John Updike
John Updike
John Hoyer Updikewas an American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth18 March 1932
CountryUnited States of America
criticism failure threatens
The study of literature threatens to become a kind of paleontology of failure, and criticism a supercilious psychoanalysis of authors.
Publishers are looking for blockbusters - all the world loves a megaseller.
american-novelist rain sky
Rain is grace; rain is the sky condescending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life.
america reagan
Reagan has turned America into a tax haven.
appears history occasions past seeks time visionary
Doctorow here appears not so much a re-constructor of history as a visionary who seeks in time past occasions for poetry.
deal escapist fact fantastic lives novel people time writer
The writer must face the fact that ordinary lives are what most people live most of the time, and that the novel as a narration of the fantastic and the adventurous is really an escapist plot; that aesthetically, the ordinary, the banal, is what you must deal with.
The rich - they just live in another realm, really.
tried
I've always tried to write about America. It's very worth a writer's effort.
death pets seems
Sometimes it seems the whole purpose of pets is to bring death into the house.
eloquently
A lot of the Koran does not speak very eloquently to a Westerner. Much of it is either legalistic or opaquely poetic.
worse
There's almost nothing worse to live with than a struggling artist.
sends
Young or old, a writer sends a book into the world, not himself.
Authors should be honored only for their works.
ink miracle print turning
The miracle of turning inklings into thoughts and thoughts into words and words into metal and print and ink never palls for me.