Living legend
John Updike speaks to, and writes for the next American generation

By Ryan Alan
Philly EDGE Correspondent

Were he to let it, the mantle of responsibility and expectation could weigh heavily on Reading native John Updike.
Being referred to, as he has been, as among the candidates for the title of “the world’s greatest living writer,” could have a way of doing that.
Having been honored with not one, but two Pulitzer Prizes for his novels Rabbit is Rich and Rabbit at Rest, might put him in that frame of mind. Being told that he has indeed written the illusive “Great American Novel” with his four-book chronicle of Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom’s life through the ‘50s, ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s could also be the catalyst.