Updike: America's Man of Letters [Paperback]

William H. Pritchard (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 31, 2005

By the time he was 28, John Updike had published a collection of poetry, a collection of short stories, and a novel. Over the next four decades he continued in these forms, along with criticism and reviews of literature and painting; in memoirs; and in commentary on his own writing. This absorbing book takes Updike's life, as well as his voluminous oeuvre, as its subject.

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A savvy literary critic, Pritchard (Talking Back to Emily Dickinson, and Other Essays) proves his credibility early on in this friendly treatment of Updike's life and work by aptly comparing the writer to Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Dean Howells and Edmund Wilson rather than to expatriates Henry James, Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot. Like the first group, Updike "mainly stayed home, thinking it his primary task to give us reports and bulletins on American manners." Perhaps even more than the others, Updike is known for his affirming tone, a sunniness that annoys those who insist that writers must be social critics. Updike, he observes, "attends church, refused to condemn American involvement in the Vietnam War, and has even confessed satisfaction with Bill Clinton as president," though this is not to say that he is a facile cheerleader or anything less than a writer as serious and complex asAPritchard again shows his uncanny gift for apt comparisonARobert Frost, William Carlos Williams and James Joyce. Pritchard writes with both uncommon clarity and easygoing erudition as he argues the case for an author who views his country and its culture with a certain skepticism yet, in the end, approbation. Surveying Updike's books chronologically, including not only the fiction but also the poems, essays and reviews, Pritchard is less an interpreter than a literary gourmand who savors and relishes a literary career that he sees as "the unfolding of a self" as well as "the unfolding of a society and a nationAAmerica in the second half of our century." (Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Pritchard, professor of English at Amherst College and the author of many books on American literature, offers the first attempt at a comprehensive assessment of John Updike!s entire career as a writer. Focusing on Updike as a man of letters in the tradition of Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Dean Howells, and Edmund Wilson, Pritchard examines his novels, short stories, poetry, memoirs, and literary criticism, tracing themes, influences, and literary relations, as well as describing characters and situating the works into the larger context of contemporary American literature. Pritchard brings to bear an intimate knowledge of both Updike!s work and modern literature in general. In describing the style of the Rabbit novels, for instance, he notes the indirect influence of James Joyce but, more importantly, that of Dawn Powell and Joyce Cary. His treatment is lucid and free of jargon, and his insights are solid and perceptive. This book is important both to the general reader as an introduction to Updike, and to the specialist as a comprehensive statement."T.L. Cooksey, Armstrong Atlantic State Univ., Savannah, GA
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 350 pages
• Publisher: Univ of Massachusetts Pr (October 31, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 155849507X
• ISBN-13: 978-1558495074
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,273,028 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An intelligent, highly personal, and persuasive study of John Updike's oeuvre, October 26, 2006

By 

Carolyn Burger - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Updike: America's Man of Letters (Hardcover)

In May, 1998 a comprehensive review of Updike's oeuvre appeared in the form of Jamea A. Schiff's "John Updike Revisited". I did a brief review of this book in August, 1999 at Amazon.com and wondered rhetorically at the time how anyone could have possibly covered (to any degree) the giant and varied oeuvre of Updike in just 228 pages? This book was the first comprehensive review of Updike's work that appeared in over a decade not withstanding dozens, it seems , of earlier seminal critical reviews by Detweiler, Markel, Greiner, Bloom, the Hamiltons, and others.
Since then the flood gates have opened and a plethora of critical reviews followed, but one comprehensive review titled UPDIKE: AMERICA'S MAN OF LETTERS by William Pritchard stands out. Published in September, 2000 by Steerforth Press, it is an intelligent, highly personal, and persuasive study of John Updike's oeuvre in several genres. I would recommend it to be on everyone's reading list of all serious Updike enthusiasts. This book is 351 pages with a chronology of Mr. Updike's life, an introduction, chapter notes, and index. With both an Edmund Wilson and John Updike format, Pritchard uses a fair amount of succinct and descriptive quotes directly from Updike's works to show exactly what the author is expressing.
Mr. Pritchard's life has an uncanny resemblance to Mr. Updike's. Mr. Pritchard was born in 1932, eight months after Updike and grew up some 150 miles north of Updike's Shillington, Pennsylvania in Johnson City, New York. Both had a parent who was a teacher, both were educated in the public school system and were high school valedictorians. Both were turned down by Princeton but Updike went to Harvard and Pritchard to Amherst. Both were married in their early twenties to Radcliff girls who gave them children young--four in Updike's case and three in the author's case. Both were churchgoers--Updike Lutheran and Pritchard low-church Episcopalian. Pritchard states that this close resemblance to Updike's life is not a hindrance to him in any way to be none other than objective in discussing Updike's works.
The book is laid out in a chronological and thematic format as follows:
FIRST FRUITS Chapter 1 "The Carpentered Hen", The Poorhouse Fair, and "The Same Door"
THE NOVELIST TAKES OFF Chapter 2 "Rabbit, Run"
THE PENNSYLVANIA THING Chapter 3 "Pigeon Feathers", "The Centaur", "Of the Farm" and the short story "Leaving Church Early"
ADULTERY AND IT'S CONSEQUENCES Chapter 4 "The Music School","Marry Me" and "Couples"
IMPERSONATIONS OF MEN IN TROUBLE (I) Chapter 5 "Midpoint", "Bech:A Book",and "Rabbit Redux"
IMPERSONATIONS OF MEN IN TROUBLE (II) Chapter 6 "A Month of Sundays" and short fiction from 1967-79
EXTRAVAGANT FICTIONS Chapter 7 "The Coup", "The Witches of Eastwick", "Roger's Version", and "S"
THE CRITIC AND REVIEWER Chapter 8 "Picked-Up-Pieces", "Hugging the Shore", and "Odd Jobs"
POET MEMORIST Chapter 9 Late Poems-1988-1993 and "Self Consiousness"
RABBIT RETIRED Chapter 10 "Rabbit is Rich" and "Rabbit at Rest"
POST RABBIT EFFECTS Chapter 11 "Memories of the Ford Administration", "In the Beauty of the Lilies", "Toward the End of Time" and his late stories "The Afterlife"
This book, even though it discusses only about 31 of over 50 of Updike's works directly, other Updike works are alluded to in the respective units as well as other Updike contemporaries like Philip Roth, Gore Vidal, Willaim Maxwell, Joyce Carol Oates, and others.
The back of the dust jacket, in a dark purple with white letters, contains three testimonials to Pritchard's book. The one quoted by Jay Parini is short and sweet: "a witty, stylish, and remorsefully knowing critic, William Pritchard belongs in the heady company of Mencken, Edmund Wilson, and Randall Jarrell." I give this book a four and one half stars.
Phil Burger, Austin, Texas October 26, 2006