In this May 20, 2006 file photo, author John Updike takes part in a panel discussion at BookExpo America 2006 in Washington. Updike, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, prolific man of letters and erudite chronicler of sex, divorce and other adventures in the postwar prime of the American empire, died Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2009, of lung cancer, according to a statement from his publisher, Alfred A. Knopf. He was