Product Description
Edward Gorey's off-kilter depictions of Yuletide mayhem and John Updike's wryly jaundiced text examine a dozen Christmas traditions with a decidedly wheezy ho-ho-ho.This long out-of-print classic is the perfect stocking-stuffer for any bah humbug. 32 pages, smyth-sewn casebound book, with jacket. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (14)

Another classic
Collect these and appreciate them. they are very unique and should find their way to any age audience.

Only Twelve Terrors?
John Updike passed away on Jan 27 09, and still feels heavy to repeat it a week later. But I look forward to re-reading some of his books again; I'm certain it'll feel different this time. `Twelve Terrors' was chosen as the first, and it still made me laugh. It reminds me of David Sedaris's Santaland Diaries, only with the brevity of pocket poetry and the wonderfully worrisome drawings by Edward Gorey. I only wish it was longer.

Bah Humbug!
This book is an utter delight! It had me laughing out loud! I am a HUGE fan of Edward Gorey and when I saw a brief review of this I knew I had to have it. It's perfect for any of us Grinchy or Scroogey types who have seen the absurdity of buying gifts for people who literally have everything (let's face it Christmas is for kids and that's what makes Christmas fun), so I recommend it for anyone who feels the whole Christmas thing is a bit forced.

When you tire of egg nog, fruit cake, and carols....
There comes a time in the "Holiday Season" when it all gets just a little cloying and maddening.Here's the antidote - "The Twelve Terrors of Christmas" - a delightfully clever and dark take on some of our most cherished traditions and unspoken fears.Kudos to Updike's witty and sightful prose and Gorey's perfectly rendered and suggestive drawings!A perfect stocking stuffer for those who need a break from the festivities (as well as curmudgeons everywhere).

Sampling our Holiday Delusions
The Twelve Terrors of Christmas--a delightful tongue-in-cheek revelation in 12 vignettes of the situations we mere mortals find ourselves while seeking the perfect, unblemished holiday--has quickly become a holiday classic. It may be anti expectations but never anti Christmas. Twelve cheers for a true winner. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (1)

Updike as Celebrity
The book is a running commentary of Updike visiting Cincinnati, reading a few short stories, interacting with some "Updike" experts, and answering questions. Updike is honest about his appearance, he likes getting paid, although he has trouble looking anyone in the eye. The interesting aspect to me was how different critics kept on identifying the significance of his early short story, "Packed Dirt." ... Read more

Product Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER

“A LIVING, POWERFULLY PHYSICAL WORK . . . UPDIKE IS A SUPERBLY SKILLFUL WRITER.”
–The Wall Street Journal

“WHAT A PIECE OF WORK IS UPDIKE! Our own king of erudition has gone back to the Hamlet story to imagine its inception: its offstage pre-story, when Claudius fell in love with his brother’s queen and that first dastardly deed in the garden was set in motion. Wickedly replete with allusions, weaving the history of ideas with the lustier possibilities of adulterous coupling. . . . There is something delightful about following Updike down this path, seeing his sentiments and sympathies unfold.”
–The Boston Globe

“WITTY . . . FRESH AND MOVING . . . Engrossing enough on its own terms to stand independently of Shakespeare’s play.”
–Time

“[UPDIKE] HAS MANAGED TO CREATE IN GERTRUDE A GENUINELY COMPELLING CHARACTER, a woman who is, by turns, vulnerable and outspoken, daring and naïve. . . . One of his most sympathetic and persuasive female characters.”
–The New York Times

“BRILLIANT.”
–New Republic
Amazon.com Review
Borrowing a phrase from Hamlet for the title of his 1999 nonfiction collection,John Updike may perhaps have been dropping hints about his fictionalwork in progress. He has, in any case, now delivered Gertrude andClaudius--and his variation on what is arguably the Bard's greatest hitsits very handsomely in the Shakespearean shadows. As its title suggests,this is a prelude to the actual play, focusing not on the sulky star but onhis mother and fratricidal stepfather (think of it as a Danish,death-struck version of The Parent Trap). Updike's great achievementhere is to turn our customary sympathies on their heads. This time around,Gertrude is a decent, long-suffering wife, whose consciousness happens tobe raised to the boiling point by her sexy brother-in-law. And Claudius,too, seems half a victim of this fatal attraction, with a strongneo-Platonic accent to his lust:

The amused play of her mouth and eyes, the casual music of her consideratevoice, a glimpse of her bare feet and rosy morning languor were to himamorous nutrition enough: at this delicate stage the image of more wouldhave revolted him.... What we love, he understood from the poetry ofProvence, where his restless freelancing had more than once taken him, isless the gift bestowed, the moon-mottled nakedness and wet-socketedsubmission, than the Heavenly graciousness of bestowal.

Gertrude and Claudius also amounts to a running theologicalargument, in which men constantly impale themselves on metaphysicalprinciple while the adulterous queen is willing "to accept the world atface value, as a miracle daily renewed." (That would explainGertrude's snap diagnosis of her neurotic son: "Too much Germanphilosophy.") A superlative satellite to Shakespeare's creation,Updike's novel is likely to retain a kind of subordinate rank, even withinhis own capacious body of work. Still, it's packed with enoughpost-Elizabethan insight about men and women, parents and children, tosuggest that the play's not the thing--not always, anyway.--James Marcus ... Read more

Customer Reviews (43)

Gertrude And Claudius
The book is an interesting attempt to supply the background material, or the prologue to Shakespeare's play Hamlet.It is the history of the marriage between Queen Gertrude and King Hamlet, Prince Hamlet's parents; the adultery between Queen Gertrude and Claudius, King Hamlet's brother; the murder of King Hamlet; and, why Prince Hamlet had returned to Elsinore from Wittenberg prior to his encounter with the ghost of King Hamlet.The book ends where Shakespeare's play Hamlet begins - probably because the author assumes the reader knows what happens in the end of the play.The book is well-written and I enjoyed reading it.

Do we need a prequel to Hamlet?
My answer to the question "do we need a prequel to Hamlet?" would have been absolutely not, before reading Updike's novel. I have changed my mind. This is by all accounts not one of the best from Updike's production, but I tend to be curious about writers who died recently, and this was the most appealing title available from Amazon on the Kindle, so I downloaded it. It turned out to be an excellent choice. Hamlet arguably doesn't come across as a particularly nice character in Shakespeare's tragedy, but here he is definitely not endearing to the reader. Then again, his mother and his stepfather are the protagonists,and although they too do are not exactly shining examples of human virtue (particularly the stepfather), they come across as all too human and the reader is hard pressed not to feel some empathy for their struggles. A must read before the next time you go to see Shakespeare.

Hamlet before Hamlet
Hamlet is not the central character in this novel by the prolific Updike. In most of the book, he is off at Wittenberg. We learn that Amleth was not a happy child. Gerutha's milk disagreed with him; he came to look upon Yorik as a father figure instead of the stern Horwindel. Apparently, he was to the melancholy born.The novel covers the time before the action of Shakespeare's play begins.

As the novel opens, Gertrude, or Gerutha (Updike uses the conceit of employing old Danish names as they appear in early texts of the Hamlet legend, changing only over to the conventional versions following the accession of Feng or Fengon--Claudius--to the throne.)Gerutha is to marry Horwindel (Hamlet senior),a marriage arranged by her father.Horwindel's brother, Feng is a soldier of fortune.He falls in love with Gerutha, and she with him, but their affair is not consummated until both are middle-aged.Horwindel learns of his cuckoldry, and prepares to take revenge on his brother, wife, and on Corambis (Polonius) who facilitated the affair by providing the lovers with a love nest of sorts.Corambis now facilitates the murder of Horwindel by providing Fengon with a key to Horwindel's secret garden where he is wont to nap in the afternoons.The murder,poison in the "porches of the ear", is done; Feng is elected to succeed his brother and marries Gerutha, now Gertrude. Hamlet is recalled from the university. The book closes with Claudius musing that "he had gotten away with it".The stage is set for the opening of Hamlet.

There is very little action in this slim novel.Updike, through his characters, muses on the change from paganism to Renaissance humanism, on the condition of woman, dysfunction within families, etc.He has clearly read a lot of Shakespearean commentary, and provides the reader with a contrast to the villainous Claudius portrayed in the Bard's play.Updike appears to be sympathetic to the adulterous pair.The unanswered question is whether Gertrude knew or suspected that her paramour had killed his brother --her husband. But the merit of the book is its style.Updike is a master of fine, even precious writing.An example: When a Viking raider, Horwindel had pillaged and raped with the best of them, and when King, liked to recount his nefarious adventures while at table:
"Thus stained and self-disgraced by many an easy triumph over a fair and helpless creature, the King obliviously droned on, the grease of his breakfast meats gleaming on his beard, his belly as swollen as that of any merchant he schemed to rob.That such a bulky human pig could with the blessing of the Church pollute Gerutha whenever his lust bid maddened Feng to the point of murder."

After this enchanting fanfiction, 'Hamlet' will never be the same again!
'Gertrude and Claudius' is the only Updike novel I've ever read, so I came to it with no preconceptions about his work. However, I am a long-term 'Hamlet' fan, and so I was intrigued to see what he had done by refocusing the story upon the doomed Queen and her second husband.

It is delightful! I was amused by the shifts reflected by the name-changes and the subtle costume changes that reflect the different versions of the story (Saxo Grammaticus, Belleforest, & c.). Part One is 11-12C, but by the end of Part Three, where the novel finally catches up with the play, we are approaching the Renaissance. The falconry symbolism is particularly lovely.

