{"product_id":"updike-isbn-9780061896453","title":"Updike","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eUpdike\u003c\/em\u003e 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn 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.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eUpdike\u003c\/em\u003e 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 \u003cem\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/em\u003e; 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 \u003cem\u003eCouples\u003c\/em\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWith a sharp critical sensibility that lends depth and originality to his analysis, Begley probes Updike’s best-loved works—from \u003cem\u003ePigeon Feathers\u003c\/em\u003e to \u003cem\u003eThe Witches of Eastwick\u003c\/em\u003e to the \u003cem\u003eRabbit\u003c\/em\u003e 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. \u003cem\u003eUpdike\u003c\/em\u003e offers an admiring yet balanced look at this national treasure, a master whose writing continues to resonate like no one else’s.\u003c\/p\u003e | \u003cp\u003eIn this eye-opening, authoritative biography, Adam Begley offers a captivating portrait of John Updike, the author who saw himself as a literary spy in small-town and suburban America, and who dedicated himself to the task of transcribing \"middleness with all its grits, bumps, and anonymities.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eUpdike\u003c\/em\u003e 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 \u003cem\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/em\u003e; 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 on in-depth archival research as well as interviews with the writer's family, friends, and colleagues, Begley explores how Updike's fiction was shaped by his tumultuous personal life—including his enduring religious faith, his two marriages, and his firsthand experience of the \"adulterous society\" he was credited with exposing in the bestselling novel \u003cem\u003eCouples\u003c\/em\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWith a sharp critical sensibility, Begley probes Updike's best-loved works—from \u003cem\u003ePigeon Feathers\u003c\/em\u003e to \u003cem\u003eThe Witches of Eastwick\u003c\/em\u003e 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eCandid, intimate, and utterly absorbing, \u003cem\u003eUpdike\u003c\/em\u003e is a masterful biography of a national treasure whose writing continues to resonate like no one else's.\u003c\/p\u003e | \u003cp\u003e“A beautifully written, richly detailed, and warmly sympathetic portrait of a great American writer.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eJoyce Carol Oates\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Adam Begley’s \u003ci\u003eUpdike\u003c\/i\u003e is a model of what a literary biography should be: rich with penetrating insights not only about the life but also about the work. It will enthrall long-time Updike fans and help create generations of new ones.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eFrancine Prose\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Adam Begley’s careful and considerate biography illuminates all the right things about Updike, whose drama were lived both privately and publicly -- his prodigious intellect and talent, the times in which he lives, his imaginative projections of those times, and the intertwining of those threads. It’s a social history in which one man’s heart, mind, and talent came to resonate for an entire society.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eAnn Beattie\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Adam Begley’s careful and considerate biography illuminates all the right things about Updike, whose dramas were lived both privately and publicly. It’s a social history in which one man’s heart, mind, and talent came to resonate for an entire society.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eAnn Beattie\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“’You have to give it magic,’ John Updike explained of the stuff on the page, so much of it alchemically transmuted from his own experience; here was a man who could find pounding a mailbox into the ground to be an occasion for literature. Adam Begley has done him proud, offering up Updike the man and Updike the writer in an exuberant, stunningly choreographed pas de deux.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eStacy Schiff\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“A sympathetic and thorough biography. . . . The more I read \u003ci\u003eabout\u003c\/i\u003e Updike, the more I wanted to go back and \u003ci\u003eread\u003c\/i\u003e Updike. - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eUSA Today\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“A wonderful, wise biography, judicious and intimately revealing, and does full justice to the highly complex individual that was Updike.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eWilliam Boyd, Daily Mail's Best Books of the Year\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“A hefty, thorough biography. . . . Begley does an impressive, conscientious job of marshaling evidence of Updike’s many contradictions.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eJonathan Dee, Harper's\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“An insightful and meticulously researched book. . . . A sustained, very fine work of literary criticism.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe New Republic\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Begley seamlessly weaves biography and critical analysis throughout his book, much as Updike himself blurred autobiography and fiction. \u003ci\u003eUpdike\u003c\/i\u003e is a monumental treatment of a towering American writer.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe New York Observer\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Honorable. . . . Updike’s exquisite words flowed, some felt, too freely and too amiably. . . . It’s one of the achievements of Begley’s book that it so acutely demonstrates how it all, in fact, didn’t come so easily. . . . Begley is a gifted literary critic.