"A reader would be hard pressed to name a contemporary author other than John Updike whose work is more in tune with the way most Americans live," wrote Donald J. Greiner in Dictionary of Literary Biography. Greiner went on to note in his entry on Updike that the author, essayist, poet, and dramatist "writes about ordinary people leading ordinary lives. Man, wife, home, children, job--these mundane concerns have rested at the heart of his art since he published his first book." Updike's fiction plumbs the quotidian, examining the fracture lines of middle-class life in sex and adultery, mortality and loss, religion and sports. Updike is considered by many to be the master of portraying small town and suburban America and charting the course of family life in the late twentieth century. In award-winning novels such as The Poorhouse Fair, the "Rabbit" books, The Centaur, Couples, In the Beauty...