Higher Gossip by John Updike

Higher Gossip by John Updike

One of the most gifted American writers of the twentieth century--and the author of the acclaimed Rabbit series--delivers the intimate, generous, insightful, and beautifully written collection he was compiling when he died.

This collection of miscellaneous prose 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 modern world robbed of imagination--a world without religion, without art--and on the difficulties of faith in a disbelieving age.

In between are previously uncollected stories and poems, a pageant of scenes from seventeenth-century Massachusetts, five late "golf dreams," and several of Updike's commentaries on his own work. At the heart of the book are his matchless reviews--of John Cheever, Ann Patchett, Toni Morrison, William Maxwell, John le Carré, and essays on Aimee Semple McPherson, Max Factor, and Albert Einstein, among others. Also included are two decades of art criticism--on Chardin, El Greco, Blake, Turner, Van Gogh, Max Ernest, and more.

Updike's criticism is gossip of the highest order, delivered in an intimate and generous voice.

In 1954, John Updike graduated from Harvard College and spent a year at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art in Oxford, England. He was a member of The New Yorker's staff from 1955 until 1957. He has won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for his works. Updike earned the Rea Prize for Short Fiction in 2006, and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for his Early Tales (1953-1975). In January 2009, he passed away.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780307957153
ISBN 10	0307957152
Title	Higher Gossip
Author	John Updike
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Alfred A. Knopf
Year published	2011-11-01
Number of pages	528
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.