by John Updike and Complete Book Reviews
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2019· 2 entries
JSTOR Daily: Myth and Gospel in the Fiction of John Updike
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The Guardian: Rabbit Is Rich by John Updike – archive, 17 January 1982
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2018· 2 entries
The Guardian: Andrew Davies to defend John Updike with Rabbit TV series
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JSTOR Daily: European Perspectives on John Updike
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2013· 1 entry
The Library of America issued a two-volume boxed edition of 186 stories under the title The Collected Stories
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2009· 13 entries
Cleveland.com: John Updike is a keen observer in his final book of poems
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PBS: John Updike, 1932 – 2009
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Observer: Remembering John Updike
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The New Yorker: John Updike: On-Screen
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Died 2009-01-27.
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“Nie wiesz jeszcze zbyt dużo o miłości. On jest moim facetem. Gdyby nie ja, co by miał? Byłby żałosny i może za bardzo go kocham i nie chcę, żeby się o tym przekonał. Dla czarnego faceta wychowanego w biednej rodzinie w New Prospect sprzedawanie swojej kobiety nie jest żadną hańbą, jest sposobem na udowodnienie męskości.”
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“Bierze pigułki antykoncepcyjne, prawda?– Oczywiście. Witaj w raju.Piet pozostał na sofie, podczas gdy oni skierowali się w stronę schodów. Angela pocałowała go na pożegnanie w policzek; nie poruszył głową. Bardzo wyraźnie poczuł zarys jej ust, jak gdyby była ogrzaną przez ogień kamienną rzeźbą.”
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“Kiedy wyraził niepokój możliwością jej zajścia w ciążę, roześmiała się. Czyżby Angela nie używała jeszcze enovidu? „Witaj – powiedziała Georgene – w pigułkowym raju”. To beztroskie bluźnierstwo przyniosło mu ogromną ulgę.”
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“When I write, I aim in my mind not toward New York but toward a vague spot a little to the east of Kansas.”
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“Umieramy. Nie przez sekundę, kiedyś tam, w przyszłości. Umieramy cały czas, we wszystkich kierunkach. (…)– Śmierć mnie podnieca. Umierać to być pieprzonym przez Boga. Będzie rozkosznie.– Przecież nie wierzysz w Boga.– W tego wierzę, Wielkiego Pana Śmierci. Codziennie czuję jego zapach (…)”
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“I think “taste” is a social concept and not an artistic one. I’m willing to show good taste, if I can, in somebody else’s living room, but our reading life is too short for a writer to be in any way polite. Since his words enter into another’s brain in silence and intimacy, he should be as honest and explicit as we are with ourselves.”
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“There's a crystallization that goes on in a poem which the young man can bring off, but which the middle-aged man can't.”
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“Życie nie jest czymś, co można kontrolować. Nie kontrolujemy oddechu, trawienia, bicia serca. Życie trzeba po prostu przeżyć. Trzeba pozwolić mu się toczyć.”
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2008· 3 entries
Awarded Jefferson Lecture (2008).
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Gave a "damning" review of Toni Morrison's novel A Mercy, and in 1999 he criticized Alan Hollinghurst's novels for being "relentlessly gay in their personnel"
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Updike published The Widows of Eastwick, a return to the witches in their old age
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2006· 1 entry
Awarded Rea Award for the Short Story (2006).
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2005· 1 entry
Awarded Carl Sandburg Literary Award (2005).
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2004· 2 entries
Awarded PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for The Early Stories: 1953–1975 (2004).
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Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement
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2003· 2 entries
Won National Humanities Medal (2003).
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Updike published The Early Stories, a large collection of his short fiction spanning the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s
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2002· 1 entry
Fitzgerald Award for Achievement in American Literature
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2000· 2 entries
Updike appeared as himself in The Simpsons episode "Insane Clown Poppy" at the Festival of Books
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Updike included the novella Rabbit Remembered in his collection Licks of Love, drawing the Rabbit saga to a close
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1998· 1 entry
Awarded National Book Award (1998).
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1997· 1 entry
Awarded Ambassador Book Award for In the Beauty of the Lilies (1997).
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1995· 3 entries
Awarded Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres (1995).
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Won William Dean Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1995).
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Everyman's Library collected and canonized the four novels as the omnibus Rabbit Angstrom; Updike wrote an introduction in which he described Rabbit as "a ticket to the America all around me
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1994· 1 entry
Awarded Prix Laure Bataillon (1994).
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1993· 1 entry
Awarded Common Wealth Award of Distinguished Service (1993).
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1992· 1 entry
Awarded honorary doctor of Harvard University (1992).
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1991· 1 entry
Awarded Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Rabbit at Rest (1991).
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1990· 3 entries
Awarded Amateur Cartoonist Extraordinary Award (1990).
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Awarded National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction for Rabbit at Rest (1990).
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Published the last Rabbit novel, Rabbit at Rest, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award
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1989· 1 entry
Won National Medal of Arts (1989).
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1988· 1 entry
Awarded PEN/Malamud Award (1988).
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1987· 3 entries
Awarded Helmerich Award (1987).
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Awarded St. Louis Literary Award (1987).
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In which he concluded that Updike possessed a major style and was capable of writing beautiful sentences which are "beyond praise"; nevertheless, Bloom went on, "the American sublime will never touch his pages"
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1986· 1 entry
Published the unconventional Roger's Version, the second volume of the so-called Scarlet Letter trilogy, about an attempt to prove God's existence using a computer program
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1983· 1 entry
Awarded National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism (1983).
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1982· 3 entries
Awarded Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Rabbit Is Rich (1982).
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Awarded National Book Award for Fiction for Rabbit Is Rich (1982).
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National Book Award for Fiction (hardcover)
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1981· 3 entries
Awarded National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction for Rabbit Is Rich (1981).
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The novelist and short-story writer John Cheever was asked why he did not write book reviews and what he would say if given the chance to review Rabbit Is Rich
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“Look, Nelson. Maybe I haven't done everything right in my life. I know I haven't. But I haven't committed the greatest sin. I haven't laid down and died.”
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1980· 1 entry
Published another novel featuring Harry Angstrom, Rabbit Is Rich, which won the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction—all three major American literary prizes
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1977· 1 entry
Updike and Bernhard married
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1971· 1 entry
Updike published a sequel to Rabbit, Run called Rabbit Redux, his response to the 1960s; Rabbit reflected much of Updike's resentment and hostility towards the social and political changes that beset the United States du
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1966· 1 entry
Awarded O. Henry Award (1966).
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1964· 1 entry
Awarded National Book Award for Fiction for The Centaur (1964).
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1962· 1 entry
“best statement of Updike's aesthetic comes in his early memoir 'The Dogwood Tree'”
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1954· 4 entries
Awarded Bowdoin prize (1954).
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Studied at Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art (1954).
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With a degree in English and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa
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Studied at Harvard University, bachelor's degree (1950–1954).
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1953· 1 entry
While a student at Harvard, Updike married Mary Entwistle Pennington, an art student at Radcliffe College and daughter of a prominent Unitarian minister
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1950· 1 entry
And received a full scholarship to Harvard University, where he was the roommate of Christopher Lasch during their first year
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1932· 2 entries
Born 1932-03-18.
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“s All-TIME 100 Greatest Novels. Short stories Updike”
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