John Updike is one of America's most prolific authors. He has written novels, short stories, essays, poetry, reviews, articles, memoirs, art criticism, and even a play. His work has been adapted for television and film, and he has won numerous awards, including a National Book Award and two Pulitzer Prizes. Since 1959 he has published nearly fifty books.

Updike was born on March 18,1932, in Reading, Pennsylvania and lived in nearby Shillngton until he was thirteen. Many of Updike's stories exhibit autobiographical elements, and his fictional town of Olinger is patterned after Shillington. When he was thirteen he moved with his parents and grandparents to a farm in Plowville, Pennsylvania, where his mother had been born. His father was a junior high school math teacher, and his mother a writer who, as her son later did, wrote stories for the New Yorker magazine. Updike did well in school...