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Audio: John Updike at the 92nd Street Y on November 7, 2005
The New York Times on the passing of John Updike: John Updike, the kaleidoscopically gifted writer whose quartet of Rabbit Angstrom novels highlighted so vast and protean a body of fiction, verse, essays and criticism as to place him in the first rank of among American men of letters, died on Tuesday. He was 76 and lived in Beverly Farms, Mass.
The cause was cancer, according to a statement by Alfred A. Knopf, his publisher. A spokesman said Mr. Updike died at a hospice outside Boston.
Of Mr. Updike’s 61 books, perhaps none captured the imagination of the book-reading public as those about ordinary citizens in small-town and urban settings. His best-known protagonist, Harry (Rabbit) Angstrom, first appears as a former high-school basketball star trapped in a loveless marriage and a sales job he hates. Through the four novels whose titles bear his nickname — “Rabbit, Run,” “Rabbit Redux,” “Rabbit Is Rich” and “Rabbit at Rest” — the author traces the sad life of this undistinguished middle-American against the background of the last half-century’s major events.
“My subject is the American Protestant small town middle class,” Mr. Updike told Jane Howard in a 1966 interview for Life magazine. “I like middles,” he continued. “It is in middles that extremes clash, where ambiguity restlessly rules.” Updike made four appearances at the Y's Poetry Center between 1967 and 2005. Listen to the Q&A portion of his last where he talks about poetry influences, his transition from would-be cartoonist to writer, finishing what he starts and art criticism.
You can also download the MP3. [8 MB]
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