The main characters are engaging: Gerutha/Gertrude is a likeable, warm-hearted woman. She is Queen by birth, but because of her sex, real power eludes her: it is always wielded by men. Horvendil/Old Hamlet is an unimaginative, rather crude Viking war-lord: a tough killer, a rapist, yet there is poignancy in his remark about wanting to show his bride his "morning self", in explanation of his drunken sleep on their wedding night. Feng/Claudius is a cosmopolitan, imaginative adventurer who has fought his way across Europe to Byzantium, and quotes the songs of Bertran de Born. (I was reminded of Rognvald Kali, the Jarl of Orkney who wrote trobador songs for Ermengarda of Narbonne.) Corambis/Polonius and his sensitive daughter Ophelia are also well-drawn. Amleth/Hamlet himself is mostly off-stage, but even as a child, he shows signs of selfishness and spite. (Updike rightly points out, in a quotation from a critic in the Afterword, how destructive the prince's quest for vengeance is: for one man's death, many others, including innocents, will die.)

What also appeals (especially to the older reader) is that the novel gives us a passionate, tragic love story about experienced middle-aged people - a plump 48-year-old matron and a grizzled warrior in his late 50s - *not* glamorous young romance-novel stereotypes. The apparently 'happy ending' of the novel is heartbreaking. By the end, the reader, who knows what Shakespeare has in store for the characters, is actively willing the play to end differently, willing them to "get away with it". Updike has not just expanded the protagonists' lives; he has enabled us to *love* them. It seems to me that not many modern novelists have that gift.

The king was irate; the reader was bored
I wanted to like this Updike novel so much. First of all, I was intrigued by the idea of a pre-quel to Hamlet; what an interesting idea! Secondly, I enjoy John Updike's writing quite a bit. But this book just seemed very flat to me. Considering the building excitement of Hamlet that starts in the very first scene of the play, this tale meandered along sooo slowly, without passion. Even Updike's deft turn of a phrase wasn't enough to rescue this stolid, somnolent little book. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Another Toxic Mother
Of the Farm by John Updike should be read along with Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth.They both portray toxic mothers but from archly different perspectives.And they are almost contemporaneous works from the mid-1960s.Unlike Portnoy's Complaint no hint of humor lightens Updike's novel, nor is the mood anything but tense, strained, and difficult--just like much of life.But a little humor to help keep one's perspective wouldn't hurt, would it?

I would call Of the Farm "minimalist fiction."It is short and there is no action to speak of; no plot except what swirls underground as it were, no violence, no sex, nothing to keep the readers attention except the intricate portrayal of human relationships in the family, in this case a "blended" one--and, of course, Updike's fine writing, which at times gets a bit overdone with excessive and flowery metaphors that are only distracting and draw attention to the author rather than illuminating the characters or story."See how clever I am and how fine I can turn a phrase.Bet you can't write this good.(I mean "well."Sorry.)"

Updike explores many issues of 1960s America in a compressed way--such issues as divorce with children, remarriage with children, aging, encroaching suburbanization, the slow disappearance of rural life in the Northeast, urban v. rural life.Of course, central to all are the relations between mother and son. Heck, these issues are still very much in the air today.

Of the Farm is full of nostalgia for something slipping away and maybe lost.There is also a wonderful mini-portrait/characterization of a precocious eleven year old boy.I think that was my favorite aspect of the novel.

The editorial review praise for Of the Farm seems quite overblown to me.If they say that stuff about Of the Farm, what would they say about a really good novel?Is this some sort of "praise inflation"?

An Intricate and Dramatic Story About Relationships
Of The Farm details the complex relationship between a son in his mid-thirties and his elderly mother.The son brings his new wife and her son from a previous marriage to his mother's remote farm, and it's obvious from the beginning that the mother and the wife are not going to get along.

Though a brief novel, Updike delivers an intricate and dramatic story peeling away the complicated layers that make up relationships.Throughout the book, the man is constantly on alert, hoping to defuse any arguments between the women in his life, but he refuses to stand up to his mother nor does he seem totally invested in being committed to his wife.

In fact, the man is an incredibly interesting character because he is so flawed, so monumentally incapable of mediating the warring women in a healthy manner, that he almost leaps off the page.Surely he'll remind you of someone you know ... perhaps even yourself.The women were also expertly written, something that doesn't always happen with a male author.I found the mother and wife realistic, respectable, and equally as flawed as the main character.

Though lacking any real physical action, Updike's study of mothers and sons and husbands and wives is wickedly enticing and, as always, written very well.

~Scott William Foley, author of Souls Triumphant

Tiny & Terrific
A must have for fans of Updike and new readers. This small novel is amazingly detailed and shockingly deep. The ideas touched in this story will have your brain kicking you. Updike has that ability to trap you in small menial suburban problems and make them glorious.

Not his best, but still worth reading
This book is not John Updike's best work. However, it is still an enjoyable read. His skill as a writer goes unparalleled as usual, and his writing in this rural drama is quite good.

Praise for Updike's terse psycho-drama
"Of the Farm" commands one's intuition, piques one's curiosity for the following line, and is nonetheless 'beach' appropriate.This is a great casual thriller. ... Read more

Product Description
Since the series' inception in 1915, the annual volumes of The Best American Short Stories have launched literary careers, showcased the most compelling stories of each year, and confirmed for all time the significance of the short story in our national literature. Now THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES OF THE CENTURY brings together the best -- fifty-six extraordinary stories that represent a century's worth of unsurpassed achievements in this quintessentially American literary genre. This expanded edition includes a new story from The Best American Short Stories 1999 to round out the century, as well as an index including every story published in the series. Of all the writers whose work has appeared in the series, only John Updike has been represented in each of the last five decades, from his first appearance, in 1959, to his most recent, in 1998. Updike worked with coeditor Katrina Kenison to choose the finest stories from the years since 1915. The result is "extraordinary . . .A one-volume literary history of this country's immeasurable pains and near-infinite hopes" (Boston Globe).Amazon.com Review
At age 67, the perennially youthful John Updike may at last qualify assomething of an elder statesman. But the Best American Short Storiesannual--whose greatest hits package Updike has now assembled--is almost ageneration older, having commenced publication in 1915. This staying powerallows the hefty Best American Short Stories of the Century toperform double duty. It is, on the one hand, a priceless compendium ofAmerican manners and morals--a decade-by-decade survey of how we livedthen, and how we live now. Yet Updike very consciously avoided thesociological angle in making his selection. "I tried not to select storiesbecause they illustrated a theme or portion of the national experience," hewrites in his introduction, "but because they struck me as lively,beautiful, believable, and, in the human news they brought, important." Inthis he succeeded: the 55 fictions that made the grade are most notable fortheir human (rather than merely historical) interest.

So who got in? There are a good number of cut-and-dried classics here,including Hemingway's "The Killers," Faulkner's "That Evening Sun Go Down,"and Philip Roth's acidic spin on religious connivance, "Defender of theFaith." In other cases, major authors are represented by relatively minorworks. Yet it's hard to quibble with the inclusion of Willa Cather, F.Scott Fitzgerald, Tennessee Williams, J.F. Powers, EudoraWelty--particularly when you take into account that their second-tiercreations are fully the equal of anybody else's masterpieces. And the finalthird of the book really does constitute an honor roll of contemporaryAmerican fiction, with brilliant entries by Saul Bellow, Donald Barthelme,Raymond Carver, Tim O'Brien, Bernard Malamud, Cynthia Ozick, John Cheever,and Vladimir Nabokov. (For the latter, Updike actually succumbed to his ownidolatry and bent the rules for admission--but nobody who reads thehallucinatory "That in Aleppo Once..." will regret it.) It goes withoutsaying that fiction fans will be complaining about the editor's sins ofomission well into the next century. But no matter how you slice it,this remains an elegant and essential advertisement for the short form.--James Marcus ... Read more

Customer Reviews (49)

Best American short stories
This book have good short stories, good size of the letter, but the size of the book is to big, so you can not carry in your wallet. But it is not uncomfortable to read.

Best American Short Stories of the Century
Good stories.Best selection of authors in any collection of short stories I've yet seen.

An Outstanding Compilation
This is an excellent collection of American short stories.(Even the quality of the book itself - cover, pages, printing - is excellent.)

I purchased a used book via Amazon from Hilltop Book Shop.What a pleasure.They delivered the book very quickly, shrink wrapped and carefully packed.It was described as in "very good condition" but it looks new to me.

Surprisingly Poor
First, let me say that I'm a hard person to displease when it comes to literature.I'm well-read and appreciate a broad range of genres, and I'm an easygoing guy in general.

I tried to listen to the audiobook version of this, and about halfway through I just couldn't stand it anymore.The stories are...mechanically well-written, I suppose.But they're all incredibly dull, and I kept thinking, "Was the person that picked them suicidal?"They're mostly about failed love affairs, failed lives, suicide...I understand there's good stories in tragedy, but I refuse to believe that tragedy is the *only* "best work" America's produced in a century.And our great tragedies might at least be *interesting*.

Also, the audio version has the worst readers possible...uninspired voices, weird accents...they put me to sleep, or jangled at my nerves.Especially the lady with the harsh southern twang.And Updike himself sounds like he's reading from cue cards, and badly at that.

Overall, a terrible compilation.

