Pulitzer Winner Novelist John Updike Dead

John Updike, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, died Tuesday January 27. He was prolific, creating more than 50 books, including novels, short stories, criticism, and a memoir. Updike won many literary prizes, including two Pulitzers, for Rabbit Is Rich and Rabbit at Rest. A collection of essays, Hugging the Shore, received the 1983 National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism. In 2003, Updike received the National Medal for Humanities at the White House. His two series,the "Bech" and the "Rabbit" books, are his most known. His Witches of Eastwick (1984), about three 20th-century sorceresses, was made into a successful film by George Miller, starring Jack Nicholson, Cher, Susan Sarandon and Michelle Pfeiffer. His last 2 books were Terrorist, about an angry young American Muslim who becomes involved in a plot to blow up the Lincoln Tunnel and The Widows of Eastwick, a sequel to his best selling Witches of Eastwick. Of his writing, Updike once commented that his aim was to "give the mundane its beautiful due".