John Updike was born 18 March 1932 in Shillington, Pennsylvania. Shillington is a few miles from Reading, which Updike renamed Brewer for the Rabbit novels. Regrettably, Updike never won the Nobel Prize for Literature, which many people think he deserved.

     My introduction to him was his 1968 novel Couples, which showed that suburbia was not as straight-laced as it claimed to me (and also that the Summer of Love was not confined to the counterculture). I managed to check it out from the local library, or maybe read my mother's copy when she was finished and absorbed in something else while I read it.

     When in Reading for my seminary internship year in 1979-1980, I started on Rabbit, moved to the exquisite short stories, and was hooked! The poems are also superb, and I mourned his death in 2009.

      I add a link to the John Updike Society  http://blogs.iwu.edu/johnupdikesociety/

and to my favorite poem of his which I have taught many times:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/172264

Finally, to my favorite short story of his, which I have also taught many times:

http://www.tiger-town.com/whatnot/updike/

I do not admire him because he came form Pennsylvania and was born a Lutheran (he became an active Episcopalian and died one), but those facts do not lessen him in my view!