Updike

Updike is Adam Begley''s masterful, much-anticipated biography of one of the most celebrated figures in American literature: Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Updike--a candid, intimate, and richly detailed look at his life and work. In this magisterial biography, Adam Begley offers an illuminating portrait of John Updike, the acclaimed 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 stages of the writer''s pilgrim''s progress: his beloved home turf of Berks County, Pennsylvania; his escape to Harvard; his brief, busy 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 another Massachusetts town, Beverly Farms, 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 that lends depth and originality to his analysis, 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: a kind man with a vicious wit, a gregarious charmer who was ruthlessly competitive, a private person compelled to spill his secrets on the printed page. Updike offers an admiring yet balanced look at this national treasure, a master whose writing continues to resonate like no one else''s.

Product details

• Authors: Adam Begley
• Publisher: Harper Perennial USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 31.03.2015
• EAN: 9780061896460
• ISBN: 978-0-06-189646-0
• No. of pages: 592
• Dimensions: 140 mm x 205 mm x 30 mm
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > English linguistics / literary studies; Non-fiction book > Philosophy, religion > Biographies, autobiographies; SOCIAL SCIENCE: Sociology / General, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY: Literary Figures, LITERARY CRITICISM: American / General, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY: Historical, HISTORY: United States / 21st Century, HISTORY: United States / 20th Century, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY: General, LITERARY CRITICISM: American / Regional, HISTORY: Essays