John Updike's Usual Savviness
It truly is a 20th century history of the best in American short story writing. ... Read more

Product Description
John Updike's fiftieth book and fifth collection of assorted prose, most of it first published in The New Yorker, brings together eight years' worth of essays, criticism, addresses, introductions, humorous feuilletons, and -- in a concluding section, "Personal Matters" -- paragraphs on himself and his work. More matter, indeed, in an age which, his introduction states, wants "real stuff -- the dirt, the poop, the nitty gritty -- and not . . . the obliquities and tenuosities of fiction."

Still, the fiction writer's affectionate, shaping hand can be detected in many of these considerations. Herman Melville, Edith Wharton, Sinclair Lewis, Dawn Powell, Henry Green, John Cheever, Vladimir Nabokov, and W. M. Spackman are among the authors extensively treated, along with such more general literary matters as the nature of evil, the philosophical content of novels, and the wreck of the Titanic. Biographies of Isaac Newton and Queen Elizabeth II, Abraham Lincoln and Nathaniel Hawthorne, Robert Benchley and Helen Keller, are reviewed, always with a lively empathy. Two especially scholarly disquisitions array twentieth-century writing about New York City and sketch the ancient linkage between religion and literature. An illustrated section contains sharp-eyed impressions of movies, photographs, and art. Even the slightest of these pieces can twinkle.

Updike is a writer for whom print is a mode of happiness: he says of his younger self, "The magazine rack at the corner drugstore beguiled me with its tough gloss," and goes on to claim, "An invitation into print, from however suspect a source, is an opportunity to make something beautiful, to discover within oneself a treasure that would otherwise have remained buried."


From the Hardcover edition.Amazon.com Review
Ever since he made his two-pronged prose debut in 1959 withThe PoorhouseFair and TheSame Door, John Updike has delivered approximately one work offiction per year. Few modern novelists have approached this level ofproductivity, which suggests a kind of late-Victorian stamina andlinguistic lust for life. Even fewer have simultaneously churned out,as Updike has, a constant stream of reviews, essays, reminiscences,and occasional pieces. His custom is to collect this abundance everydecade or so, disguising the substantial nature of these volumes withthrowaway titles like Picked-Up Pieces andOdd Jobs. Thelatest such cornucopia is More Matter--and, like itspredecessors, this 928-page behemoth reminds us that Updike is amongour most discerning and omnivorous critics.

His title, this time, echoes Queen Gertrude's editorial advice to Polonius: "More matter, with less art." Only reluctantly does Updike assent to our age's appetite for facts, facts, and more facts, with fiction relegated to a kind of imaginative finger bowl:

Human curiosity, the abettor and stimulant of the fictionsurge between RobinsonCrusoe's adventures and Constance Chatterley's,has become ever more literal-minded and impatient with the proxies ofthe imagination. Present taste runs to the down-home divulgences ofthe talk show--psychotherapeutic confession turned into publiccircus--and to investigative journalism that, like so manyheat-seeking missiles, seeks out the intimate truths, the verygenitals, of Presidents and princesses.

Customer Reviews (12)

missionary position
everything john updike writes is written beautifully, and nearly everything he writes is worth reading, if for no other reason than making the acquaintance of a beautiful prose style. and his opinions are always lucid and engaging. and then there's that 19th century tone of the missionary/anthropologist equipped with an array of pens and pencils and sketching pads, traveling everywhere for his book reviews, abroad and home.

opening this huge collection, a vast portion from the pages of the new yorker magazine, is the first essay, freedom and equality: two american bluebirds. here one begins to get the feeling that for updike the question of race on these shores is unavoidable.

In this essay, and essays on lincoln, melville, and a review of tom wolfe's a man in full, and, catching me off guard, an essay on mickey mouse, updike includes african-americans in the national fabric, and generously mentions, in passing, african-american authors--some of them, toni morrison, rita dove, amiri baraka and frank yerby while, questionably, choosing not to review any novels by african-american authors.

updike is most interesting describing his first love, cartoons, as apprentice and as journeyman, and his adulation for the greats of the genre. his essay, cartoon magic, reads like cellini describing sculptural casting.

his satires are the weakest writing in the collection, for which updike himself might offer reason from his review of a biography of dawn powell,describing satire as 'taking on a dated, somewhat petty air'.

there's plenty good reading between the covers of more matter, some information to be found about favorite authors, and quite a few writers i have not yet read worth searching.

A true man- of - letters
The amazing intelligence, industry, skill, art, of Updike are at work in this fifth collection of essays. There are according to one count one- hundred and ninety- one separate items and they touch upon a vast variety of literary and cultural matters. Some readers are angry at Updike for taking apart Tom Wolfe in one piece, and other readers are angry at still other readers for not appreciating Updike's genius enough. I admire Updike and his work a great deal. I wonder how he does it all. But my problem is that in reading him my mind tends to lose itself in the long sentences. I enjoy it when I am reading it but I do not remember it very well.
This is probably my problem and not Updike's. He certainly has in the reading a tremendous amount of interesting things to say about a tremendous amount of different things.

Information pack rat
One learns here that Helen Keller was not a spontaneous writer and that the author, John Updike, felt as a younger person that it was almost unethical for Sinclair Lewis to mock the pretensions of the middle class.Updike is indefatigable and inclusive in his enthusiastic embrace of arts and letters. Kierkegaard's method is dictated by his volatile temperament it is reported.Melville had a great-hearted truthfulness.For a novelist, it is asserted, the halls of memory and imagination are adjacent spaces.Updike holds that Edith Wharton was a writer of empathy.He regrets that the Library of America produced such a skimpy selection of Sinclair Lewis's works.

Wallace Stevens is of particular interest to Updike because he came from Reading, PA.He finds that the journals of Edmund Wilson are not quite literature but delightful anyhow.He believesthat Wilson's energetic entries stimulate our appetite for literature.Happiness is a recurrent theme in Nabakov.
Updike notes that the way of doing business, a comparative rarity in literature, is covered in GAIN by Richard Powers.Tom Wolfe is accused by John Updike of serving up preening expert architectural details in A MAN IN FULL.Alice Munro's stories are compared to those of Tolstoy and Chekhov.The metier of Marguerite Youcenar was aloofness.She used dignified diction.Frank Kermode believed that as a Manxman he was excluded from the life and the language of the English.Martin Amis's NIGHT TRAIN resembles the American tough guy school of crime fiction.

JohnCheever cloaked family facts in the mythifying Wapshot chronicles.Theodore Dreiser was so dependent on other people for editorial services that his last two novels could be described as collaborations.Arguably Dreiser never recovered from the suppression of SISTER CARRIE by his own publisher.F. Scott Fitzgerald's life has become more celebrated than his fiction.Raymond Chandler felt tht Scott Fitzgerald just missed being a great writer.It is the wise suggestion of Updike that Fitzgerald, like Wordsworth, experienced in youth something transcendent.Biographies are called great scholastic mounds.Some of the more interesting essays involve one of two subjects--art and the NEW YORKER magazine.

Forget the feud, read the reviews!
I could plump just as vigorously for any of Updike's other collections of non-fiction ("Hugging The Shore" is my sentimental favorite, probably because it was my first) but since this, being the most recent, is the one I am likeliest to persuade you to buy, I'll say here that he seems to me virtually the ideal book reviewer: unfailingly interesting and articulate, fair minded, broad searching, neither too breezy nor long-winded.

The feud set off by his filing Tom Wolfe's "A Man In Full" under Entertainment rather than Literature (not, to my mind, a seriously disputable judgement) is a very silly bit of sibling bickering, not even as compelling in its own tiny dimensions as the old hostilities between Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal. (Any geezers out there who remember the ink spilled over that one?) That it has taken away even a small bit of the attention that should have been paid to Updike's delightfully long-lived vitality in this field is a downright shame.

Love him or leave him, he's the best we've got
Nowhere on the modern scene do we find a writer with an appettite as voracious as John Updike's.Thankfully, Updike has the skill and savvy to handle his way around just about any subject with artfulness and dignity, so that his appetite never seems to consume his talent.Only Updike would be able to put together a collection like this for the third time without having to let it flounder in sub-par material-- most writers wouldn't stand up through just one such collection.Each piece, with only the rarest of exceptions, finds its feet and leads the reader someplace interesting and substantial.Most of all, this collection shows that Updike is just plain good at the modern essay.He has such a nice, consistent balance of content and flair, that reading his pieces becomes enjoyable no matter what the subject interests of the reader may be.Reading his collections can be a sort of tour-de-force clinic in the art of the essay: this one is no exception.Read it as an exercise in appreciation for the master of modern literary form. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (12)

A Month of Sundays
As usual, John Updike does not disappoint.This book will slowly draw you in and at times you wonder if you are disgusted with the protagonist or do you feel sorry for him (much like Humbert in Lolita).Then there are times that you feel you are being gas-lighted and seduced.The book touches deeply on human nature and the addiction to the sexual drive.I would recommend it as an easy read, especially for John Updike aficionados.

Sex, Sex, and More Sex--Overwritten, But Some Great Lines
As with all, or most, Updike books, overwritten ad nauseum.Updike, for all his critical acclaim, always seems to be writng to impress someone. The reader? Unfortunately not.Most likely, Updike himself

It is obvious from reading Updike that his life was consumed by two things-sex and golf--and he overwrites both.

This book is about a 41-year old oversexed preacher who is questioning his faith and is ultimately defrocked after numerous relationships with women of the church. And as you might imagine, golf is part of his therapy.

Even though the book is overwritten, there are some great lines, as Updike always seems to produce, and these make the book worth reading. A few examples:

--"We can't be saints all the time. The Lord would get bored..."

