Due Considerations: Essays and Criticism

Due Considerations: Essays and Criticism

John Updikeâ€™s sixth collection of essays and literary criticism opens with a skeptical overview of literary biographies, proceeds to five essays on topics ranging from China and small change to faith and late works, and takes up, under the heading â€œGeneral Considerations,â€ books, poker, cars, and the American libido. The last, informal section of Due Considerations assembles more or less autobiographical piecesâ€”reminiscences, friendly forewords, comments on the authorâ€™s own recent works, responses to probing questions.

In between, many books are considered, some in introductionsâ€”to such classics as Walden, The Portrait of a Lady, and The Mabinogionâ€”and many more in reviews, usually for The New Yorker. Ralph Waldo Emerson and the five Biblical books of Moses come in for appraisal, along with Uncle Tomâ€™s Cabin and The Wizard of Oz. Contemporary American and English writersâ€”Colson Whitehead, E. L. Doctorow, Don DeLillo, Norman Rush, William Trevor, A. S. Byatt, Muriel Spark, Ian McEwanâ€”receive attentive and appreciative reviews, as do Rohinton Mistry, Salman Rushdie, Peter Carey, Margaret Atwood, Gabriel GarcÃa MÃ¡rquez, Haruki Murakami, GÃ¼nter Grass, and Orhan Pamuk. In factual waters, Mr. Updike ponders the sinking of the Lusitania and the â€œunsinkable careerâ€ of Coco Chanel, the adventures of Lord Byron and Iris Murdoch, the sexual revolution and the advent of female Biblical scholars, and biographies of Robert Frost, Sinclair Lewis, Marcel Proust, and SÃ¸ren Kierkegaard.

Reading Due Considerations is like taking a cruise that calls at many ports with a witty, sensitive, and articulate guide aboardâ€”a voyage not to be missed.
Country USA
Brand Knopf
Manufacturer Knopf
Binding Hardcover
Color Black
ReleaseDate 2007-10-23
UnitCount 1
Format Deckle Edge
EANs 9780307266408

Country	USA
Brand	Knopf
Manufacturer	Knopf
Binding	Hardcover
Color	Black
ReleaseDate	2007-10-23
UnitCount	1
Format	Deckle Edge
EANs	9780307266408

Due Considerations: Essays and Criticism

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