A detailed, seemingly comprehensive 500 page biography that reads almost like a novel. Begley shows how Updike repeatedly and mercilessly, yet lovingly, mined the relationships and experiences of a lifetime in his fiction, essays, and poetry. Many exquisite quotes from Updike’s works like the following: Updike’s stated goal in his writing: “to give the mundane its beautiful due.”“I read slower than I write.” “The world keeps ending but new people too dumb to know it keep showing up as if the fun just started.” “We forget most of our past but embody all of it.” “Happiness is best seen out of the corner of the eye.” “Between now and the grave lies a long slide of forestallment, a slew of dutiful, dutifully paid-for maintenance routines in which dermatological makeshift joins periodontal work and prostate examinations on the crowded appointment calendar of dwindling days.”Updike’s boyhood plan was to ride “a thin pencil line out of Shillington, out of time altogether, into an infinity of unseen and even unborn hearts.” And he succeeded. A dense, respectful examination of the eventful life and prodigious work of John Updike, whose obsession with the moral failings of the middle class, conveyed in precise, wistful prose, made him one of the literary superstars of the late 20th century. Begley's bio is perfectly balanced, giving us the man in full (an elfin yokel with a Harvard brain, the ultimate WASP work ethic and a fifty year hard-on)and a wise analysis of his entire output in fluid,Freud-free style.
What do You think about Updike (2014)?
Very good. I feel like reading some John Updike this summer.
—hostageek
A terrific bio of one of my favorite authors.
—starfish
Brilliant analysis and fascinating biography.
—dalittlered97