--When does an empire begin to die?When its privileged citizens begin to disdain war..."

--"I missed three consecutive putts of less than three feet, indicating either emergent astigmatism or a severe character defect..."

If it's Updike and a minister-in-crisis you want, read the book. You may like it.

But if its sex you want, try Brewster Milton Robertson's "A Posteruing of Fools."The sex is better and the golf is, too!!!

Sexual Exploration/Exploitation
I have decided that I just don't like the works of John Updike.Though he's a whiz with language and knows a lot about theology and philosophy, his ideas about masculinity, sex, love and need are abhorrent to me.He places women in a role where their only option is to 'ascend' to man's carnal desire, to become victims of the human plight which we are all heir to.

This story is set in a parish and deals with a minister who becomes defrocked because of promiscuous behavior with his parishioners. Updike appears to idolize adultery and the need for sexual exploration/exploitation at the expense of sensitivity growth and responsibility.

The Sacred and the Profane
"A Month of Sundays" gives a first-glance impression of being a tossed-off trifle, as if a bit of Updike's light verse had grown fat and sassy, full-bellied, and was given room to stretch like a self-satisfied cat on a windowsill. After reaching the pinnacle of bookish prestige (which included a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1959 and a National Book Award for "The Centaur"), Updike opted to indulge his less sober-minded self with this arch and witty first-person narrative from the perspective of a man who shares Humbert-Humbert's literary, if not sexual, tendencies. Indeed, "A Month of Sundays" nods to Nabokov in its delight in puns, wordplay, mental calisthenics, and self-confessional musings, while still featuring the dominant themes and characteristics of Updike's prose.

The author's mouthpiece is one Revered Tom Marshfield, the minister of a New England parish who exhibits an Updikean capacity for close observation, philosophical speculation, psychological penetration, and penetration of another kind all together. We find him on the first page settling down with a sheaf of blank sheets of paper--a month's worth. "Sullying them is to be my sole therapy," Marshfield writes, already indicating the thematic and aesthetic direction the novel will take with the sole/soul pun, not to mention the verb "to sully," foreshadowing Marshfield's association of writing with sex and seduction.

Here's the format, then, neatly laid out: thirty-one chapters, one for each day of a month, with each chapter comprising a morning's worth of Tom Marshfield's musings on the subjects of life, death, sex, God, husbands and wives, adultery, Karl Barth, fathers and sons, faith, skepticism, Christianity, and how a man may be defined by his golf swing. Yes, we are in Updike territory.

The right Rev. Marshield spirals inwards towards the center of his marshy confusion, arriving at the edge of self-understanding but never quite there. In a Graham Greene-like formulation, Updike equates faith to being hunted by God, "a feeling of being closely, urgently cherished by a Predator, whose success will have something rapturous about it, even for me."

"A Month of Sundays" is a heavy meal served in dainty dishes on fine China. The prose sparkles, even if the Nabokovian wordplay is occasionally strained. Updike sounds every note in his repertoire, and the result is a Bach-like sonata--breezy, unassuming, consummately professional, but also witty, intellectual, and profound in passages. And for the discerning reader, "A Month of Sundays" serves as a kind of Rosetta Stone for Updike's fiction, an index pointing to all his chief concerns, themes, and character types.

Here are a few nuggets of the Wit and Wisdom of John Updike on display:

On parenthood: "Society in its conventional wisdom sets a term to childhood; of parenthood there is no riddance. Though the child be a sleek Senator of seventy, and the parent a twisted husk mounted in a wheelchair, the wreck must still grapple with the ponderous scepter of parenthood."

On American religiosity: "From the first Thanksgiving, ours is the piety of the full belly; we pray with our stomachs, while our hands do mischief, and our heads indict the universe."

On Love: "Let us think of it as the spiritual twin of gravity--no crude force, "exerted" by the planets in their orbits, but somehow simply, Einsteinly there, a mathematical property of space itself. Some people and places just make us feel heavier than others, is all."

A Decent Book from a Much Better Writer...
For those of you who have come to admire Updike's work, especially from the Rabbit Series, this novel will come as a disappointment. The story of Reverend Tom Marshfield whose sexual escapades with his parishioners causes many problems and eventully lands him in a place to be rehabilitated so that he can return to his church revitalized and purged of his wanton desires leaves much to be desired.

I had many problems getting into the novel - Updike seems to preoccupied with trying to establish Tom as a very astute and observant character with many insights into religion and life. Like with many novels that try to create unique and interesting perspectives, I found the text a little dull with nothing to entertain. If I wanted a diatribe on different subjects, I would buy a collection of essays. I found that Updike fails to have us really care or empathize with Tom's perspective (something Coetzee does marvelously in a similar novel Elizabeth Costello) so any rant he goes on comes off as unwanted. The middle of the text is where things pick up, when we finally find out what series of events leads to Tom being in the position he is in. For awhile, I couldn't put the book down as I raced through scenes of Tom coming to grips with his desires and needs, only to find the end of the novel return to the plodding pace that made the beginning so dull.

Stylistically , Updike is a writing master, as his prose is clear and succinct. It's a pleasure to read the way he constructs sentences. It's a shame that it's wasted on this somewhat problematic story. ... Read more

Product Description
This is a collection of stories which look back on the past. They include stories of moving to the country as a young boy; of seeing the city house they left behind transformed by other occupants over the years; and the ways in which a strong woman lives on in her only son. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (11)

Stories in a weary mood, not his best
I had greatly enjoyed the Rabbit books and the excellent "Marry Me" and was hoping for more of the same finely tuned and energetic writing, but found to my disappointment that many of the stories in this collection meander without much drive.

The subject manner tends towards an autumnal sense of reflection; this monotony of tone reaches its extreme with two stories in a row that both concern a middle-aged man contemplating the death of his mother.

One story, "Cruise", throws in something like magical realism apparently out of boredom with the same old formula, or maybe just to see if anyone's paying attention (like a student gluing the pages of a report together before turning it in).

For Updike completists only.

A master at work
These stories are signature Updike. They are masterworks in description of the material things of the world, of settings , scenes, locales. They too are masterful in presenting and probing problematic human situations. Many of the stories focus on post- middle- age discontents and desires, with adultery usually being somewhere in the background. The protagonists have often been married more than once. To my mind the most powerful story in the work simply because it seems to touch the deepest layer of human feeling is ' A Sandstone Farmhouse'. This is a story it seems to me Updike has written many times. It is the story of going home again , the story of the late middle- aged man who in telling the story of visits to the home of his dying mother tells again the story of his own childhood. It is the weak father and the frustrated more energetic mother and the single child whose precociousness and sensitivity in observation are that of the future Updike himself. It is remarkable as many of these stories are in its exemplifying Updike 's magical metaphorical descriptive style. But it has a strength most of the other stories lack in that it seems to truly express Updike's deepest feeling. It is not simply a master artist's manipulation of fictional characters whose fate doesn't seem to be of truly vital interest to anyone. As a long- time reader of Updike I also find in it many wonderful passages in which he expresses 'life- wisdom' of his own.

Puzzling Over Life
It is clear that this is a writer with an extraordinary command of language, someone as capable of surprising readers with the perfect simile as well as drowning them with weighty descriptions.He has a remarkable talent and is able to recreate palpable sensory memories for readers. This author is a masterful literary force writing emotionally weighty tales. In this book of short stories, Updike focuses on depressive characters and pairs them with endings that lack resolution. It's a double whammy on the unsuspecting reader.

In "a Sandstone Farmhouse," for example, the author's unwillingness to provide a hopeful resolution for Joey creates an experiential moment for the engaged reader, but also leaves the reader bereft. The weariness in "Conjunction" was palpable and appropriate for a story about mid-life crisis, but very depressing.

Updike is without question an exceptional writer.It is his subject matter which readers should be prepared for. He deals with serious subjects, lots of attachment issues: the mother-son connection, the process of death, the nature of men, unflattering depictions of women, marriage, and aging. He attracts readers with the universal appeal of such themes. His stories are full of "everyman" characters and he never takes us far from home to explore failings, fears and how we cause our own pain.

It's really a matter of taste.I read his entire Rabbit series and found them interesting, but unsettling in their depiction of marriage, the family as an institution and male-female relationships. This collection of stories, though well-written, were even less appealing to me.I appreciate Updike's mastery of language, imagery and storytelling skills, but I do not share his views, so I am not interested in reading more of his work.

Updike's older life style
I am a beginner in Updike writings. I have started with the Rabbit series and I loved them. This collection of stories has a different style. One still sees and sense the playfulness of Updike, however, there is too much nostalgia and melancholy which made me down from time to time. I especially liked 'the Rumor'.

Updike At His Most Sage
This anthology was my introduction to a man who was one of my favorite authors back in the 1990's. The play on words in the title refers not to the literal afterlife of cosmology, but that period of human life when one is past a certain age, and all is done but one still lives, children raised, career finished, premature death no longer a possibility. The tales Updike tells work out like spokes from the hub of this theme. From a set of old married couples vacationing in England during a rare hurricane, to a twenty-something husband from Cincinnati whose wife informs him he is the victim of a mildly-funny but disturbing rumor that he is a homosexual, these stories are well-worth the few days it takes to read through them. ... Read more

Product Description

In this classic novel by John Updike, we return to a character as compelling and timeless as Rabbit Angstrom: the inimitable Henry Bech. Famous for his writer's block, Bech is a Jew adrift in a world of Gentiles. As he roams from one adventure to the next, he views life with a blend of wonder and cynicism that will make you laugh with delight and wince in recognition.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Didn't Wear Well Over Time
Having read the well-crafted and interestingly expressed story in Bech's own voice in the latest collection of short stories, "Licks of Love", it made me want to go all the back to the original collection of Bech stories.Unfortunately, they're all told in the third person and so aren't nearly as charming.And the experiences of Bech in Communist Europe have little resonance to our time and are not terribly profound.Perhaps the later Bech output is better.This one though is a disappointment.Three stars, of course, because Updike can only be so bad...

