Writer John Updike Dead at 76; Read His Rolling Stone Story on Andy Warhol
Author John Updike died today from lung cancer, according to a statement from his longtime publisher, Alfred A. Knopf. He was 76. Updike began publishing in the 1950s, achieving his greatest acclaim for his “Rabbit” series of novels published between 1960 and 2001, which followed protagonist Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom as he settled into and struggled against the adult American experience. Updike received two Pulitzer Prizes (Rabbit Is Rich and Rabbit at Rest) and saw his The Witches of Eastwick made into a movie three years after it hit bookstores in 1984.
In 2003, Updike wrote a meditation on the life and career of Andy Warhol for Rolling Stone that ran in Issue 922. Updike begins the piece, “In becoming an icon, it is useful to die young, and Andy Warhol managed this in the nick of time, at the age of fifty-eight, with the help of lifelong frailty and some negligent postoperative care at New York Hospital.” Read his full story here: