Updike
Apr 2014 · Harper Collins
4.0star
1 reviewreport
Ebook
850
Pages
family_home
Eligible
info
reportRatings and reviews aren’t verified Learn More
About this ebook
“A brilliant biography. . . . The joys are . . . discovering the autobiographical content of the . . . details that populate Updike’s vast fictional universe.” —Orhan Pamuk, The New York Times Book Review
Adam Begley offers an illuminating portrait of John Updike, Pulitzer prize–winning novelist, poet, short-story writer, and critic who saw himself as a literary spy in small-town and suburban America, who dedicated himself to the task of transcribing “middleness with all its grits, bumps and anonymities.”
Updike explores the writer’s beloved home turf of Berks County, Pennsylvania; his escape to Harvard; his working life as the golden boy at The New Yorker; his family years in suburban Ipswich, Massachusetts; his extensive travel abroad; and his retreat to Beverly Farms, Massachusetts, where he remained until his death in 2009. Drawing from in-depth research as well as interviews with the writer’s colleagues, friends, and family, Begley explores how Updike’s fiction was shaped by his tumultuous personal life—including his enduring religious faith, his two marriages, and his first-hand experience of the “adulterous society” he was credited with exposing in the bestselling Couples.
With a sharp critical sensibility, Begley probes Updike’s best-loved works—from Pigeon Feathers to The Witches of Eastwick to the Rabbit tetralogy—and reveals a surprising and deeply complex character fraught with contradictions. Updike offers an admiring yet balanced look at one of American literature’s most treasured authors.
“A superb achievement. . . . as rewarding as Updike’s best fiction.” —Scott Stossel, The Boston Globe
“A monumental treatment of a towering American writer.” —The New York Observer
“A highly literate illumination of a supremely literate human being.” —Louis Menand, The New Yorker
Adam Begley offers an illuminating portrait of John Updike, Pulitzer prize–winning novelist, poet, short-story writer, and critic who saw himself as a literary spy in small-town and suburban America, who dedicated himself to the task of transcribing “middleness with all its grits, bumps and anonymities.”
Updike explores the writer’s beloved home turf of Berks County, Pennsylvania; his escape to Harvard; his working life as the golden boy at The New Yorker; his family years in suburban Ipswich, Massachusetts; his extensive travel abroad; and his retreat to Beverly Farms, Massachusetts, where he remained until his death in 2009. Drawing from in-depth research as well as interviews with the writer’s colleagues, friends, and family, Begley explores how Updike’s fiction was shaped by his tumultuous personal life—including his enduring religious faith, his two marriages, and his first-hand experience of the “adulterous society” he was credited with exposing in the bestselling Couples.
With a sharp critical sensibility, Begley probes Updike’s best-loved works—from Pigeon Feathers to The Witches of Eastwick to the Rabbit tetralogy—and reveals a surprising and deeply complex character fraught with contradictions. Updike offers an admiring yet balanced look at one of American literature’s most treasured authors.
“A superb achievement. . . . as rewarding as Updike’s best fiction.” —Scott Stossel, The Boston Globe
“A monumental treatment of a towering American writer.” —The New York Observer
“A highly literate illumination of a supremely literate human being.” —Louis Menand, The New Yorker
Ratings and reviews
4.0
1 review
About the author
Adam Begley was the books editor for the New York Observer from 1996 to 2009. He has been a Guggenheim fellow and a fellow at the Leon Levy Center for Biography at the CUNY Graduate Center. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, New York Times Magazine, Financial Times, Guardian, London Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement, and many other publications. He lives in England.
Rate this ebook
Tell us what you think.
Reading information
Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can listen to audiobooks purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
eReaders and other devices
To read on e-ink devices like Kobo eReaders, you'll need to download a file and transfer it to your device. Follow the detailed Help Center instructions to transfer the files to supported eReaders.