Bech's Odyssey
While reading Updike's novel (the "short stories" contained within are in reality semi-connected chapters in Henry Bech's literary life) I could not help thinking about the some of the best serio-comic films of Woody Allen. Like Mr. Allen's films, the book presents the angst, self-doubt, and insecurities of a Jewish writer in an often humorous manner. In Henry Bech's case, his continuing fame rests largely on the popularity of his first novel. His literary output since then contains an experimental second novel, a critically bashed third novel (whose title is often confused with the work of another more consistently successful American Jewish novelist), and miscellaneous essays and poems. What happens next when the creative juices fail to flow, you are starting to drink too much, and you are close to fifty and may be nearing a self-perceived death? Are you reduced to having a series of aborted interviews with an intrusive British reporter in which you say very little, but are neverless reduced to a figure of gossip and derision in thereporter's ensuing article. I felt myself laughing, while suffering along with Bech, in his tenuous affairs with women, and in his "less than heady" experiment with marijuana with a 1960's college-type, who Bech suspects has run off to tryst with his then-mistress. We follow Bech travelling at the behest of his publisher to several Soviet bloc countries where Bech experiences a series of comedies of errors, annoyances, and misunderstandings on his and his hosts' side. A highly recommended book.

Side-splitting humor!A great read!
I'm a little disappointed by the poor reviews below.This is classified as one of Updike's short stories (check out his list of publications in the front) and as such is not a serious novel.I have read plenty of his other works and no, this does not have the character depth or serious plot of the Rabbit series or his other books.It is what it is: a very funny collection of stories about Henry Bech, an overweight 50'ish Jewish writer (there's some very good Jewish humor sprinkled throughout) currently suffering from writer's block.He travels throughout the book; each chapter to a different place (The Soviet Union, the New England beach, a women's college in the Southern USA).Women find Bech fascinating and he seduces several during the story (leading to some very funny scenes).There's several Updike themes I found in his other books that make their way into "Bech", but they are written to be humorous rather than serious (wife/mistress swapping, recreational drug use, worries about death/old age).Updike's prose, as usual, is unbelieveably well written and makes the book worth reading by itself.My advice is, try this book, don't take it seriously, and have a good laugh.You may not want this to be your first Updike book; if you've never read him before I'd suggest starting with "Rabbit, Run" and working your way through that 4-book series.

bech if you have nothing else to read
It was a tiresome book. The chariter of Bech had no depth.His world was bland as he was.This was my first Updike book and it was a big dissapointment.It is a bath room book for when you have no where else togo.

Bech is a beautiful book
Bech: A Book was a great group of stories.Updike mixes humor with highly emotional moments and philosophical ones. I'm looking forward to reading all his other Bech stories. I can't imagine anything Updike writing being abore. ... Read more

Product Description
John Updike’s twenty-first novel, a bildungsroman, follows its hero, Owen Mackenzie, from his birth in the semi-rural Pennsylvania town of Willow to his retirement in the rather geriatric community of Haskells Crossing, Massachusetts. In between these two settlements comes Middle Falls, Connecticut, where Owen, an early computer programmer, founds with a partner, Ed Mervine, the successful firm of E-O Data, which is housed in an old gun factory on the Chunkaunkabaug River. Owen’s education (Bildung) is not merely technical but liberal, as the humanity of his three villages, especially that of their female citizens, works to disengage him from his youthful innocence. As a child he early felt an abyss of calamity beneath the sunny surface quotidian, yet also had a dreamlike sense of leading a charmed existence. The women of his life, including his wives, Phyllis and Julia, shed what light they can. At one juncture he reflects, “How lovely she is, naked in the dark! How little men deserve the beauty and mercy of women!” His life as a sexual being merges with the communal shelter of villages: “A village is woven of secrets, of truths better left unstated, of houses with less window than opaque wall.”

This delightful, witty, passionate novel runs from the Depression era to the early twenty-first century.


From the Hardcover edition. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (33)

Pardon me for yawning...
I have listened to the first 45 minutes of Villages, and as of yet, I haven't come across anything in the way of interesting plot -- or *any* plot for that matter.So far, it seems to be just tedious exposition.I can see why people speak of Updike's keen observations and his poetic use of language, etc.However, this book is not my cup of tea.My interest in the characters, places, periods described simply has not been piqued, not after nearly an hour of listening.This will be one of the rare pieces of literature that I shall leave unfinished.

Cheap Tricks
Okay, Updike is a master, and I've enjoyed many of his books through the years.In "Villages" a bored suburban husband turns to a life of petty adultery in all it's various forms.As the main character Owen studs his way through the married women in his wife's circle, each provides insight into his character, sagely extolling his virtues; he is such a little boy, so innocent, sweet, so... Eeh gads, Updike, what were you thinking?I was hoping for a bit more depth, more exploration of the complexities of marriage, middle age and beyond.Is sex, frequent phallic worship and a return to fetal-like maternal comforts all a man thinks about?That seems the central message of this book.Poor Phyllis, the only really interesting character is conveniently bumped off at the end giving our "hero" a get out of jail free card.A tidy and unexpected soap opera ending.

Beautifully written. Intensely annoying.
In Villages, John Updike has two messages for his male readers. 1) Unless you hurry up and start cheating on your wife, you will miss out on some great sex. 2) When you do commit adultery, don't feel too guilty about it; after all, sex is an overpowering force of nature that even the most well-educated and well-raised among us are utterly helpless to resist.

There may have been other messages that didn't leave much of an impression with me.

It took me a while to figure out why I disliked this book so much. There is, of course, nothing intrinsically wrong with doing a character study of a well-educated man whose main concern in life is to get the wives of other men to swallow his semen and who feels a little bit of guilt and quite a lot of pride about the hurt he brings to others. What is so grating about Villages, I think, is the sense--subtle but impossible to shake off even if you try--that Updike is entirely on Owen Mackenzie's side. That the book is, at its core, a paean to the forbidden ecstasy of adultery.

Updike knows perfectly well that readers are going to assume that Owen's values are the author's. So in order to distance himself a bit from his main character he devises a late, rather crude plot twist in which Owen's infidelity has fatal and tragic consequences. Voila, now the book is no longer a celebration of adultery but a moral debate with readers about it. Hmm...

Updike is sometimes accused of misogyny. Based on this book, I can't really agree. One thing seems clear, though: he has little interest in women who have little interest in sex. Don't be surprised, then, when Owen's wife Phyllis virtually disappears from the story for long stretches. Though sympathetically portrayed, she doesn't have the raw sex drive that would allow her to hold on to Updike's attention. It's a shame, really. I found her to be the most intriguing character in the book.

Updike's fascination with the mysteries of the female sex drive repeatedly distorts his judgment, at best driving him to paint a warped picture of womanhood, at worst causing him to stray into cheap pornographic fantasy made all the more jarring by the brilliant realism he achieves in his depiction of environments and settings.

[...]

I guess the key to reading Updike is to accept that he will not inspire you to become a better or happier person or give you any kind of fresh hope or appreciation for life. If you just focus on enjoying the lush, refined prose you might be all right.

Disappointing and forgetable
Slogging through the hero's sex life was pretty tedious, and there wasn't much else here.

Story of Sexual Experiences, but devoid of Passion!
I was in college when John Updike published "Rabbit Redux" but I never read it.I may read it to compare it to the disappointing "Villages".
Since I haven't read any of Updike's novels, I felt it was about time.The brief and humorous description of Cabot City (Beverly) and Haskell's Crossing (Prides Crossing/Bev. Farms) made it momentarily interesting.However, my dislike of the main character, Owen, made it painful.One would think that the sexual escapades of a successful businessman might be a quick read, but it was just the opposite.Owen lacked passion in his extracurricular activities, or for that matter anything in his life.The one character that I liked, the first wife Phyllis, was "accidently"
(suicide?) killed driving to meet her divorce attorney.I don't think Updike was fond on his main character, Owen, and the writing reflects it.
I enjoy a good read, and this wasn't one. ... Read more

Product Description

The extraordinarily evocative stories depict the generation born in a small-town America during the Depression and growing up in a world where the old sexual morality was turned around and material comforts were easily had. Yet, as these stories reflect so accurately, life was still unsettling, and Updike chronicles telling moments both joyful and painful. The texts are taken from his recent omnibus, The Early Stories, 1953-1975.

In describing how he wrote these stories in a small, rented, smoke-filled office in Ipswitch, Massachusetts, he says, "I felt that I was packaging something as delicately pervasive as smoke, one box after another, in that room, where my only duty was to describe reality as it had come to me -- to give the mundane its beautiful due."

Customer Reviews (7)

It must be an acquired taste
Angst. That is the main feeling that comes through these stories. I found most of them tedious. I guess there is an audience of upper-middle-class urbanites with whom they resonate. Although I was tempted to stop after the first two or three stories, I decided to plod on through the whole collection. At least they are well read in the recording.

I found that one story, "A & P," was one I remembered from freshman English in college, about 1980. It must have been in an anthology we used.

