American novelist, poet, and critic. He was born in Pennsylvania, USA, and attended Harvard College and the Ruskin School of Art at Oxford University in England. He spent a year on a scholarship and worked in journalism from 1955 to 1957. He published many poems, short stories, and book reviews in The New Yorker newspaper, and since 1957 he lived in Massachusetts and was a full-time writer. His first novel, entitled "Pigeon Feathers," was published in 1956, and another in 1959, entitled "The Happiest I've Been," then he followed it with a novel titled "Rabbit, Run." His other novels include "The Centaur" and :The Witches of Eastwick," which was turned into a film.