A critic keeping it surreal
JOHN Updike is best-known for his work as a novelist, short story writer and essayist. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Rabbit Is Rich and Rabbit At Rest was the darling of literary critics, particularly in his native America, and a serial best-seller.
It will come as no surprise that Updike was an English graduate, but what is sometimes overlooked is that he trained as a visual artist, studying at The Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art at the University of Oxford, with the intention of becoming a cartoonist. That ambition was soon abandoned in favour of writing, but Updike always maintained an interest in the visual arts, and much of his work as a critic was devoted to the subject.
