{"product_id":"updike-book-adam-begley-9780061896453","title":"Updike","description":"Updike is Adam Begley's masterful, much-anticipated biography of one of the most celebrated figures in American literature: Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Updike-a candid, intimate, and richly detailed look at his life and work.  In this magisterial biography, Adam Begley offers an illuminating portrait of John Updike, 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.\"  Updike explores 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. Drawing from in-depth research as well as interviews with the writer's colleagues, friends, and family, 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.  With a sharp critical sensibility that lends depth and originality to his analysis, 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. Updike offers an admiring yet balanced look at this national treasure, a master whose writing continues to resonate like no one else's.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49518895333649,"sku":"GOR006467927","price":11.39,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49548275908881,"sku":"GOR006644309","price":10.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49558386049297,"sku":"GOR012468500","price":10.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49892466491665,"sku":"CIN0061896454G","price":5.33,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50715430453521,"sku":"CIN0061896454VG","price":5.33,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":51323307229457,"sku":"CIN0061896454A","price":5.33,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52384684474641,"sku":"GOR010428547","price":11.39,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0061896454.jpg?v=1751194122","url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/products\/updike-book-adam-begley-9780061896453","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}