John Updike: 1932-2009

Writer John Updike, shown in this undated photo, was a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, prolific man of letters and erudite chronicler of sex, divorce and other adventures in the postwar prime of the American empire. He died of lung cancer Jan. 27, 2009, at the age of 76.

John Updike takes part in a panel discussion at BookExpo America 2006 in Washington. Updike wrote more than 50 books in a career that started in the 1950s. He won virtually every literary prize, including two Pulitzers, for "Rabbit Is Rich" and "Rabbit at Rest," and two National Book Awards.

In this May 20, 2006 file photo, author John Updike takes part in a panel discussion at BookExpo America 2006 in Washington. Updike was born in Reading, Pa., his mother a department store worker who longed to write, his father a high school teacher remembered with sadness and affection in "The Centaur," a novel published in 1964.

John Updike speaks during the National Book Awards in New York, Nov. 18, 1998. While on full scholarship at Harvard, he headed the Harvard Lampoon and graduated summa cum laude in 1954. On a one-year fellowship, he studied at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Arts at Oxford University and worked as foreign books reviewer at The New Yorker. Many of Updike's reviews and short stories were published in The New Yorker.

John Updike, speaks at a lecture at the Boston Public Library in Boston on Oct. 23, 1990. Updike received his greatest acclaim for the "Rabbit" series, a quartet of novels published over a 30-year span that featured ex-high school basketball star Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom and his restless adjustment to adulthood.

Writer John Updike is shown in this undated photo. He was married twice, first in 1953 to Mary Entwistle Pennington. After divorcing Pennington in 1975, he was remarried two years later, to Martha Bernhard.