Episode Details

John Updike wrote about suburban adultery with the precision of a jeweler and the moral seriousness of a theologian. His Rabbit novels tracked one ordinary American man across four decades and became the most sustained fictional portrait of postwar middle-class life ever attempted. He made the ordinary feel sacred and the sacred feel ordinary.

This episode traces Updike from his small-town Pennsylvania childhood through his years at The New Yorker, the four Rabbit novels, and the relentless productivity that produced over sixty books.

• The four Rabbit novels span from 1960 to 1990, tracking one man through four decades of American life
• He won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction twice, for Rabbit Is Rich and Rabbit at Rest
• He published over sixty books including novels, short story collections, poetry, and criticism
• He wrote for The New Yorker for over fifty years, contributing fiction, poetry, and art criticism