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Overview
In this collection of nonfiction pieces, John Updike gathers his responses to nearly two hundred invitations into print, each “an opportunity to make something beautiful, to find within oneself a treasure that would otherwise remain buried.” Introductions, reviews, and humorous essays, paragraphs on New York, religion, and lust—here is “more matter” commissioned by an age that, as the author remarks in his Preface, calls for “real stuff . . . not for the obliquities and tenuosities of fiction.” Still, the novelist’s shaping hand, his gift for telling detail, can be detected in many of these literary considerations. Books by Edith Wharton, Dawn Powell, John Cheever, and Vladimir Nabokov are incisively treated, as are biographies of Isaac Newton, Abraham Lincoln, Queen Elizabeth II, and Helen Keller. As George Steiner observed, Updike writes with a “solicitous, almost tender intelligence. The critic and the poet in him . . . are at no odds with the novelist; the same sharpness of apprehension bears on the object in each of Updike’s modes.”
Synopsis
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."
NY Times Book Review - William H. Pritchard
It would be a mistake to think that [Updike] gives any less of himself, is any less fully engaged and serious, in his essays and criticism...Even more than in previous collections, the range is astonishing...
Editorials
William H. Pritchard
It would be a mistake to think that [Updike] gives any less of himself, is any less fully engaged and serious, in his essays and criticism...Even more than in previous collections, the range is astonishing...— NY Times Book Review
Publishers Weekly -
Many American writers this century have been called brilliant and accomplished, but Updike is the real thing, as this huge collection of personal essays, social commentary, book reviews, introductions, interviews and occasional pieces amply attests. It is astonishing that a volume of nearly 200 pieces--most written for such intellectual venues as the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books, but some penned for the mass audiences of Newsweek and USAir Magazine--represents only eight years' work at a time when Updike was producing roughly a novel every two years. But perhaps even more surprising is his range, depth and originality. Segueing freely from the latest biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald and the nature of evil to cars, cartoons and burglar alarms, these essays are bursting with sentiments and observations that defy ideology or neat categorization. Just when you think Updike is a cultural conservative (he deems young men's haircuts "hostile," mocks Borges and debates the serial comma), he defends Jacques Derrida (against Camille Paglia, no less). Just when you think he is refined and cautious (shaving the metaphysical line between "freedom" and "equality"), he turns irreverent (referring to Helen Keller jokes and "God in a lilac shortie nightgown" on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel). Some pieces are prophetic, such as his comments in 1996 on our fascination with the Titanic disaster. Unlike most journalism, Updike's occasional writing is so exquisite as to repay multiple readings. And not least among the many virtues of this book, the 50th of his career, is its sheer fact of convenient assembly. BOMC alternate selection. (Sept.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.Library Journal
It's always fun to hear from Updike, even when we get bits and pieces like these essays, criticism, addresses, etc., but what is noteworthy here is that this is Updike's 50th book. Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.Booknews
The popular American writer's fifth collection of assorted prose, most of it first published in over the past eight years. They include essays, criticism, addresses, introductions, humor, and paragraphs about himself and his work. He considers many particular authors, but also general literary topics such as the nature of evil, the philosophical contents of novels, and the wreck of the . Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)Bruce Bawer
Indeed, there is much to be said for this book, whose author — a working man of letters in the nineteenth-century mold — has rarely if ever appeared to be in thrall to literary trends, to covet the kind of media celebrity that some other writers of his generation have sought, or to use his criticism to settle scores. If aspiring writers may not find in these pages the foremost living model of critical candor, courage, and passion, they can nonetheless learn a great deal from Updike about how to shape a sentence and read a text. They can also learn the value of having an eye for particulars...— The Hudson Review