John Updike, Dead at 76

Author, literary critic and (as the AP describes him) "prolific man of letters and erudite chronicler of sex and divorce, " John Updike died earlier today. The Pulitzer Prize winner was 76 when he lost his battle with lung cancer. Back in the '50s, upon graduating from Harvard, he was offered a position at The New Yorker from E.B. White. His contributions to the magazine are archived online and can be read here. For a time he lived in New York City, but departed for Massachusetts in 1957, saying the city was a "cultural hassle" and filled ith "agents and wisenheimers." The NY Times notes that after moving he said, ''The real America seemed to me 'out there,' too heterogeneous and electrified by now to pose much threat of the provinciality that people used to come to New York to escape.''