- 248 pages
- English
- PDF
- Available on iOS & Android
About This Book
One of the world's greatest writers, John Updike chronicled America for more than five decades. This book examines the essence of Updike's writing, propelling our understanding of his award-winning fiction, prose, and poetry. Widely considered "America's Man of Letters, " John Updike is a prolific novelist and critic with an unprecedented range of work across more than 50 years. No author has ever written from the variety of vantages or spanned topics like Updike did. Despite being widely recognized as one of the nation's literary greats, scholars have largely ignored Updike's vast catalog of work outside the Rabbit tetralogy. This work provides the first detailed examination of Updike's body of criticism, poetry, and journalism, and shows how that work played a central role in transforming his novels. The book disputes the common misperception of Updike as merely a chronicler of suburban, middle-class America by focusing on his novels and stories that explore the wider world, from the groundbreaking The Coup (1978) to Terrorist (2006). Popular culture scholar Bob Batchelor asks readers to reassess Updike's career by tracing his transformation over half a century of writing.
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Table of contents
- Cover
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- 1 John Updike: An American Writer and His Times
- 2 Why Write: Updike as Craftsman, Professional, and Celebrity
- 3 Pennsylvania as American Ideal
- 4 Updikeās Poetry
- 5 Rabbit, Run and American Culture
- 6 Chronicler of American Sexuality
- 7 Rabbit Lives and Dies
- 8 Between Writer and Reader: Updike as Critic
- 9 Master Storyteller
- 10 Radical Departures: Updike as Experimental Novelist
- 11 Updikeās Audience
- 12 Racing toward the Apocalypse: Updikeās New America
- 13 Evolution of a Literary Lion
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index