Good-bye, Mr. Updike

One of Reading, PA's own, Mr. John Updike, two-time winner of the Pulitzer prize, died on January 27. I believe he was 76. Christianity Today lauded him as an American writer who filled his works with religious themes. His publish, Knopf, will release his final collection of poetry, Endpoint, in April to coincide with National Poetry Month. Two other publications will follow later in the year.

Updike loved his vocation, writing “From earliest childhood I was charmed by the materials of my craft, by pencils and paper and, later, by the typewriter and the entire apparatus of printing. To condense from one’s memories and fantasies and small discoveries dark marks on paper which become handsomely reproducible many times over still seems to me, after nearly 30 years concerned with the making of books, a magical act, and a delightful technical process. To distribute oneself thus, as a kind of confetti shower falling upon the heads and shoulders of mankind out of bookstores and the pages of magazines is surely a great privilege and a defiance of the usual earthbound laws whereby human beings make themselves known to one another.”

One of my hometown's claims to fame is gone. He will be missed.