NEW YORK — John Updike, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, prolific man of letters and erudite chronicler of sex, divorce and other adventures...

John Updike was one of the few writers of our age who didn't see writing as an aggressive act that needed to be met with another aggressive act: criticism.

Colleagues for more than half a century, writer-editor partners for more than half that time, John Updike and I were close at a fixed distance--he at ...

I think I was simply seduced by his writing. I felt I knew him, and in an odd way, that he knew me.

Updike had a good priest's devotion to his writing vocation. And for all the sex, laughter and inspired mischief we gratefully associate with him, he had also an air almost of sanctity.