My first thought, as a child, was that the artist brings something into the world that didn't exist before, and that he does it without destroying something else. A kind of refutation of the conservation of matter. That still seems to me its central magic, its core of joy.

He once wrote that it was "a subject which if I have not exhausted has exhausted me. His mother's attempts to be a publiJohn Updiked writer influenced the young Updike's own aspirations. Later Updike and his family relocated to Ipswich Massachusetts.

John Hoyer Updike (18 March 1932 – 27 January 2009) was an American novelist poet short story writer art critic and literary critic. Hundreds of his stories reviews and poems appeared in The New Yorker starting in 1954. Describing his subject as "the American small town Protestant middle class" Updike was well recognized for his careful craftsmanship his unique prose style and his prolificity.