John Updike, 1932-2009

RIP. I never read many of his novels - although I do have a garish hardbound copy of Couples - but he was familiar to me as one of the most insistent proponents of Henry Green's work as Green fell into relative neglect over the latter half of the twentieth century. His introduction to the Loving - Living - Party Going anthology has been an important way into Green for many first-time readers: odd, of course, that the quintessential postwar American novelist should be so astute a reader of such an unalterably English writer. Fitting though, somehow.