Overview
John Updikes classic Bech novels, Bech: A Book (1970), Bech is Back (1982), and the latest installment, Bech at Bay."Mr. Updike finds full scope for his gifts here: for sly and cheerfully malicious pensees on contemporary life; for busy observations on human behavior."
-The New Yorker
Bech a Book (1970): This is where we meet him for the first time - Henry Beck, a New York writer "with his thinning curly hair and melancholy Jewish nose," whose first novel had become a minor classic. A rich and unforgettable portrait and a satire of the literary life.
Bech Is Back (1982): When Bech comes back, he roams a number of third-world countries as a cultural ambassador - astonished at his won literary celebrity. From the era of Vietnam to the sagging end of the Seventies, his aesthetic embarrassments reveal truths about his trade and his times.
Bech at Bay (1998): Our hero returns - older, but scarcely wiser. 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. it's not easy being Henry Beck in the post-Gutenbergian world, but somebody has to do it, and he brings to the take that indomitable mixture of grit and ennui that only Updike could make so deliciously funny.
Synopsis
John Updikes classic Bech novels, Bech: A Book (1970), Bech is Back (1982), and the latest installment, Bech at Bay.
"Mr. Updike finds full scope for his gifts here: for sly and cheerfully malicious pensees on contemporary life; for busy observations on human behavior."
-The New Yorker
Bech a Book (1970): This is where we meet him for the first time - Henry Beck, a New York writer "with his thinning curly hair and melancholy Jewish nose," whose first novel had become a minor classic. A rich and unforgettable portrait and a satire of the literary life.
Bech Is Back (1982): When Bech comes back, he roams a number of third-world countries as a cultural ambassador - astonished at his won literary celebrity. From the era of Vietnam to the sagging end of the Seventies, his aesthetic embarrassments reveal truths about his trade and his times.
Bech at Bay (1998): Our hero returns - older, but scarcely wiser. 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. it's not easy being Henry Beck in the post-Gutenbergian world, but somebody has to do it, and he brings to the take that indomitable mixture of grit and ennui that only Updike could make so deliciously funny.
Library Journal
In his 49th book, Updike returns with Henry Bech, the middling Jewish American writer he first introduced in Bech: A Book. This time, Bech gets an unexpected awarda Nobel.