|
|
Article: Updike's passions.(Religion, sex, art)(John Updike)(Critical essay)
- Article from:
- The Christian Century
- Article date:
- March 24, 2009
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2009 The Christian Century Foundation. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
AS JOHN UPDIKE'S readers know, he was haunted by death, but he lived in hope that his words would live and speak to other children of earth. "I think of [my] books on library shelves, without their jackets, years old, and a country-ish teenaged boy finding them and having them speak to him."
Shining in every dust-jacket photograph are the eyes of a country-ish boy from Shillington, Pennsylvania--the shy high achiever who could learn anything and who would gladly tell the test of us everything he knew. He tapped out at least three pages every day. When he died this year of lung cancer at age 76, that daily discipline had amounted to over 60 volumes of novels, ...