An illuminating collection of letters from one of the literary greats of the 20th century, John UpdikeTwice the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for novels about Harry -Rabbit- Angstrom, John Updike, though very much aware of his gifts and blessings, believed himself to be, like Rabbit, an everyman- -a relatively fortunate American male--and his life a specimen life, -representative in its odd uniqueness of all the oddly unique lives in this world.- This belief animated his more than sixty autobiographical books-fiction, poetry, collections of first-person essays and memoirs-a body of creative work universal in its literary appeal but intimately based upon, as Updike himself called it, -this massive datum that happens to be mine.-Now, more than a decade after his death, comes a generous volume of letters both personal and professional. We see, at last, Updike in -real time,- documenting with preternatural facility every stage of his unspooling life, from Pennsylvania farm boy to Harvard sc
