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
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.
exile extremes grandeur host human likes plays york
My complaint, as an exile who once loved New York and who likes to return a half-dozen times a year, is not that it plays host to extremes of the human condition: There is grandeur in that, and necessity.
america experience lacks since thirteen
Most Americans haven't had my happy experience of living for thirteen years in a seventeenth-century house, since most of America lacks seventeenth-century houses.
diminishes perception possession
Midas's Law: Possession diminishes perception of value, immediately
family trying
I was trying to support a family with writing. I didn't have a private income. I had no other profession.
money seemed sold
I think my first story sold for $550. This was in 1954, and it seemed like quite a lot of money, and I said to myself, 'Hey, I'm a professional writer now.'
behind hope revealed snail words
We hope the ""real"" person behind the words will be revealed as ignominiously as a shapeless snail without its shapely shell.
might
Without books, we might just melt into the airwaves and be just another set of blips.
I still want to give my public, such as it is, a book a year.
artist brings destroying exist
The artist brings something into the world that didn't exist before and he does it without destroying something else
bestows color harsh march sentences sun
Her sentences march under a harsh sun that bleaches color from them but bestows a peculiar, invigorating, Pascalian clarity.
aware blind celebrity deaf eats either extra fame goes input listened mask performer soon watched
Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face. As soon as one is aware of being ''somebody,'' to be watched and listened to with extra interest, input ceases, and the performer goes blind and deaf in his over-animation. One can either see or be seen.
drops four muse poetry ran time
I would especially like to recourt the Muse of poetry, who ran off with the mailman four years ago, and drops me only a scribbled postcard from time to time.
generally
My interest generally is the hidden Americans; the ones who live far away from the headlines.