John updike biography academy of achievements

The old anecdote goes like this: Sherwood Anderson, author of Winesburg, Ohio, met a young aspiring author named William Faulkner while both were living in New Orleans.

At the time, Faulkner was struggling to find his voice. Anderson advised him to return to Mississippi and to write about the world that he knew: to find his own little postage stamp.

John updike biography academy of achievements and works

In this same tradition, much of John Updike’s own writing bares the transparency of his own life and experiences.

Generally regarded as one of 20th-century America’s greatest men of letters, John Hoyer Updike, born in West Reading, Pennsylvania, on March 18, 1932, was the only child of Wesley Russell Updike and Linda Grace Hoyer Updike.

They lived with John’s maternal grandparents at 117 Philadelphia Avenue, in Shillington, a suburb of Reading. Updike attended Shillington High School, from which he graduated as senior class president and co-valedictorian in 1950.

While he was in ninth