As many have likely already heard, John Updike died today. The New York Times and innumerable other outlets are remembering his gargantuan contribution to American letters. We’ve talked about Updike many times here at the Millions; for starters, there was Corey Vilhauer on the Rabbit Angstrom novels, James Hynes on Rabbit at Rest, and Hamilton Leithauser on Roger’s Version. With his close association with The New Yorker, his stories were naturally covered in the two roundups of the magazine’s fiction that we’ve done: 2005 and 2008. Patrick also paid homage to Updike’s story “The Christian Roommates” last year.
Speaking of Patrick, he has collected some nice links at the Vroman’s blog, including Updike’s appearance on the Bat Segundo Show podcast, Sam Anderson’s remembrance at Vulture, and, oddly, Updike on dinosaurs for National Geographic.
Updike fans can also wend their way through the New Yorker archives, checking out his work. That link comes via emdashes, which also offers ample Updike coverage. There’s also this conversation (there’s a video and transcript available) between Updike and Jeffrey Goldberg at the NYPL, suggested by our contributor Anne. And George Saunders recalls his own first story for the New Yorker being paired with an Updike story.
Finally, Wikipedia has plenty of detail on Updike’s life and Amazon, on his substantial oeuvre.
