Author John Updike (born 1932) mirrored his America in poems, short stories, essays, and novels, especially the four-volume "Rabbit" series.

John Updike was born on March 18, 1932, in Shillington, Pennsylvania. His father, Wesley, was a high school mathematics teacher, the model for several sympathetic father figures in Updike's early works. Because Updike's mother, Linda Grace Hoyer Updike, nurtured literary aspirations of her own, books were a large part of the boy's early life. This fertile environment prepared the way for a prolific career which began in earnest at the age of 22, upon the publication of his first story, "Friends from Philadelphia," in the New Yorker in 1954.

Updike admired the New Yorker and aspired to become a cartoonist for that periodical. He majored in English at Harvard where he developed his skills as a graphic artist and cartoonist for the Lampoon, the college's humor magazine. In 1953, his junior year at Harvard...