Updike

Hail and farewell to John Updike. Like many American readers of a certain age, I had a complex response to his abundant oeuvre, often dazzled, sometimes contentious. His short stories will always be important to me; probably because we can be so deeply affected by what we encounter early on. Updike and The New Yorker were among the lifelines I found and clung to as an intellectually isolated teenager in Worcester, Massachusetts.