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John Hoyer Updike
Life Time
18 March 1932 - 27 January 2009
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John Hoyer Updike was born on March 18, 1932 in the town of Reading, Pennsylvania, in the family of a school teacher and writer. Updike spent his entire childhood in Shillington. In 1954, John graduated with honors from Harvard University. His specialization was English literature. In addition to studying at Harvard, John attended one-year painting courses at the Ruskin School of Art, which was located at Oxford University. While at Harvard, Updike was the editor of the satirical magazine Harvard
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John Hoyer Updike was born on March 18, 1932 in the town of Reading, Pennsylvania, in the family of a school teacher and writer. Updike spent his entire childhood in Shillington.
In 1954, John graduated with honors from Harvard University. His specialization was English literature. In addition to studying at Harvard, John attended one-year painting courses at the Ruskin School of Art, which was located at Oxford University. While at Harvard, Updike was the editor of the satirical magazine Harvard Pasquillant. In 1953, John Updike married Mary Entwistle Pennington. The marriage broke up in 1967. During his fourteen years together with Mary Entwistle, John had four children. In 1977, he married Martha Bernard for the second time, adopting her three children.
After graduating in England, returning to his homeland, Updike worked for several years in the New Yorker magazine, where he published his first works.
John Updike's first novel was The Whorehouse Fair, which was published in 1959.
Released in 1968, the novel “Married couples” became a bestseller. The novel takes place in a small town in New England, past which the wave of the sexual revolution. The main themes of his works – sex and religion – Updike develops in such novels as “Sunday Month”, “Roger’s Version”. Updike’s writings, along with his criticism of society and mores, made him a Christian writer. Despite this, his works, such as the novel “S” or “Eastwick Witches”, in which the writer ironically speaks about emancipation, caused very restrained reviews from the public.
John Updike was awarded the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for his novels Rabbit Got Rich and Rabbit Calm down. In 1989 he received the Medal of Arts.
On January 27, 2009, John Updike died of lung cancer.
In total, during his writing career, Updike wrote 28 novels and 45 books, including collections of poems, essays and short stories.