More Matter: Essays and CriticismJohn 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." |
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Page 19
... become the white - collar gouger of the urban hospitals , running thousand - dollar tests on comatose street people and propelling a ruinous run - up on medical costs the country over . Except for the very rich and the legally penniless ...
... become the white - collar gouger of the urban hospitals , running thousand - dollar tests on comatose street people and propelling a ruinous run - up on medical costs the country over . Except for the very rich and the legally penniless ...
Page 524
... become , notoriously , a dealers ' art ; the art of the deal has made our pleasure in a museum inextricable from our wonder at how much these things are worth - that little Vermeer in the corner , just past the shoulder of the scowling ...
... become , notoriously , a dealers ' art ; the art of the deal has made our pleasure in a museum inextricable from our wonder at how much these things are worth - that little Vermeer in the corner , just past the shoulder of the scowling ...
Page 689
... become a painter and burned all his canvases , he embarked upon his famous series of more than a thousand photographs of a white teacup and saucer , with minute adjustments of shadow and background . Still life — including bodies and ...
... become a painter and burned all his canvases , he embarked upon his famous series of more than a thousand photographs of a white teacup and saucer , with minute adjustments of shadow and background . Still life — including bodies and ...
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References to this book
The Quest for Epic in Contemporary American Fiction: John Updike, Philip ... Catherine Morley No preview available - 2008 |