John Updike (1932-2009), who died of cancer on January 27, 2009 at the age of 76 in Boston, US, often found the inspiration for his writings in his own living experience like quite a few illustrious writers of India. Like Sarat Chandra Chatterjee, the Immortal Wordsmith of India, who wrote 27 novels and numerous short stories and essays, presenting the commoner's life almost with pathological accuracy, based on his encounters with life as a country youth that provided him with the inspiration, ingredients and storylines for his lifelike characters in the uncomplicated rural family settings of the late 19^th to early 20^th century Bengali society, without indulging in value judgment, except for raising awareness about social malice, John Updike too, drawing from his suburban American living experience, authored 28 novels and published 14 collections of short stories, all centering around "the American small town, Protestant middle class," and nine volumes of poetry and countless reviews on the literary output during the second half of the 20^th century.

As Philip Roth observed, Updike was "our times' greatest man of letters, as brilliant a literary critic and essayist as he was a novelist and short story writer." Equally important are the six massive collections of articles, reviews, and essays that Updike published—Assorted Prose (1965), Picked-Up Pieces (1975), Hugging the Shore (1983), Odd Jobs (1991), More Matter (1999), and Due Considerations (2007). This nonfiction leaves an indelible impression about the "author's vast range in time, space, and discipline as a reader, and his capacity to understand, appreciate, discriminate, explain, and guide," wrote Christopher Lehmann-Haupt in the Times. For over half a century, Updike wrote an amazing number of book reviews stretching over 5,000 pages. His reviews were generous, which does not mean that he pampered mediocrity, for he assessed the books from the perspective of the terms they set for themselves, and then evaluated how well they managed on those terms, besides assessing the adequacy and usefulness of the very terms. Reviewing his Picked-Up Pieces, Martin Amis observed, "Updike's view of 20^th century literature is a leveling one. Talent, like life, should be available to all."

Equally important are his short stories. Though his stories are often about a sense of loss, they cannot be dismissed. In today's world of crumbling `trust' all around, it is refreshing to read Updike's short stories, particularly, the story, "The Happiest I've been" that he wrote in 1959, which recounts the last night of a young man at home, about to return to college after Christmas holidays. The young man is returning from a New Year's party during which a female friend falls asleep on his shoulder, while another friend sleeps on the other side of the seat.

American Literature Journal, Tripuraneni Gopichand, Mamakaram, Cultural Universals, John Updike, Immortal Wordsmith of India, Social Malice, Nature Religion, Medical Buzzards, Theology, Brhadaranyakopanisad, Cultural Experiences, Complementary Principles, Complementary Aspects, Sublime Unity.