Writer John Updike Dies

This from the Times Online (UK)… John Updike, the American novelist and man of letters, has died aged 76. Updike was a rare literary writer with enough cross-over appeal to feature regularly in the best-seller lists. He was renowned for his stylistic writing that encompassed fiction, poetry, essays, journalism, memoir and playwriting and was best known for his series of novels based on the character Harry ‘Rabbit’ Angstrom. Rabbit is Rich, published in 1981, received numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. He died of lung cancer, according to a statement released today by his publisher, Alfred A Knopf. He lived in Beverly Farms, Massachusetts, with his second wife. …author of more than 50 books, he was also known for his campaign against the Soviet government’s persecution of fellow writer Alexandre Solzhenitsyn.