{"id":6873,"date":"2026-02-05T07:56:16","date_gmt":"2026-02-05T13:56:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/?p=6873"},"modified":"2026-02-05T08:04:35","modified_gmt":"2026-02-05T14:04:35","slug":"updike-died-and-got-better-writer-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/2026\/02\/05\/updike-died-and-got-better-writer-says\/","title":{"rendered":"Updike died . . . and got better, writer says"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In <a href=\"https:\/\/bigreaderbadgrades.substack.com\/p\/how-john-updike-died-and-got-better\">&#8220;How John Updike Died and Got Better,&#8221;<\/a> an essay that&#8217;s both artful and thoughtful, Alexander Sorondo wrote, &#8220;John Updike wrote and published constantly for 40 years. More than 70 titles. Thousands of articles. Mostly for <em>The New Yorker<\/em>. He sold millions of books and his Rabbit Angstrom quartet is celebrated as a pillar of American literary achievement in the 20th century. . . . <em>Couples<\/em> was a hit. It earned him $1 million if you include the $400,000 movie rights. . . . It got him on the cover of <em>Time<\/em> magazine. He was on there again in 1982 when Rabbit Is Rich won a Pulitzer and a National Book Award and a National Book Critics Circle Award. Ten years later he published a sequel and they gave him another Pulitzer for it (only the third American to ever win it twice). Then a PEN\/Faulkner Award after that and he got a Guggenheim too at some point. He appeared multiple times on <em>Dick Cavett<\/em> and <em>Charlie Rose<\/em> and he was the subject of documentaries and biographies and critical anthologies and an academic periodical that endures to this day.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;He died in 2009.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;And then everyone stopped reading him.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I think they&#8217;ll start again,&#8221; Sorondo wrote.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/bigreaderbadgrades.substack.com\/p\/how-john-updike-died-and-got-better\">Read the rest of his 16-part essay<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In &#8220;How John Updike Died and Got Better,&#8221; an essay that&#8217;s both artful and thoughtful, Alexander Sorondo wrote, &#8220;John Updike wrote and published constantly for 40 years. More than 70 titles. Thousands of articles. Mostly for The New Yorker. He &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/2026\/02\/05\/updike-died-and-got-better-writer-says\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":818,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-person-singular"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/818"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6873"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6873\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6874,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6873\/revisions\/6874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}