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Updike / Adam Begley.

by Begley, Adam.

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Updike, John -- Criticism and interpretation.

Novelists, American -- 20th century -- Biography.

Authors, American -- 20th century -- Biography.

Critics -- United States -- Biography.

9780061896453 (hc.)

0061896454 (hc.)

xiii, 558 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

"One of the most celebrated figures in American literature: Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Updike (18 March 1932 – 27 January 2009) -- a candid, intimate, and richly detailed look at his life and work. A portrait of the acclaimed novelist, poet, short-story writer, and critic who saw himself as a literary spy in small-town and suburban America, who dedicated himself to the task of transcribing "middleness with all its grits, bumps and anonymities." The stages of the writer's pilgrim's progress: his beloved home turf of Berks County, Pennsylvania; his escape to Harvard; his brief, busy working life as the golden boy at The New Yorker; his family years in suburban Ipswich, Massachusetts; his extensive travel abroad; and his retreat to another Massachusetts town, Beverly Farms, where he remained until his death in 2009. Begley explores how Updike's fiction was shaped by his tumultuous personal life -- including his enduring religious faith, his two marriages, and his first-hand experience of the "adulterous society" he was credited with exposing in the bestselling Couples. Begley probes Updike's best-loved works -- from Pigeon Feathers to The Witches of Eastwick to the Rabbit tetralogy -- and reveals a surprising and deeply complex character fraught with contradictions: a kind man with a vicious wit, a gregarious charmer who was ruthlessly competitive, a private person compelled to spill his secrets on the printed page. An admiring yet balanced look at this national treasure, a master whose writing continues to resonate like no one else's"--Provided by publisher.

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