Updike, John 1932–

An American novelist, short story writer, and poet, Updike is known as a stylist. He is the author of Couples, Rabbit Run, Rabbit Redux, and The Centaur. (See also Contemporary Authors, Vols. 1-4, rev. ed.)

Since The Poorhouse Fair, I have done my best to keep up with Updike. I have also done my best to understand why so many people I respect enjoy and admire his work. The results have not been good on either count. His short stories—which I usually find myself throwing away in disgust before I can get to the end—strike me as all windup and no delivery, and I am alternately bored and exasperated by the verbal pyrotechnics they specialize in…. To me he seems a writer who has very little to say and whose authentic emotional range is so narrow and thin that it may without too much exaggeration be characterized as limited to a rather timid nostalgia for the confusions of youth. So far as his famous...

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