
Higher Gossip
Essays and Criticism
John Updike(Author)
Christopher Carduff(Editor)
Random House Trade Paperbacks (Publisher)
Published on 18. September 2012
Book
Paperback/Softback
528 pages
978-0-8129-8368-5 (ISBN)
Description
Here is the collection of nonfiction pieces that John Updike was compiling when he died in January 2009. It opens with a self-portrait of the writer in winter, a Prospero who, though he fears his most dazzling performances are behind him, reveals himself in every sentence to be in deep conversation with the sources of his magic. It concludes with a moving meditation on a world without religion, without art, and on the difficulties of faith in a disbelieving age. In between are pieces on Peanuts, Mars, and the songs of Cole Porter, a pageant of scenes from early Massachusetts, and a good deal of Updikean table talk. At the heart of the volume are dozens of book reviews from The New Yorker and illustrated art writings from The New York Review of Books. Updike's criticism is gossip of the highest sort. We will not hear the likes of it again.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Publishing group
Random House USA Inc
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
42 ILLUSTRATIONS
Dimensions
Height: 239 mm
Width: 162 mm
Thickness: 27 mm
Weight
553 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8129-8368-5 (9780812983685)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
John Updike was born in Shillington, Pennsylvania, in 1932. 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. His novels have won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Rosenthal Foundation Award, and the William Dean Howells Medal. In 2007 he received the Gold Medal for Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. John Updike died in January 2009.
Christopher Carduff, the editor of this volume, is a member of the staff of The Library of America.
Christopher Carduff, the editor of this volume, is a member of the staff of The Library of America.