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John Updike (The Sixties in America)

Early Life

During his college years, John Updike expected to pursue an art career. A graphic artist, he was especially adept at cartoons. After earning a bachelor’s degree at Harvard University in 1952, Updike studied on a Knox Fellowship at the Ruskin Center of Drawing and Fine Arts in Oxford, England, 1954-1955. He and his wife, Mary Entwistle Pennington, whom he married on June 26, 1953, had four children before their divorce. The young Updike began earning his reputation with short stories in the New Yorker, and in 1959, he published his first novel, The...

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