John Updike’s Archive: A Great Writer at Work

By Sam Tanenhaus in the New York Times

“When John Updike died of lung cancer in January 2009, at 76, there seemed little left to learn about him. Not only was he among the most prolific writers of his time, but he was also among the most autobiographical, recasting the details of his life in an outpouring of fiction, poetry, essays and criticism that appeared with metronomic regularity in the pages of The New Yorker and in books published at a rate of almost one a year for more than half a century. Yet Updike was a private man, if not a recluse like J. D. Salinger or a phantom like Thomas Pynchon, then a one-man gated community, visible from afar but firmly sealed off, with a No Trespassing sign posted in front.”

John Updike’s Archive: A Great Writer at Work – Sam Tanenhaus in the New York Times, with a video “A conversation with John Updike” and an interactive feature “Revising ‘Rabbit at Rest’”