“A drop of truth, of lived experienced, glistens in each.” This is how John Updike modestly described his nonfiction pieces, of which Due Considerations is perhaps his most varied, stylish, and person
Eighteen-year-old Ahmad, the son of an Irish-American mother and long-gone Egyptian father, is contemptuous of the self-indulgent society surrounding him in suburban New Prospect, New Jersey, and devo
In this wry novel of sentimental education and sexual pursuit, we follow Owen Mackenzie, a representative man of the author’s generation, from cradle to grave, and from bed to bed. His life and relati
Self-ConsciousnessOne of our finest novelists now gives us his most dazzling creation -- his own life. In six eloquent and compelling chapters, the author of The Witches of Eastwick and the wonderful
In this short novel, Joey Robinson, a thirty-five-year-old New Yorker, describes a visit he makes, with his second wife and eleven-year-old stepson, to the Pennsylvania farm where he grew up and where
The seventy-eight-year-old painter Hope Chafetz, who in the course of her eventful life has been Hope Ouderkirk, Hope McCoy, and Hope Holloway, answers questions put to her by a New York interviewer
John Updike's first collection of verse since his Collected Poems, 1953-1993 brings together fifty-eight poems, three of them of considerable length. The four sections take up, in order: America, its
In this collection of nonfiction pieces, John Updike gathers his responses to nearly two hundred invitations into print, each “an opportunity to make something beautiful, to find within oneself a trea
Henry Bech, the moderately well known Jewish-American writer who served as the hero of John Updike's previous Bech: A Book (1970) and Bech Is Back (1982), has become older but scarcely wiser. In thes
Set in the near future of 2020, this disconcerting philosophical fantasy depicts an America devastated by a war with China that has left its populace decimated, its government a shambles, and its natu
John Updike has been writing about golf since he took the game up at the age of twenty-five. In the nearly forty years of pleasurable bafflement that have followed, he has composed essays for Golf Di
Toward the end of the Vietnam era, in a snug little Rhode Island seacoast town, wonderful powers have descended upon Alexandra, Jane, and Sukie, bewitching divorcees with sudden access to all that is
Marry Me is subtitled “A Romance” because, in the author’s words, “people don’t act like that anymore.” The time is 1962, and the place is a fiefdom of Camelot called Greenwood, Connecticut. Jerry Con
As Roger Lambert tells it, he, a middle-aged professor of divinity, is buttonholed in his office by Dale Kohler, an earnest young computer scientist who believes that quantifiable evidence of God’s ex
To Carter Billings, the hero of John Updike's title story, all of England has the glow of an afterlife: "A miraculous lacquer lay upon everything, beading each roadside twig, each reed of thatch in th
The Coup describes violent events in the imaginary African nation of Kush, a large, landlocked, drought-ridden, sub-Saharan country led by Colonel Hakim Felix Ellellou. (“A leader,” writes Colonel Ell
Ex-basketball player Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, now living in a Florida condominium, faces middle age, heart trouble, and a wife who has suddenly gone to work
In this short novel, Joey Robinson, a thirty-five-year-old New Yorker, describes a visit he makes, with his second wife and eleven-year-old stepson, to the Pennsylvania farm where he grew up and where
The hero of John Updike's Rabbit, Run (1960), ten years after the hectic events described in Rabbit Redux (1971), has come to enjoy considerable prosperity as Chief Sales Representative of Springer Mo
In Greenwood, Connecticut, during the period of the Kennedy administration, Jerry and Sally, both married, have an affair charged with doubts, subtle intensities, and a deep sense of caring
The Coup describes violent events in the imaginary African nation of Kush, a large, landlocked, drought-ridden, sub-Saharan country led by Colonel Hakim Felix Ellellou. (“A leader,” writes Colonel Ell
Ben Turnbull is a 66 year-old retired investment consultant living north of Boston in the year 2020. A recent war between the United States and China has thinned the population and brought social chao
At the Diamond County Home for the Aged, the inmates prepare for the annual ritual of the Poorhouse Fair. The elderly residents take pride in the self-respect they gain from this one day. But when the
Sally is big and pampered. She's married to Richard. But she loves Jerry. Jerry loves Sally, but he's also still in love with his wife Ruth. Who's been sleeping with Richard ...As a hot, feverish summ
In the small town of Pierce Junction adultery is the popular pastime and pillow talk the common currency. Martin knows the women he hasn't yet seduced hold his attention for the longest, and Winifred,
Concerns a month of seven days, a month of enforced rest and recreation as experienced by the Reverend Tom Marshfield, sent west from his Midwestern church in disgrace.
WHEN, five years and five books of fiction ago, THE CARPENTERED HEN, John Updike’s first collection of verse, was published, Phyllis McGinley wrote: “I have been happily reading Mr. Updike in The New
Beginning with early American portraits and landscapes, and moving on to two 19th century masters, Winslow Homer and Thomas Eakins, this book considers the eccentric pre-modern James McNeill Whistler,
The first and second novels in John Updike’s acclaimed quartet of Rabbit books–now in one marvelous volume.RABBIT, RUN“Brilliant and poignant . . . By his compassion, clarity of insight, and crystal-b
The dozen short stories in John Updike's new collection revisit many of the locales of his fiction: the small Pennsylvania town of Olinger, the lonely farm to which the hero moves as an adolescent, th
“The idea of verse, of poetry, has always, during forty years spent working primarily in prose, stood at my elbow, as a standing invitation to the highest kind of verbal exercise—the most satisfying,
S. is the story of Sarah P. Worth, a thoroughly modern spiritual seeker who has become enamored of a Hindu mystic called the Arhat. A native New Englander, she goes west to join his ashram in Arizona,
A collection of two short stories in which, the writer Henry Bech travels to Europe on a hapless cultural exchange, first to Russia, where he struggles to spend his money when everything - from his me
Ben Turnbull is a 66-year-old retired investment consultant living north of Boston in the year 2020. A recent war between the United States and China has thinned the population and brought social chao
A collection of art criticism and a masterclass in appreciating art - from the great American man of letters. It treats readers to a series of essays on art, and includes writing on a comprehensive ar
In a moment of sudden inspiration Sarah Worth - S - has walked out on her husband to join the Ashram Arhat. Famous for his transcendent wisdom and divine immobility, the Arhat has transferred his ahra
In the boldly eclectic title poem of his collection, John Updike employs the meters of Dante, Spenser, Pope, Whitman, and Pound, as well as the pictographic tactics of concrete poetry, to take an inve
