Hugging the Shore: Essays and Criticism [Paperback]

John Updike (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1994

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism, Hugging the Shore is an enormously intelligent, witty collection of essays by John Updike. The Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist sheds keen light on everything from the first kiss to going barefoot to the world's greatest writers. First time in paper.

Product Details

• Paperback: 919 pages
• Publisher: Ecco Pr (September 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0880013982
• ISBN-13: 978-0880013987
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.6 x 2.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,586,324 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

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You'll read parts of it again and again. Superb!, February 3, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Hugging the Shore: Essays and Criticism (Paperback)

From a brilliant essay on Melville to great book reviews to presenting the works of other writers (such as Yevtushenko), this volume is entertaining, enlightening, and wonderful.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The true American man- of - letters, October 19, 2005

By 

Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Hugging the Shore: Essays and Criticism (Paperback)

Updike 's great fictional output is accompanied by hundreds of occasional pieces he has written through the years. He defines the difference between the two kinds this way. "Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.''
So for him the non- fictional pieces are the less -adventurous ones, the ones in which one must stay closer to the world of fact and observation.
Nonetheless in these pieces he almost invariably brings his great intelligence and aesthetic sense into play in addressing a tremendously wide variety of subjects.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What Updike Does Best, May 25, 2000

By 

Alex D. Groce (Pasadena, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hugging the Shore: Essays and Criticism (Paperback)

I've always felt that Updike is better as a critic and essayist than as a fiction writer; not that he isn't superb at both, but the fiction is (sometimes) too smooth, paradoxically too well-written. Updike's striking insights (Doris Day as an American Pelagian) and widely ranging topics make this collection worth reading again and again.