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Overview
John Updike wrote about the lure of golf for five decades, from the first time he teed off at the age of twenty-five until his final rounds at the age of seventy-six. Golf Dreams collects the most memorable of his golf pieces, high-spirited evidence of his learning, playing, and living for the game. The camaraderie of golf, the perils of its present boom, how to relate to caddies, and how to manage short putts are among the topics he addresses, sometimes in lyrical essays, sometimes in light verse, sometimes in wickedly comic fiction. All thirty pieces have the lilt of a love song, and the crispness of a firm chip stiff to the pin.
Synopsis
"BUBBLY AND QUIZZICAL AND LUMINOUS."
—Los Angeles Times
"JOYFUL . . . THE JACK NICKLAUS OF GOLF WRITING . . . The 30 entries in this collection, drawn mainly from magazine pieces, constitute a championship round. . . . This unbridled appreciation of golf's mystical opportunities for grace and redemption will enthrall even those who have never followed an 80-yard worm-burner with an elegant chip to the pin."
—People
"VINTAGE UPDIKE AND A RARE TREAT FOR GOLFERS."
—San Francisco Chronicle
"A BOOK WRITTEN UNDER A CLEAR BLUE SKY WITH AN UTTERLY PURE SWING . . . [ending] with a handful of essays on the metaphysics of golf and great golf gurus, both writers and caddies. Here, Updike waltzes about the heavens of Nabokov, in pure esthetic bliss. And here his transcendental agonies and anxieties fuse into split-second moments of impact that lift us from sand pit to rhapsody."
—The Philadelphia Inquirer