On this day in 1932 John Updike was born. In a writing career of almost fifty years and as many books, Updike's five Rabbit novels (counting the 2000 novella, Rabbit Remembered) stand out as a bell tolling, at decade intervals, for Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom and America. If Harry is often a fool and his country is often a mess, all is given such "incandescent allure," as Joyce Carol Oates puts it, that the saga stands as Updike's "surpassingly eloquent valentine to his country, as viewed from the unique perspective of a corner of Pennsylvania ... FULL STORY »