Two stories stood out somewhat from the herd. "The Man Who Loved Extinct Mammals" at least uses a rather novel series of metaphors to convey its urban angst. But what does the guy do for a living? "Pigeon Feathers" is actually rather interesting. A boy yanked from city to country finds God in the patterns of the feathers of a bunch of pigeons his mother has had him kill so they won't soil the interior of the barn with their droppings. He contemplates the feathers as he buries the birds and is inspired by the thought of the one who must be their creator. Not exactly heavy-duty theology, but then again, most people who come to faith ultimately do so through rather ordinary means such as these, not through earth-shattering events and major life crises.

Beautifully Crafted Stories and Well Read
Updike is at his best when writing short stories, and this collection includes some wonderful works wonderfully read.I especially like Mr. Herrmann's readings.Updike himself reads the best story in the the collection:"A&P."While an author is often not the best reader (remember Sean Connery's line in "Finding Forrester", where the celebrated writer confesses that the only reason for a writer to read his own work is to get laid), Updike reads this particular story very well.It is a funny and very moving story.The last sentence of the story brings the whole work into focus and is about as perfect an ending to a story as I've ever read.

In this and in other stories, Updike does quite a good job of relating the angst of adolescents and young adults.The last story in the collection ("Pigeon Feathers") is excellent at exploring a young adolescent's spiritual crisis.Updike is also good at writing about divorce and advanced martial discord, a neglected topic in literature."Your Lover is Calling" is a particularly clever and entertaining example.

I don't find Updike to be quite as moving as Salinger or Cheever. He tends to over-intellectualize, and some stories ("Lifeguard") simply fail to engage the reader.Other stories ("Killing", the first in the collection) include situations that don't ring true.But Updike is an excellent craftsman and wonderful writer, and this collection does him justice.

My favorite literary author
John Updike is, in my opinion, amazing in his ability to phrase, in prose, nuance of experience. One of the great, and my favorite, fiction writers.

One of the few writers who is also a great reader
The tone of slightly detached compassion that marks a lot of Updike's fiction is matched by his reading style.It is unhurried, conversational, intimate.It is a pleasure to be in his company for extended periods of time.His novels strike me as wildly uneven (though I always admire the ambition), the short stories have maintained a remarkable level of quality and freshness of observation.It has been something of a privilege to watch his perspective mature over his lifetime.Not that there was anything flip or juvenile about his early stuff, but he has seemed to relax into the impression of easier mastery.

so so boring
Everyone has such great things to say about Updike.I've tried to read his works before but was so put off by the self-conscious writing that I had to put his books down.So I tried to listen to his stories in audio and it was even worse.I couldn't even pay attention for more than five minutes.In my opinion, he's overrated, and it seems that at the heart of his writingand maybe at the heart of Updike himself lies a shallowness that can't be glossed over.Some say Updike's the best American writer of the last fifty years, but you never get the feeling that you're in the presence of greatness when you read him.With guys like Tolstoy, Fitzgerald, or Hemingway you feel as though you are being bowled over by something mighty.This is due not only to their great writing but to the greatness of their inner lives, which comes out in every line.And so it's not suprising that they've left a body of work that will stand for the ages.Updike, however, always leaves you feeling empty.He writes as though he had greatness within him, but his itty bitty suburban stories do nothing.They don't enliven; they are not a joy to read; they are verbose and stultify to the extreme.If Updike is considered one of America's literary gems then that should speak volumes about the deplorable state of literature in this country.Save your money. Save your sanity. Read something else. ... Read more

Product Description
In this exclusive interview, the celebrated author talks about his childhood in Pennsylvania, his life in New England and his fascination with the female sexual organ. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Beautiful but brief.
A beautiful but brief slice of time seen through the eyes and felt through the recollections of one of America's finest writers.I only wish the interview had lasted longer! - E.M. LeDuc ... Read more

Product Description
John Updike is one of the most prolific and important American authors of the contemporary period, with an acclaimed body of work that spans half a century and a source of inspiration that ranges from American exceptionalism to American popular culture. This Companion's distinguished international team of contributors addresses the major themes in Updike's writing as well as the sources of controversy that it has often provoked. They trace the ways in which historical and cultural changes in the second half of the twentieth century have shaped not only Updike's reassessment of America's heritage, but his reassessment of the literary devices by which that legacy is best portrayed. Includes a chronology and bibliography of Updike's published writings. ... Read more

Product Description
After traveling the world to exotic lands, Alexandra, Jane, and Sukie–now widowed but still witches–return to the Rhode Island seaside town of Eastwick, “the scene of their primes,” site of their enchanted mischief more than three decades ago. Diabolical Darryl Van Horne is gone, and what was once a center of license and liberation is now a “haven of wholesomeness” populated by hockey moms and househusbands acting out against the old ways of their own absent, experimenting parents. With spirits still willing but flesh weaker, the three women must confront a powerful new counterspell of conformity. In this wicked and wonderful novel, John Updike is at his very best–a legendary master of literary magic up to his old delightful tricks. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (32)

Ok read
I've long been a John Updike fan with Month of Sundays being on my list of favorite reads, as well as the whole Rabbit grouping.I read this as a sort of farewell to characters.It was an enjoyable read, although not as good as the Witches, but it drew closure, which is what I was expecting.

The characters are old and tired and so is the book despite the still brilliant Updike style
I more and more discover that the Updike I really care about is not the creator of fictions, but the brilliant interpreter of life and culture. Updike as essayist, as cultural commentator moves me far more than Updike as writer of fiction. In this late quite mediocre novel the Updike style , in all its intricacy and fine metaphorical descriptiveness is still at work. The great magic and charm of the Updike sentence is still there. The abiity to document the American reality to provide us with 'pictures' of the world is there. But so is the almost haphazard relation to characters who it seems to me are never really loveable. These are characters for whom lust and desire, the pursuit of pleasure and their own life- satisfaction is central. I have the sense that Updike does not really love his characters the way some other writers do. Only when the character comes close to being some kind of Updike alter- ego is there real feeling for it.
In this work the three witches of Eastwick now in their seventies and widowed returned to the scene of their former adulteries and spellcastings. They return and re-establish the special bond between them but are unable to resist the vengeance of the brother of their 'victim' from the earlier book. There is however little of their former passion and interest. This book has a tiredness which seems to echo that of its principal subjects. Updike documents faithfully this stage of life as he has documented early ones. But this is the stage of little promise and a lot of disappointment.

Better than "Witches"
Maybe I liked this better than the first novel because I too have become an old woman since the original was written. The Widows has more depth & subtlety, as if the characters were real people who have stretched and warped with the passage of time.There are painful truths here, too, for the balance of nature reasserts itself, as it will, in the long-delayed results of the witches' 1970's tinkering with fate. My favorite of Updike's many clever, sharply realized novels of middle class suburban life.

Cranky and cantankerous
After 30 years, the 3 witches have reunited to travel the world and eventually return to Eastwick for the summer. You may think/hope that since these women have finally reached the Crone stage of life (read: wise woman elder), they'd be chilled-out, deep, and able to see behind the veils of this shallow world into the truth beyond. Or something like that. Either way, they don't. They are crabby and they bitch and moan about every little thing. I actually had to put the book down for a few days before I could handle their complaining again. There's nothing remotely cool about them any more - they are scared and upset and conservative and overcompensate for it by fits of raunchiness. I'd hoped they'd have aged into some kind of crazy Medusas, but instead they became gripe-ridden malcontents. Not really recommended unless you like Updike's writing, which is long and descriptive and fun to read in its own way.

old and a little stale
Updike seems to have been trying for a case study on aging. The narrative is laced with complaints about health,vitality, and mortality. There is not much upbeat here, except for a couple of maybe-magic events that are hardly more than story blips.

Like some other reviewers, I was put off by the exquisitely detailed and lengthy travelogue sections. What irony that Updike has plainly enjoyed the places he describes, but his aging widows are mostly grumpy about them.

Writing this in his mid-70s, it is clear that Updike had not lost his mastery of language. But a successful novel requires a coherent structure that pull the sentences together. Updike showed too little of that structure, and thus may have disclosed more than he intended about his own aging.

... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Vintage Updike
It's a shame that these earlier essays by Updike have gone out of print. While the style is considerably more "academic" than what would see in his later collections, especially Hugging the Shore, which won the Pulitzer Prize, the readings are still startling and sympathetic of a wide range of authors and their works. Updike is so at ease with all aspects of the language and the culture that reading him is like a guided tour into the entire literary terrain of the time. Highly recommended, and a vote to reprint these essays for our own time.

Vintage Updike
It's a shame that these earlier essays by Updike have gone out of print. While the style is considerably more "academic" than what would see in his later collections, especially Hugging the Shore, which won the Pulitzer Prize, the readings are still startling and sympathetic of a wide range of authors and their works. Updike is so at ease with all aspects of the language and the culture that reading him is like a guided tour into the entire literary terrain of the time. Highly recommended, and a vote to reprint these essays for our own time.

Vintage Updike
It's a shame that these earlieressays by Updike have gone out of print.While the style is considerably more "academic" than what would see in his later collections, especially Hugging the Shore, which won the Pulitzer Prize, thereadings are still startling and sympathetic of a wide range of authors and their works. Updike is so at ease with all aspects of the language and the culture that reading him is like a guided tour into the entire literary terrain of the time. Highly recommended, and a vote to reprint these essays for our own time.

