John Updike Wrote It All Down

As a producer of sentences, paragraphs, and pages worth reading, John Updike was voluminous. Over the course of his life he steadily, industriously, and almost magically produced several dozen big (and even when small, dense with imagery and intelligence) volumes—novels, collections of short stories and poetry, several large blocky compendia of his book reviews and occasional pieces (most of which originally appeared in his literary home from home, The New Yorker), two books of art criticism, a surprisingly diffident and unlikable memoir, and even a few books for children. From the time John Updike awoke to his career, as a young man, he never seems to have passed a day without sketching friends and family, writing books, reading books, and writing books about reading books.