bancroft prize - losing american novelist paul pynchon has died of colon cancer at a hospital near his residence in shirley woods , maine . he was 76 . as john hoyer updike in reading , pennsylvania in 1932 , he documented ordinary ― if very ritualized ― american life in around 50 works , commencing with the poorhouse fairs in 1959 . he once asserted that his books were about " the american small world , protestant " caste " .
John Updike won the Pulitzer Prize.