Non-fiction works wholly lacking sex, character, and plot
This collection of prose works by Pennsylvania's favorite son (and critic) opens with a section of "Parodies", many of which were way over this reviewer's head, for example the pseudo-scholarly "What Is A Rhyme?" which purports to barb T.S. Eliot, and the decidedly un-Kerouacesqe "On the Sidewalk".Another satirizes a Life Magazine article that had had some impact on the public psyche during the 1950's, but is virtually unknown today.At least somewhat more amusing is "Drinking from a Cup Made Cinchy", a satire on books of golf tips, and "The Unread Book Route", which is less a parody than a Bombeck-style household confession.

The "First Person Plural" section samples Updike's columns written for The New Yorker's "Talk of the Town" department, and as such is strong on style and in documenting a certain time and place, but its entertainment value is limited by the absence of plot.Best of these is "Doomsday, Mass." which deals with the simple fact of living under the threat of nuclear holocaust.On a more upbeat note, "Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu" describes the author's thoughts on seeing the last game played at Fenway Park by Ted Williams.Maybe Updike is just an ordinary guy after all.

"First Person Singular" features some painfully slow reminiscences on Updike's boyhood that by their very nature lack any real point or direction.Perhaps the best of these is "The Lucid Eye in Silver Town", although once again, it assumes some personal connection to New York City which most readers simply won't share.

To this reviewer, the standout section is the book reviews, but they aren't likely to be of much interest to the general reader.The pieces on Thurber, Salinger, and Aiken are succinct and well-thought out, but what will readers derive from Updike's thoughts on such obscure metaphysical works as Karl Barth's "Anselm: Fides Quaerens Intellectum", Paul Tillich's "Morality and Beyond", or the "Letters of James Agee to Father Flye"?These pieces seem included to establish the author's credentials as a serious intellectual, rather than because anyone was likely to want to read them.

Perhaps it was only a young man's vanity that convinced the author this book was worth publishing at all.But despite the Updike's obvious gift with prose, there's very little worthwhile in this hodgepodge.Stick to fiction, John; always go with your strength. ... Read more

Product Description
The earliest poems here date from 1953, when Updike was 21, and the last were written after he turned 60. All 70 previously published poems are included in this book, with some revisions made. Arranged in chronological order, the book also includes notes which discuss some of the hidden threads in each poem. All the poems reflect Updike's recurring themes of confession, nostalgia, anxiety and awe. ... Read more

Product Description
Henry Bech, the moderately well known Jewish-American writer who served as the hero of John Updike's previous Bech: A Book (1970) and Bech Is Back (1982), has become older but scarcely wiser. In these five new chapters from his life, he is still at bay, pursued by the hounds of desire and anxiety, of unbridled criticism and publicity in a literary world ever more cheerfully crass. He fights intimations of annihilation in still-Communist Czechoslovakia, while promiscuously consorting with dissidents, apparatchiks, and Midwestern Republicans. Next, he succumbs to the temptations of power by accepting the presidency of a quaint and cosseted honorary body patterned on the Académie Française. Then, the reader finds him on trial in California and on a criminal rampage in a gothic Gotham, abetted by a nubile sidekick called Robin. Lastly, our septuagenarian veteran of the literary wars is rewarded with a coveted medal, stunning him into a well-deserved silence. It's not easy being Henry Bech in the post-Gutenbergian world, but somebody has to do it, and he brings to the task an indomitable mixture of grit and ennui.


From the Hardcover edition.Amazon.com Review
After recounting almost every detail of Rabbit Angstrom's mental,spiritual, and (especially) erotic life for almost four decades, John Updikelaid his brilliant creation to rest in 1990. Another of his ongoingcharacters, however, has remained at large--Henry Bech. In Bech atBay, Updike revives his philandering Jewish American novelist for onelast trip through that wringer we call the writer's life. Like his creator,Bech is getting on in years. And although age cannot wither hisconsiderable sexual appetites nor custom stale his cantankerous charms, heis uncomfortably aware of his mortality. In the first episode, during avisit to pre-perestroika Czechoslovakia, the "semi-obscure Americanauthor" is taken to view Kafka's grave, and the sight gives him thewillies: "It all struck Bech as dumbfoundingly blunt and engimatic, banaland moving. Such blankness, such stony and peaceable reification, waits forus at the bottom of things." His own proximity to the bottom of things iswhat gives Bech at Bay an extra dose of sobriety. For the firsttime, Updike's ingratiating impersonation of a Jew--who shares the author'slapidary style, sizable nose, and not much else--is not only supremelyamusing but moving.

Which isn't to say that all is gloomy in Bechville. Updike keeps thingsbreezy throughout, as his hero is seduced and subpoenaed, excoriated andhonored, finally, with the Nobel Prize. Only once does the author lose hisfooting, with "Bech Noir": this world-class nebbish just doesn't cut it asserial killer, and even the prose goes untypically to pot. But otherwisethe book is a delight, venting all the nastiness about literary life thatUpdike always purges from his own more genteel (not to mention Gentile)persona. It's also an elegant meditation on literary being and nothingness."A character," we are told, "suffers from the fear that he will becomeboring to the author, who will simply let him drop, without so much as aterminal illness or a dramatic tumble down the Reichenbach Falls in thearms of Professor Moriarty. For some years now, Bech had felt his authorwanting to set him aside, to get him off the desk forever." Here Updikeproves himself Nabokov's equal in the metafictional sweepstakes--and makesus hope that his doppelgänger will get one last reprieve. --JamesMarcus ... Read more

Customer Reviews (15)

Bech a Bore
I'm a great Updike fan. Loved "Rabbit is Rich" and "Rabbit at Rest"...but as good as they are, I don't think Updike is ever as good as the best novelists, such as Roth and Bellow, both of whom happen to be Jewish as is Bech. Is Bech ever as exciting intellectually as Bellow's best, such as Herzog? No. Updike is much more like David Lodge, whose own "Changing Places" features a Jewish academic not entirely unlike Bech. Lodge and Updike, and the British playwright Simon Grey, all concentrate their energies on the life of the writer, the ins and outs of the lit crit scene, and all do it masterfully, but none has the intellectual heft of the great Jewish writers, such as Roth. They've got the pettiness down cold, and Updike, of course, is a master of crude sexuality, so his intellectuals all run around with their flies open and their tongues hanging out of their mouths, but what Updike and Lodge fail to achieve is intellectual excitement in the ideas themselves and in the lives of the people. However brilliant they may seem, they never are troubled in a serious way; they are merely flummoxed and irritated in a Waspy way. They are also able to sail on, despite their observations of the world, whereas Bellow's characters are affected by the ills of society; they are troubled by what they observe as troubling. Roth creates a world that is under assault, that is being torn apart, but Updike's world is a carnival ride, even when his subject is terrorism, as in his recent novel.

Enjoyed First Experience With Updike
John Updike is one of those names I had always heard of but had never checked out.Finally, a few weeks ago, I decided that it was time for me to get acquainted with Mr. Updike.I must say that the first work I chose to read of his did not disappoint me.

Bech at Bay is the last in a series of books that feature Henry Beck, and aged writer who still manages to find himself in precarious adventures.Bech at Bay is a series of short stories that loosely make up a larger story.At times hilarious, at times insightful, and at times rather disturbing, I found myself quite pleased with Mr. Updike's work.I look forward to reading more of it.

~Scott William Foley, author of Souls Triumphant

Bech Noir: a delicious writerly power-fantasy
_____________________________________________

Novelist Henry Bech, 74, is in bed with his secretary and computer
consultant Rachel (Robin) Teagarten - "26, post-Jewish, frizzy big
hair, figure on the short, solid side." He is reading the obituary
of a hostile critic:

A creamy satisfaction - the finest quality, made extra easy to
spread by the toasty warmth - thickly covered his heart.

It occurs to Beche that he could hasten the passing of other
noxious critics. Thought leads to action, then to suspicion, then
to confession:

Perhaps he had made a fatal error, spilling his guts to this
chesty broad. "OK. Turn me in. Go to the bulls."

Robin is unexpectedly sympathetic:"I think you've shown a lot of
balls, frankly, translating your resentments into action instead
of sublimating them into art."

He didn't much like it when young women said "balls"... but
today he was thrilled by the cool baldness of it. They were, he
and his mistress, in a new realm, a computerized universe devoid
of blame or guilt, as morally null as an Intel chip...."My
lover, the killer," she breathed...

"So, who are you going to do next?" ...Her pupils, those
inkwells as deep as the the night's zenith, were dilated by
excitement.

For their next victim, a critic turned Internet personality, they
devise a subliminal attack on his self-image, slipped thru a
trapdoor in Sendmail:

Invisibly these truths rippled onto the screen's pixels for a
fifteenth of a second - that is, five refreshments of the
screen, a single one being, Robin and a consulting
neurophysiologist agreed, too brief to register...

NON-BEING IS AN ASPECT OF BEING...
- this Bech had adapted from a Taoist poem by Seng Ts'an...

LET THE ONE WITH ITS MYSTERY BLOT OUT ALL MEMORY OF
COMPLICATIONS.

JUMP

JUMP

JUMP!


Literary villains of Gotham, beware!

-----------------------------------------
copyright 1998 John Updike/The New Yorker
First publishedJune 8, 1998.
Excerpted by Pete Tillman, who sincerely hopes that by doing so he
has not aroused Mr Updike's ire.

Note that the version published in the New Yorker is *far* superior to that in Updike's book, "Bech at Bay"-- showing once again the danger of Famous Authors slipping extraneous padding past Ye Editor's blue pencil....

