From the New York Times obituary:
Updike was the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, a prolific man of letters and erudite chronicler of sex, divorce and other adventures in the postwar prime of the American empire. Best known for his four ”Rabbit” novels, he died Tuesday at age 76.Updike was a literary writer who frequently appeared on best-seller lists. He wrote novels, short stories, poems, criticism, the memoir ”Self-Consciousness” and even a famous essay about baseball great Ted Williams .He released more than 50 books in a career that started in the 1950s, winning virtually every literary prize, including two Pulitzers, for ”Rabbit Is Rich” and ”Rabbit at Rest,” and two National Book Awards.
He captured, and sometimes embodied, a generation’s confusion over the civil rights and women’s movements, and opposition to the Vietnam War. Updike was called a misogynist, a racist and an apologist for the establishment. On purely literary grounds, he was attacked by Normal Mailer as the kind of author appreciated by readers who knew nothing about writing. Last year, judges of Britain’s Bad Sex in Fiction Prize voted Updike lifetime achievement honors.
But more often he was praised for his flowing, poetic writing style. Describing a man’s interrupted quest to make love, Updike likened it ”to a small angel to which all afternoon tiny lead weights are attached.”
