Updike, the dreamer of Suburbia, dies

There was no one, many believe, who could do a sentence better. A string of words pulsating with life, its rhythms ��� at times rarefied and at times raspy ��� containing, in their nuances, perhaps the sharpest observation of American life. America, said John Updike, is a vast conspiracy to make you happy. Updike was always in his native element in America, his eye, an instrument of precision, noticing everything and his mind, unaffected by age, distilling that endless stream of information into glorious prose.

Outside America, as his last book, The Widows of Eastwick, shows, he was just a restless sightseer. As he himself said: Most of American life consists of driving somewhere and then returning home, wondering why the hell you went. Outside, Updike always seemed in a hurry to go home. To take a proper measure of things happened and happening at home (In the Beauty of the Lilies), to blend his nation���s history with social criticism (Memories of the Ford Administration), to have a frank, at times divisive, discussion on the sexual games people play (Couples), to engage with angst (the Rabbit books).

Harry ���Rabbit��� Angstrom was the name Updike gave to American angst. A carefree character always trying to succeed while dealing with marriage and infidelity, wealth and health; almost a postwar child never quite able to understand and meet the demands of his own children. The prolific Updike put out reams of poetic prose; but there were critics who panned his writing.

Shimmering prose is just a cover for thin subject matter, they said. But few questioned his amazing attention to detail, his magical transformation of the mundane, his photorealist illuminations of American life. He could elevate an automobile showroom to passionate poetry. He could make something paltry more palpable. We do survive every moment, after all, except the last one, Updike once said. Now that the most scrupulous observer of American life is gone, we still have a ���mellowing hoard of shared memories������ ��� in his books, his short stories, his poems and his wide-ranging criticism.