Updike

A masterful, much-anticipated biography of one of the most celebrated figures in American literature: Pulitzer Prizewinning author John Updikea candid, intimate, and richly detailed look at his life and work In this magisterial biography, Adam Begley offers an illuminating portrait of John Updike, the acclaimed novelist, poet, short-story writer, and critic who saw himself as a literary spy in small-town and suburban America, who dedicated himself to the task of transcribing middleness with all its grits, bumps, and anonymities. Updike explores the stages of the writers pilgrims progress: his beloved home turf of Berks County, Pennsylvania; his escape to Harvard; his brief, busy working life as the golden boy at the New Yorker; his family years in suburban Ipswich, Massachusetts; his extensive travel abroad; and his retreat to another Massachusetts town, Beverly Farms, where he remained until his death in 2009. Drawing from in-depth research as well as interviews with the writers colleagues, friends, and family, Begley explores how Updikes fiction was shaped by his tumultuous personal lifeincluding his enduring religious faith, his two marriages, and his firsthand experience of the adulterous society he was credited with exposing in the bestselling Couples. With a sharp critical sensibility that lends depth and originality to his analysis, Begley probes Updikes best-loved worksfrom Pigeon Feathers to The Witches of Eastwick to the Rabbit tetralogyand reveals a surprising and deeply complex character fraught with contradictions: a kind man with a vicious wit, a gregarious charmer who was ruthlessly competitive, a private person compelled to spill his secrets on the printed page. Updike offers an admiring yet balanced look at this national treasure, a master whose writing continues to resonate like no one elses.