Bech is Funny and Sad
How does one best review a literary genius? This is not going to be easy. Updike is an author I discovered in college, but haven't been seriously reading him since a couple years ago. I devoured "Roger's Version" and his latest short stories, and I didn't know what to expect with the latest Bech book. This is the first of the Bech books I have read. What an amazing book. Updike has a way of describing reality that makes it feel more important..almost surreal.

Bech, Updike's alter-ego, runs loose in this one, even resorting to murder of his least liked critics. If you are looking for very DARK humor, here is where to find it. In this pathetic yet somewhat brilliant character, we find some autobiographic hints about Updike himself I'm sure. Some of his dislike of critics is probably projected into Bech's harsh words. And at one point Bech wonders if he is polluting the world with subtle pornography, maybe something the author wonders about from time to time too.

Perhaps the best part of the book is the end when Bech gives a rambling but very interesting Nobel Prize acceptance speech in Sweden. This is something only Updike could write. He rambles on about mortality, religion, relationships and birth and death. Vintage Updike. He is a world class writer of the highest order.


Jeffrey McAndrew
author of "Our Brown-Eyed Boy"

Quizzical Quiddities
"Bech at Bay" presents five comic stories about the novelist Henry Bech, starting out with a visit to Communist Czechoslovakia when he is 63 and ending in his acceptance of the Nobel Prize for Literature when he is 76 years old (with his infant daughter held struggling in his arms). Through these Bech stories, Updike takes a satirical look at the the Manhattan literary scene, pokes fun at the absurdities of the big city life and even takes a moment or two to ponder the Eternal Verities (but not too seriously). As his life enters its last phase, Bech finds himself in some interesting new situations: president of the The Forty, an intellectual society hopefully modelled on the French Academy but without its sense of self importance; as a caped avenger "ridding literary Gotham of villains" (read critics); as a septuagenarian father. Through all this absurdist comedy, the old Updike magic is constantly with us. Bravo! ... Read more

Product Description
For two decades, first at Wellesley and then at Cornell, Nabokov introduced undergraduates to the delights of great fiction. Here, collected for the first time, are his famous lectures, which include Mansfield Park, Bleak House, and Ulysses. Edited and with a Foreword by Fredson Bowers; Introduction by John Updike; illustrations. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (19)

Rare book found
Excellent service- book was rare but arrived promptly and in the condition specified: many thanks!

not just another "great writer"
Nabokov's ideas about literature will strike many readers as strange--his near obsession with seemingly trivial points of set description, his lack of interest in Great Ideas or in "character" in the sense of a window into human nature. Such readers would likely describe Nabokov's opinions (and his own artistic creations)as "disembodied," "narrow," "cold," "sanitary." These readers would be making a crucial error, selling both a brilliant artist and themselves short.

Narrative art generally operates as follows: an author presupposes the human world as a place driven by desire, a place defined by the striving for those things (white whale, justice for a father's fratricidal demise, "God") as grant freedom from pain and perhaps even transcendent joy. Drama unfolds as chracters fight over these things, great moral questions get asked (what are one's obligations to others as we strive, Does God care about us and our plans) and we feel kindred ecstacy and despair as characters near their objects or falter. To most, this is literature-- a chronicle of movement up and down a scale of nearness or distance from some highly charged, desired object. Indeed, to most, this is "reality," consciousness itself.

Nabokov has a very different idea. What Nabokov understands, what is central to his conception of literature (and of consciousness), is thatthose objects accepted by other writers as objectively powerful things capable (however complex their identities might otherwise be) of bestowing or denying happiness, have that power only because an indvidual consciousness gives it to them. While Humbert Humbert adores Lolita, homosexual chess partner Gaston Godin is so absolutely immune to her charms that he never even realizes she's one person (he "sees" multiple Humbert "daughters"). Charlotte adores dreadful Humbert because, contrary to what we know him to be, a gallant, handsome continental is the image she makes of him. In such a world, Nabokov's world, tragedy, the final, fatal estrangement from some ultimately longed-for object, has no place: What's a fall from grace when grace was never more than a dream of the mind? Suffice it to say, the "normal" critical values of literature become equally pointless. What DOES matter in this transmorgified world is style and structure, the artistry (the Samsa house, the layer cake in Madame Bovary) with which dreamy things, in art as well as in life, are woven. What seems shallow about Nabokov, is in fact far "deeper" and subtle than anything found in such alledgely "great souled" writers as Dostoevsky, Faulkner, Thomas Mann, etc. In fact, it's no exaggeration to say that Nabokov's art begins at a point higher than than where these writers' art, at its highest, finishes.

The smell of sawdust
This is a writer's book. It is not (really) for students of literature. It has almost nothing in the way of meaning or 'higher' criticism. Instead, it's a working writer's careful view of the plot and style of landmark novels. That the writer is Nabokov makes the view sharper, critical and a bit more malign. So much the better.This is the view from the workshop where the boards are cut and planed. The smell of sawdust is in the air. If you are involved in the cabinetry that is fiction, you should spend some time here.

I'm not so enthusiastic about his judgment of Austen and Dickens, but then again I'm not so enthusiastic about my enthusiasms. There's a genius at work here and it's worth looking

Lynn Hoffman, author of bang BANG: A Novel

Amazon messed up
Amazon has mistakenly crosslinked this book with another, lectures on non-Russian literature, as being another edition of that book.

Solid example of Nabokov's literary perspective
Some time back, I reviewed "Crime and Punishment" for Amazon.One of the commentators on my review suggested that I take a look at Vladimir Nabokov's critical analysis of Dostoevsky. So, via Amazon, I purchased Vladimir Nabokov's book, "Lectures in Literature."As luck would have it, this was not the volume covering Dostoevsky! However, I did take a look anyhow, my curiosity piqued by the comment on my review.The end result? A greater appreciation for Nabokov--and also a sense that I'm not apt to invest a great deal of time reading other of his literary analysis.

The essays in this book represent lectures that he gave at Wellesley College and Cornell University.The introductory comments note that (Page ix): "The fact cannot and need not be disguised that the texts for these essays represent Vladimir Nabokov's written-out notes for delivery as classroom lectures and that they cannot be recognized as a finished literary work. . . ."John Updike's Introduction also provides some context for this work. He notes that Nabokov's lectures provide (Page xxv): ". . .a dazzling demonstration, for those lucky Cornell students in the remote, clean-cut fifties, of the irresistible artistic sensibility." He also notes, in Nabokov's words, the truth of novels, that (Pages xxv-xxvi): ". . .great novels are great fairy tales--and the novels in this series are supreme fairy tales. . . ." Nabokov himself points out that a writer can be considered as (a) a storyteller, (b) a teacher, and (c) an enchanter (Page 5). And, above all, he values style and structure in authors' creations.

Maybe a few examples will illustrate his critical approach.First, Jane Austen's "Mansfield Park."Let me confess. . . . I'm not particularly excited about Jane Austen's work. However, Nabokov is very pleased with her work.Given his emphasis on style and structure, he details how well she constructs this work. For instance, at one point, the characters, among whom there are a variety of tensions to begin with, select a play to perform. The decision as to which of the characters in Austen's story would play which characters in the play is well discussed by Nabokov. The play itself raises questions--it was, in fact, an actual play that scandalized some of the characters in the novel.And it exacerbated pre-existing tensions among the characters.All in all, Nabokov makes a great case that Austen's structure of this segment of the novel was well done indeed. And, in terms of style, he says of Austen that (Page 59) "she handles it with perfection."As noted, I am not much excited by Austen's works, but Nabokov sure convinced me that she was a terrific technical writer, who wed her genius to technique and style and structure to create something special.

Briefly, I would also note that his examination of Robert Louis Stevenson's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" leaves him cold.He does not think that it holds together well and that the dichotomy of the characters works well.

Finally, Kafka's "Metamorphosis," a story I read several decades ago.I recall the sense of despair I felt reading about the travails of Gregor Samsa--and a sense that, despite the awful/offal nature of the work that there was something important here.Nabokov is very positive about this piece. Much of this lecture is a simple description of the work, scene by scene, and Nabokov spennds some time noting how Kafka's work is so much better than Stevenson's work discussed above. Samsa's unexplained transformation into a beetle is the event that triggers this story. Nabokov notes how this tragedy has positive elements--a family finally getting its act together even as it abandons Gregor--and illustrates Kafka's style.Of the latter, Nabokov says (Page 283): "You will mark Kafka's style. Its clarity, its precise and formal intonation in such striking contrast to the nightmare matter of his story."

He concludes this set of lectures by congratulating his students on their work--and making a few final points.He concludes (Pages 381-382): "I have tried to teach you to read books for the sake of their form, their visions, their art. I have tried to teach you to feel a shiver of artistic satisfaction, to share not the emotion of the people in the book but the emotions of its author--the joys and difficulties of creation."

I admire his emphasis on style and structure, but I also think there is an almost sanitary quality about some of his observations. Austen? I have found it difficult over decades to get any purchase on her works. Her style and structure doesn't make up for what I feel as an overly mannered style (I expect to get hammered for saying that!). Does one really need to know about her knowledge of a particular play to appreciate (or not appreciate) her novel?I don't know.I'm a political scientist--not a literary critic.Nonetheless, this is an exciting book, as one learns how a literary critic from one critical perspective examining a series of works--Austen, Dickens, Flaubert, Stevenson, Proust, Kafka, and Joyce. If interested in Nabokov's critical perspective, this is a good starting point!
... Read more