Some context: Lewis Robert "Hack" Wilson (April 26, 1900 - November 23, 1948) was an American Major League Baseball player who played 12 seasons for the New York Giants, Chicago Cubs, Brooklyn Dodgers and Philadelphia Phillies. Despite his diminutive stature, he was one of the most accomplished power hitters in the game during the late 1920s and early 1930s. His 1930 season with the Cubs is widely considered one of the most memorable individual single-season hitting performances in baseball history. Highlights included 56 home runs, the National League record for 68 years; and 191 runs batted in, a mark yet to be surpassed. "
Lewis Robert Wilson was born April 26, 1900, in the Pennsylvania steel mill town of Ellwood City, north of Pittsburgh. His mother, Jennie Kaughn, 16, was an unemployed drifter from Philadelphia; his father, Robert Wilson, 24, was a steel worker. His parents never married; both were heavy drinkers, and in 1907 his mother died of appendicitis at the age of 24. In 1916 Lewis left school to take a job at a locomotive factory, swinging a sledge hammer for four dollars a week. Although only five feet six inches tall, he weighed 195 pounds with an 18-inch neck, and feet that fit into size-five-and-one-half shoes. Sportswriter Shirley Povich later observed that he was "built along the lines of a beer keg, and was not wholly unfamiliar with its contents." While his unusual physique was considered an oddity at the time, his large head, tiny feet, short legs and broad, flat face are now recognized as hallmarks of the Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. In 1921 Wilson moved to Martinsburg, West Virginia, to join the Martinsburg Mountaineers of the Class "D" Blue Ridge League. After breaking his leg while sliding into home plate during his first professional game, he was moved from the catcher's position to the outfield. In 1922 he met Virginia Riddleburger, a 34-year-old office clerk; they married the following year. In 1923, playing for the "B" division Portsmouth Truckers, he led the Virginia League in hitting with a .388 batting average. Late in the season, New York Giants manager John McGraw purchased his contract from Portsmouth for $10,500.
how long was he in the minor leagues?
A: In 1923, playing for the "B" division Portsmouth Truckers, he led the Virginia League in hitting with a .388 batting average.

Question: John Hoyer Updike (March 18, 1932 - January 27, 2009) was an American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic. One of only three writers to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once (the others were Booth Tarkington and William Faulkner), Updike published more than twenty novels, more than a dozen short-story collections, as well as poetry, art and literary criticism and children's books during his career.

The principal themes in Updike's work are religion, sex, and America as well as death. Often he would combine them, frequently in his favored terrain of "the American small town, Protestant middle class", of which he once said, "I like middles. It is in middles that extremes clash, where ambiguity restlessly rules." For example, the decline of religion in America is chronicled in In the Beauty of the Lilies (1996) alongside the history of cinema, and Rabbit Angstrom contemplates the merits of sex with the wife of his friend Reverend Jack Eccles while the latter is giving his sermon in Rabbit, Run (1960). Critics have often noted that Updike imbued language itself with a kind of faith in its efficacy, and that his tendency to construct narratives spanning many years and books--the Rabbit series, the Henry Bech series, Eastwick, the Maples stories--demonstrates a similar faith in the transcendent power of fiction and language. Updike's novels often act as dialectical theological debates between the book itself and the reader, the novel endowed with theological beliefs meant to challenge the reader as the plot runs its course. Rabbit Angstrom himself acts as a Kierkegaardian Knight of Faith. Describing his purpose in writing prose, Updike himself, in the introduction to his Early Stories: 1953-1975 (2004), wrote that his aim was always "to give the mundane its beautiful due." Elsewhere he famously said, "When I write, I aim my mind not towards New York but towards a vague spot east of Kansas." Some have suggested that the "best statement of Updike's aesthetic comes in his early memoir 'The Dogwood Tree'" (1962): "Blankness is not emptiness; we may skate upon an intense radiance we do not see because we see nothing else. And in fact there is a color, a quiet but tireless goodness that things at rest, like a brick wall or a small stone, seem to affirm."

Using a quote from the above article, answer the following question: What can you tell me about his american themes
HHHHHH
Answer: Often he would combine them, frequently in his favored terrain of "the American small town, Protestant middle class", of which he once said, "I like middles.

Some context: Born in Prague, Czech Republic (then part of the Austro Hungarian empire) Friml showed aptitude for music at an early age. He entered the Prague Conservatory in 1895, where he studied the piano and composition with Antonin Dvorak. Friml was expelled from the conservatory in 1901 for performing without permission.
Friml wrote his most famous operettas in the 1920s. In 1924, he wrote Rose-Marie. This operetta, on which Friml collaborated with lyricists Oscar Hammerstein II and Otto Harbach and co-composer Herbert Stothart, was a hit worldwide, and a few of the songs from it also became hits including "The Mounties" and "Indian Love Call". The use of murder as part of the plot was ground-breaking among operettas and musical theatre pieces at the time. After Rose-Marie's success came two other hit operettas, The Vagabond King in 1925, with lyrics by Brian Hooker and William H. Post, and The Three Musketeers in 1928, with lyrics by P. G. Wodehouse and Clifford Grey, based on Alexandre Dumas's famous swashbuckling novel. In addition, Friml contributed to the Ziegfeld Follies of 1921 and 1923. Friml wrote music for many films during the 1930s, often songs adapted from previous work. The Vagabond King, Rose-Marie and The Firefly were all made into films and included at least some of Friml's music. Oddly enough, his operetta version of The Three Musketeers was never filmed, despite the fact that the novel itself has been filmed many times. In 1930, he wrote a new operetta score for film, The Lottery Bride. Like his contemporary, Ivor Novello, Friml was sometimes ridiculed for the sentimental and insubstantial nature of his compositions and was often called trite. Friml was also criticized for the old-fashioned, Old World sentiments found in his works. Friml's last stage musical was Music Hath Charms in 1934. During the 1930s, Friml's music fell out of fashion on Broadway and in Hollywood.
What was it about?
A:
This operetta, on which Friml collaborated with lyricists Oscar Hammerstein II and Otto Harbach and co-composer Herbert Stothart, was a hit worldwide,