Blogger Lori Carlson has challenged herself to post entries from “A to Z” and her entry for “U” is “John Updike Inspires Me.” On her blog, As the Fates Would Have It, she writes that she was told not to read Updike when she was 13 but did so anyway.
“His Rabbit series was my first taste of his writing, which I continued to read up until the last one was published in 1990. I also read The Witches of Eastwick around 1984 and The Widows of Eastwick in 2008. Over the years, I have probably devoured around 15 of his novels, two of his poetry books and even a few of his non-fiction works. What inspires me the most about Updike’s writing is that he speaks to the everyman with his topics of morality, mortality, religion, death and sex. And as my old high school English teacher would say, he ‘knows how to use his words.'”