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 xxiii
... Matter offers such satis- factions — the tactile thrill of the fixed , the interlocking — but any illu- sion of " permanent form " struggles against the realizations , come upon me late in life , that paper decays , that readership ...
... Matter offers such satis- factions — the tactile thrill of the fixed , the interlocking — but any illu- sion of " permanent form " struggles against the realizations , come upon me late in life , that paper decays , that readership ...
Page 257
... matter that much ? And all that energy and worry expended on merely getting themselves reproduced ! The subjects we study with such care seem of transitory unreal interest . . . . Is it worth it to impose the order - bound to be ...
... matter that much ? And all that energy and worry expended on merely getting themselves reproduced ! The subjects we study with such care seem of transitory unreal interest . . . . Is it worth it to impose the order - bound to be ...
Page 816
... Matter— my remarks for Easton Press were skimpy and casual , but on rereading them I thought they recalled a few truths not present in the later , fuller introduction . Also , the hurried feel of the prose was possibly truer to the ...
... Matter— my remarks for Easton Press were skimpy and casual , but on rereading them I thought they recalled a few truths not present in the later , fuller introduction . Also , the hurried feel of the prose was possibly truer to the ...
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American appeared asked beauty become begins body called century characters close cold comes dance dark death described early English equality eyes face fact father feel felt fiction freedom girl give hand happy head heart hero hope human imagination John journals keep kind later less letter light literary live look matter means Melville mind mother moved nature never night novel offers once perhaps play political present published reader remains seems sense sexual short side social society story Street tells thing thought tion told took translated turned voice wife woman women write written wrote York young
References to this book
The Quest for Epic in Contemporary American Fiction: John Updike, Philip ... Catherine Morley No preview available - 2008 |