So Sad.

John Updike has died at the age of 76.

He wrote one of what I consider the most perfect sentences ever: "All of a sudden I slid right down her voice into her living room."

When I wrote to him some years back and said I loved this sentence but couldn't quote it directly at the moment, he wrote back and included a photocopy of the appropriate page from his story "A&P," the sentence marked in red. What a gracious man, as well as a talented writer.

I had a professor who was convinced that Updike deserved - and would receive - the Nobel Prize in Literature. He made me believe it, too, and every Nobel season, I would wait to see if this was the year. I am convinced that Pink Floyd were fans (how else to explain their lyric, "Rabbit, run?").

The literary world shines a little less brightly today.