Golf Dreams: Writings on Golf [Hardcover]

John Updike (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 20, 1996

rare and wonderful coming together of author and subject, Golf Dreams includes 30 pieces by bestselling author John Updike, culled from various sources--The New Yorker, Golf Digest, and his own fiction--which knowingly cover everything from the peculiar charms of bad golf to the camaraderie of good golf and the perils of its present boom. Line drawings.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

How lucky can an editor be? When legendary New Yorker editor William Shawn wanted a writer to review a book on golf, he could turn to novelist John Updike. Updike, a devoted golfer, was delighted to take on the assignment. That review of Michael Murphy's Golf In the Kingdom is contained -- along with essays from Golf Digest, The New York Times Book Review and other publications -- in Golf Dreams. Rounding out the collection of 30 pieces are excerpts from Updike's classic fiction, including Three Rounds With Rabbit Angstrom.

From Publishers Weekly

In his preface to this volume of essays and short fiction, longtime golfer Updike speculates that his addiction to the sport has "stolen my life away." But this collection of pieces written between 1959 and 1995 illustrates that, even if his swing has become less supple, his ruminations on the game retain their vitality. As he addresses the frustrations, humiliations and rare "soaring grandeur" of the game, Updike's dry wit and ironic insight enliven such entries as a spoof on instruction books and an evaluation of viewing golf on TV. Essays range in theme from the specific ("The Big Bad Boom") to the ethical (the moral imperatives of "The Gimme Game") to the philosophical: "Many men are more faithful to their golf partners than to their wives." Generally, those pieces written originally for sports magazines tend to contain more technical detail, while the three short stories and selections from three of the Rabbit novels illuminate how a day on the links can reveal character and the hand of destiny. If there is a general theme, it is that golf can be both a mystical experience and infernal torture, what Updike calls "the bliss and aggravation of the sport." Diehard aficionados will find all of this collection entertaining and meaningful; and even duffers will appreciate Updike's lucid prose and command of metaphor. Christmas sales seem assured here, with a resurgence for Father's Day next year. 75,000 first printing; simultaneous Random House audio.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1 edition (August 20, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679450580
• ISBN-13: 978-0679450580
• Product Dimensions: 5.4 x 1.1 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #919,418 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

John Updike was born in 1932, in Shillington, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Harvard College in 1954, and spent a year in Oxford, England, at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. From 1955 to 1957 he was a member of the staff of The New Yorker, and since 1957 lived in Massachusetts. He was the father of four children and the author of more than fifty books, including collections of short stories, poems, essays, and criticism. His novels won the Pulitzer Prize (twice), the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Rosenthal Award, and the Howells Medal. A previous collection of essays, Hugging the Shore, received the 1983 National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism. John Updike died on January 27, 2009, at the age of 76.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Writer's Wry Look at Golf's Challenges and Pleasures, August 28, 2000

By 

Donald Mitchell "Jesus Loves You!" (Thanks for Providing My Reviews over 109,000 Helpful Votes Globally) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Golf Dreams: Writings on Golf (Hardcover)

I am always a little at a loss to review a work like this which has 30 essays, short stories, and poems in it, humorously illustrated by the talented Paul Szep. Obviously, in a thousand words I cannot review each work. However, there's also no relevant way to give you an overview except to say that this is much of the best writing about golf that anyone has ever done, looking beyond how to improve your score.

Let me share a few highlights with you, much like you might compliment a golf partner on the best shots in his or her round. Imagine that we are all having a tall cool beverage while I do this after finishing a long, hot round.

I thought the funniest work was "Drinking from a Cup Made Cinchey" written in 1959. Updike has obviously had a golf lesson or two, as the other works make clear. This essay is a satire on all of those instructional articles that you find in Golf Digest. Updike begins by pointing out that occasionally there's a slip between cup and lip (but he humorously avoids that phrase). So he takes the simple task of picking up a cup and drinking something from it, and writes it up in golf instructional style. I couldn't stop laughing. I think I got a better idea of the golf swing from this non-golf swing instruction than I ever did from taking a lesson!

"Swing Thoughts" from 1984 captures the problems that we all have with using the conscious mind too much, but with more self-consciousness than even the most self-conscious golfer ever had.

The part I least agreed with was "The Trouble with a Caddie." Updike doesn't like them, but I find having a caddie one of the pleasures of the game. He dislikes everything from the company to handling the tip. Perhaps it is hard for someone with a solitary occupation like writing to get over that preference for solitude. Book tours must be rough!

The best fiction was "Farrell's Caddie" from 1991 with all due respect to the Rabbit Angstrom material that is well known from the Rabbit books. It transcends golf in a valuable way.

The best poem was "Upon Winning One's Flight in the Senior Four-Ball" from 1994. Many of Updike's later works look ironically on the effects of our changing golf fortunes as the body starts to produce less and less satisfying golf. This one is very well done without having the negative tone that some of the others do, hinting at decay and death.

The book is divided ino three sections: (1) Learning the Game (2) Loving the Game and (3) Playing the Game. The works are about equally distributed among the sections.

If you're a golfer, you know that people love to give golf-related gifts but never know what to give. I suggest you solve their problem by putting this book on your Amazon.com wish list. Then on those cold winter's nights, you can curl up with this book to help you conjure up your own golf dreams!

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Almighty Updike, March 26, 2000

By 

william woolum - See all my reviews

This review is from: Golf Dreams (Paperback)

When John Updike brings the depth and breadth of his intelligence to bear upon a subject, the light of his insight and wisdom radiates from his silky prose. One expects to be enlightened as he reviews contemporary novels or tackles current questions of theology. I didn't know what to expect from his essays on golf, but having read "Golf Dreams", I would say that Updike loves this enigmatic game every bit as much as he loves fiction, theology, and philosophy. If we find a writer's love in his attention to detail, then in these essays Updike shares his deep love not only in the details of the game itself, but in the details of playing of golf in New England and his love for his golfing companions. It is as if in a life of a writing discipline, book tours, speaking engagements, and other demands, Updike can rely upon the fidelity of his foursome and the bucolic mysticism of golf itself as a source of constant and dependable pleasure. Fortunately, because like most of us who play, Updike's pleasure does not depend upon his mastery of the game; but our reading pleasure does depend on Updike's mastery of lucid prose to express his golf dreams.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Updike's collection of essays and short stories of golf, September 13, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Golf Dreams (Audio Cassette)

A collection of pieces about golf, mostly bad golf. These essays and short stories have appeared in Golf Digest & The New Yorker, so some you may have already read, BUT you haven't heard them read by the author! There always seems to be a specialness given to any piece read by the author. Though any reader may be coached to the correct inflection, the author truly knows how his story is to be read; where the pauses are, how the intonation and pacing should be. The stories themselves are from the perspective of the player, the hacker who loves the game though his scorecards seldom show the game loving him. The piece on how the popularity of the game is endangering the sport, studies the subject from many angles and shows Updike a genuine lover of the game, no matter what the condition of the course or length of wait on the tee.