NEW YORK – Alison Lurie, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist whose satirical and cerebral tales of love and academia included the marital saga “The War Between the Tates” and the comedy of Americans abroad “Foreign Affairs,” died Thursday at age 94. Lurie, a professor emerita at Cornell University, died of natural causes, according to her husband and partner, Edward Hower. “Before he met Rosemary, Fred didn’t really exist for anyone here except a few other academic ghosts,” Lurie wrote. “The War Between the Tates” became a 1977 TV production featuring Elizabeth Ashley and Richard Crenna. “The day on which Emily Stockwell Turner fell out of love with her husband,” Lurie wrote in the book’s opening sentence, “began much like other days.”

Today is Wednesday, Sept. 30, the 274th day of 2020. On this date:In 1777, the Continental Congress — forced to flee in the face of advancing British forces — moved to York, Pennsylvania. In 1955, actor James Dean, 24, was killed in a two-car collision near Cholame, California. Rock singer Trey Anastasio is 56. Rock musician Robby Takac (Goo Goo Dolls) is 56.