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Title: Self-Consciousness by John Updike ISBN: 0-449-21821-X Publisher: Fawcett Books Pub. Date: 28 May, 1990 Format: Mass Market Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.2 (5 reviews)
Rating: 1
Summary: The Twists and Turns of Narcissm
Comment: How does one become a writer? Well, from Updike's perspective all you need is some mindless ambition, coupled with a merely technical understanding of literature and writing. If one is to be great, then one must follow Updike's formula on creativity which is: the more unintelligible the better, and to the extent that the reader is frustrated and baffled, made to feel insecure and dumbfounded by an empty metaphor is the extent to which your novel succeeds. An author, Updike leads us to believe, sits high above in the stratosphere, writing tome upon tome of messianic goodness for the edification of the ignorant flock, who can't help but be awed by said author's transcendent knowledge. Updike is obviously on another level. Perhaps if I develop a megalomaniac delusional sense of self I could write just like him. That would be groovy.
Rating: 5
Summary: Wonderful evocation of formative years
Comment: John Updike is arguably, with Saul Bellow, the greatest of living authors writing in English. This volume exemplifies his strengths. His evocation of growing up in middle-America is often quite beautiful. Yet this book is not a memoir in the conventional sense of a chronological account, but more of series of scenes and reflections from a full and satisfying life. Updike's moving account of his struggle with psoriasis and his marital difficulties is personal without degenerating into the narcissism of so much second-rate autobiography, even if he pays slightly more attention to his rakish period in the 1970s than we might strictly wish to know.
Updike writes poignantly but with resolution of his lonely status as a liberal writer in the 1960s who did not lose his ideals as a liberal Democrat, in the traditional sense of that term, and thus who abjured the descent into extremism and anti-anti-Communism of many of his contemporaries. To have believed that the Vietnam War was imprudent and prosecuted by morally dubious means, yet known the noble cause that was at stake in it - namely, preventing a country from falling to a ferocious Communist tyranny - won Updike few friends and lost him many, yet his stance was an honourable and principled one.
The final chapter of the book is, for me, the best. Updike writes particularly well of his liberal religious faith, which almost amounts to fideism. One can admire his honest wrestling with such questions without sharing his conclusions, and admire even more the quality of writing and personal reflection here expressed.
Rating: 5
Summary: From one Shillingtonian to another...
Comment: One of the main regrets of my five years in Shillington (ages 12-16) was that I did not realize that I was walking in the footsteps of one of the greatest authors of all time. John Updike's autobiography, especially as it concerns Shillington, was like reading a bit of my own life. He was an alter boy at the church that is behind my old Miller Street home. I was a busboy at the restaurant that used to be his doctor's office that used to be a house. He used to walk up New Holland Avenue to the cemetary, passing number 39, which would years later be a home (apartment) to me. The hallowed halls of Governor Mifflin Jr. High, where I labored from 7th to 9th grade, were once the halls of the old high school that Mr. Updike once passed through. I wonder if we shared the same locker? The old movie theater, in which I saw my first movie alone, still holds a special place in my history. But through my many walks up and down Philadelphia Avenue, I am saddened by the fact that I was never drawn to number 117. My visits to Shillington in the past decade have been unfortunately too brief, and even before reading Mr. Updike's autobiography I have wanted to return to retrace my old footsteps. However, the walk up and down Philadelphia Avenue will include a stop, a reverential pause, at number 117, the shadow of my life in Shillington.
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Title: Rabbit Angstrom : The Four Novels : Rabbit, Run, Rabbit Redux, Rabbit Is Rich, Rabbit at Rest (Everyman's Library) by John Updike ISBN: 0679444599 Publisher: Everyman's Library Pub. Date: 17 October, 1995 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
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Title: More Matter : Essays and Criticism by John Updike ISBN: 044900628X Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 03 October, 2000 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Licks of Love : Short Stories and a Sequel by John Updike ISBN: 0375411135 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 07 November, 2000 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: Marry Me : A Romance by John Updike ISBN: 0449912159 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 27 August, 1996 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Couples by John Updike ISBN: 044991190X Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 27 August, 1996 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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