If you’d asked me yesterday who was America’s greatest living writer, I probably would ultimately have come down for John Updike; as the Wikipedia article on him puts it, “Updike was widely recognized for his careful craftsmanship, his highly stylistic writing, and his prolific output, having published more than twenty-five novels and more than a dozen short story collections, as well as poetry, art criticism, literary criticism and children’s books.” He seemed to do everything, as a writer, and if not always brilliantly, he consistently managed to do it with insight and wit. I particularly appreciate his willingness to be unfashionable in his opinions (as seen for instance in his piece “On Not Being a Dove”). Like the rest of his contemporaries, he was no longer at his best as a writer, but his death today of lung cancer is a great loss to the republic of American letters—with his independence of mind, I think, being the greatest loss of all.
