John Updike

An item at American Writers Museum

John Updike grew up in Reading, Pennsylvania, which inspired the setting for his four Rabbit novels. In his adolescence, he seriously considered a career as a cartoonist but instead turned to writing, beginning with a staff position at The New Yorker. He left after two years but maintained a lifelong relationship with the magazine, which frequently published the famously prolific writer's short stories, criticism, and essays.

Balancing precision and realism with lyricism and humor, Updike's fiction plumbed the emotional depths of what he called the "American Protestant small-town middle class." Noting that Updike was also a brilliant essayist and critic, author Philip Roth once called him "our time's greatest man of letters."

AMERICAN VOICES

An exhibit at American Writers Museum

American writing is distinctive, diverse, and comes in many forms from across the nation. The 100 authors featured here represent the evolution of American writing. Learn more about each writer on the timeline by turning the panels below their portraits. Explore centuries of writing by pulling, turning, and touching the interactive elements on the counter.

This is not meant to be a list of the greatest or most influential writers. Instead, we present authors and works as part of the American story as it grows and changes. Taken together, this rich literary heritage reflects America in all of its complexity: its energy, hope, conflict, disillusionment, and creativity.

American Writers Museum