John Updike Dies at 76

Penn State confirms death of beloved former coach

(AP) - Joe Paterno, who racked up more wins than anyone else in major college football but was fired from Penn State amid a child sex abuse scandal, has died, his family confirmed this morning. He was 85. Paterno "died as he lived," read the statement. "He fought hard until the end, stayed positive, thought only of others and constantly reminded everyone of how blessed his life had been." Paterno's son Scott announced Nov. 18 that his father was being treated for lung cancer, which was diagnosed in mid-November during a follow-up visit for a bronchial illness. More»

Ex-Nixon speechwriter, Pulitzer winner was forceful voice on right

(NEWSER) - Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist William Safire died today outside Washington, the paper reports. He was 79 and suffered from cancer. A onetime speechwriter for Richard Nixon, Safire, a self-described "libertarian conservative," used his background as a reporter and love for English usage to punch up his op-ed column, which he wrote from 1973 to 2005, and books of history and fiction. More»

(AP) - Playwright and screenwriter Horton Foote, who movingly portrayed the broken dreams of common people in The Trip to Bountiful, Tender Mercies, and his Oscar-winning screen adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird, died today in Connecticut at age 92. Foote's writing career spanned more than half a century and earned him two Academy Awards (Mockingbird and Tender Mercies) and a 1995 Pulitzer Prize for the play The Young Man From Atlanta. More»

3-stanza poem to be published this year

(NEWSER) - John Updike considered his own mortality, and did so with his usual wry wit. The evidence is in one of his last poems called "Requiem," writes the New York Post. It begins: "It came to me the other day: Were I to die, no one would say, 'Oh, what a shame! So young, so full of promise—depths unplumbable! More»

Superlatives hardly lacking in wake of writer's death at 76

(NEWSER) - John Updike, who died today at 76, was many things: Bob Ryan, in the Boston Globe, calls him the author of the “most spellbinding essay ever written about baseball.” For Carolyn Kellogg, in the Los Angeles Times, the first line of his story A&P displays a “durability that authors can only hope for.” The bottom line: “He looked deeply and clearly into the swamps of human experience,” Lev Grossman writes in Time, “and reported back to us what he saw with a matchless precision.” More»