Updike was a student of the human condition not just in his fictional portrayals but in his commentary on the role of fiction in understanding ourselves. In a turn-of-the-millennium magazine article, he endorsed evolutionary psychology and presented a fiction writers viewpoint on human nature that is as insightful as any I have seen: ‘A writer of fiction, a professional liar, is paradoxically obsessed with what is true, and the unit of truth, at least for a fiction writer, is the human animal, belonging to the species Homo sapiens, unchanged for at least 100,000 years. ... To be human is to be in the tense condition of a death-foreseeing, consciously libidinous animal. No other earthly creature suffers such a capacity for thought, such a complexity of envisioned but frustrated possibilities, such a troubling ability to question the tribal and biological imperatives. So conflicted and ingenious a creature makes an endlessly interesting focus for the meditations of fiction.’ Simply brilliant.
Alain de Botton
- See more at: http://www.granta.com/New-Writing/Updike-Remembered#sthash.4Ne1vxSF.dpuf

Steven Pinker On John Updike

  Updike was a student of the human condition not just in his fictional portrayals but in his commentary on the role of fiction in understanding ourselves. In a turn-of-the-millennium magazine article, he endorsed evolutionary psychology and presented a fiction writers viewpoint on human nature that is as insightful as any I have seen: ‘A writer of fiction, a professional liar, is paradoxically obsessed with what is true, and the unit of truth, at least for a fiction writer, is the human animal, belonging to the species Homo sapiens, unchanged for at least 100,000 years. ... To be human is to be in the tense condition of a death-foreseeing, consciously libidinous animal. No other earthly creature suffers such a capacity for thought, such a complexity of envisioned but frustrated possibilities, such a troubling ability to question the tribal and biological imperatives. So conflicted and ingenious a creature makes an endlessly interesting focus for the meditations of fiction.’ Simply brilliant.

Taken from Updike Remembered in Granta Magazine.

Updike was a student of the human condition not just in his fictional portrayals but in his commentary on the role of fiction in understanding ourselves. In a turn-of-the-millennium magazine article, he endorsed evolutionary psychology and presented a fiction writers viewpoint on human nature that is as insightful as any I have seen: ‘A writer of fiction, a professional liar, is paradoxically obsessed with what is true, and the unit of truth, at least for a fiction writer, is the human animal, belonging to the species Homo sapiens, unchanged for at least 100,000 years. ... To be human is to be in the tense condition of a death-foreseeing, consciously libidinous animal. No other earthly creature suffers such a capacity for thought, such a complexity of envisioned but frustrated possibilities, such a troubling ability to question the tribal and biological imperatives. So conflicted and ingenious a creature makes an endlessly interesting focus for the meditations of fiction.’ Simply brilliant.
Alain de Botton
- See more at: http://www.granta.com/New-Writing/Updike-Remembered#sthash.4Ne1vxSF.dpuf

Updike was a student of the human condition not just in his fictional portrayals but in his commentary on the role of fiction in understanding ourselves. In a turn-of-the-millennium magazine article, he endorsed evolutionary psychology and presented a fiction writers viewpoint on human nature that is as insightful as any I have seen: ‘A writer of fiction, a professional liar, is paradoxically obsessed with what is true, and the unit of truth, at least for a fiction writer, is the human animal, belonging to the species Homo sapiens, unchanged for at least 100,000 years. ... To be human is to be in the tense condition of a death-foreseeing, consciously libidinous animal. No other earthly creature suffers such a capacity for thought, such a complexity of envisioned but frustrated possibilities, such a troubling ability to question the tribal and biological imperatives. So conflicted and ingenious a creature makes an endlessly interesting focus for the meditations of fiction.’ Simply brilliant.
Alain de Botton
- See more at: http://www.granta.com/New-Writing/Updike-Remembered#sthash.4Ne1vxSF.dpuf

Updike was a student of the human condition not just in his fictional portrayals but in his commentary on the role of fiction in understanding ourselves. In a turn-of-the-millennium magazine article, he endorsed evolutionary psychology and presented a fiction writers viewpoint on human nature that is as insightful as any I have seen: ‘A writer of fiction, a professional liar, is paradoxically obsessed with what is true, and the unit of truth, at least for a fiction writer, is the human animal, belonging to the species Homo sapiens, unchanged for at least 100,000 years. ... To be human is to be in the tense condition of a death-foreseeing, consciously libidinous animal. No other earthly creature suffers such a capacity for thought, such a complexity of envisioned but frustrated possibilities, such a troubling ability to question the tribal and biological imperatives. So conflicted and ingenious a creature makes an endlessly interesting focus for the meditations of fiction.’ Simply brilliant. - See more at: http://www.granta.com/New-Writing/Updike-Remembered#sthash.4Ne1vxSF.dpuf

Updike was a student of the human condition not just in his fictional portrayals but in his commentary on the role of fiction in understanding ourselves. In a turn-of-the-millennium magazine article, he endorsed evolutionary psychology and presented a fiction writers viewpoint on human nature that is as insightful as any I have seen: ‘A writer of fiction, a professional liar, is paradoxically obsessed with what is true, and the unit of truth, at least for a fiction writer, is the human animal, belonging to the species Homo sapiens, unchanged for at least 100,000 years. ... To be human is to be in the tense condition of a death-foreseeing, consciously libidinous animal. No other earthly creature suffers such a capacity for thought, such a complexity of envisioned but frustrated possibilities, such a troubling ability to question the tribal and biological imperatives. So conflicted and ingenious a creature makes an endlessly interesting focus for the meditations of fiction.’ Simply brilliant. - See more at: http://www.granta.com/New-Writing/Updike-Remembered#sthash.4Ne1vxSF.dpuf