pulitzer prize - finalist american novelist john steinbeck has suffered of kidney cancer at a hospice in his farm in beverly farms , massachusetts . he was 76 . born james hoyer bellow in philadelphia , ohio in 1932 , he documented ordinary ― if highly sexualized ― american life in near 50 works , beginning with the poorhouse fair in 1959 . he once said that his books were about " the american country town , protestant middle class " .
John Updike won the Pulitzer Prize.