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eDwight Garner, The New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“A highly literate illumination of a supremely literate human being.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eLouis Menand, The New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Begley is quiet, careful, self-effacing, and steady. . . . He amply shows us the strangeness and contradictions under the affable mask.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eHermione Lee, The New York Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Though Adam Begley’s biography is the first on the writer, it’s hard to see how it will be bettered. Thoroughly researched, written with intelligence, sympathy, and grace, it is a model of first-rate literary biography. . . . A complex, intimate portrait.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eDan Cryer, Newsday\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Adam Begley has written an exemplary biography. . . . Respectful and sympathetic. . . . Any Updike fan will find it rewarding, as indeed will anyone who has enjoyed his work and any reader with an interest in modern American letters.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Guardian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Begley is so much in command of his subject. . . . He has located the man behind the giant oeuvre.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eSam Tanenhaus, Prospect\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“A master storyteller comes to affably charming life in Begley’s incisive biography. . . . Begley finds the truest reflection of the man in his work.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eVogue\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Fabulous. . . . Updike fans will enjoy Begley’s marvelous biography, which is as much about the man as the writer.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eEntertainment Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Terrific. . . . Begley’s book blends biography with a brilliant close read of Updike’s work. . . . As insightful on the work as the life, it is a complicated and fascinating portrait of one of the great literary lives of the second half of the 20th century.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eSalon\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“An exemplary biography, oceanically researched, full of insights. . . . Begley is even-handed in his judgments and is a fine writer himself, his supple and cadenced prose sometimes matching his subject’s.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Sunday Times (London)\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Not only has Begley written a convincing interpretative biography, one characterized by suavity, wit, and independent judgment throughout, he has also produced a major work of Updike criticism. . . . Displaying total command of his material, Begley does his author proud.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eMichael Dirda, The Washington Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“An insightful, compelling, discreet, and admirable biography. . . . In synthesizing a substantial amount of material through clear, intelligent prose, Begley does what I never thought possible: he writes a biography I wished were longer. He adeptly handles the arc of the larger life while sprinkling an array of engaging facts.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Christian Science Monitor\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“An insightful, compelling, discreet, and admirable biography. . . . In synthesizing a substantial amount of material through clear, intelligent prose, Begley does what I never thought possible: he writes a biography I wished were longer.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Christian Science Monitor\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“This is a generous tribute to an amusing and brilliant man. . . . Begley is a perceptive reader, illuminating the different alter egos who populate Updike’s fiction.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Financial Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“A thorough and even-handed book. It doesn’t judge Updike so much as lay out his life with matter-of-fact precision that manages to be both entertaining and informative. . . . Begley gives new insight into a reflective and often conflicted man.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Chicago Tribune\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“The two-time Pulitzer winner couldn’t have hoped for a biography more respectful -- or more critically attuned to his work -- than this one. \u003ci\u003eUpdike\u003c\/i\u003e is gracefully written. . . . It contains revealing tales about Updike’s work habits and publishing relationships that haven’t been told before.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe San Francisco Chronicle\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Begley has written an exemplary biography, oceanically researched, full of insights, patiently relating every twist of Updike’s tormented emotional life to his stories and novels. He is even-handed in his judgments and is a fine writer himself, his supple and cadenced prose sometimes matching his subject’s. His close readings of the works are spot-on: he is admiring but undazzled, and brings some intelligent grit to a career that often seems a little too frictionless.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Sunday Times (London)\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“As a biographer, Adam Begley has a great many strengths -- concision, eloquence, an eagle eye -- and few of the usual shortcomings. He isn’t puritanical, or reductive, or over-diligent. . . . If this biography succeeds in renewing general interest in Updike, then it will do so not by taking him down a peg or two but by showing that it is not a betrayal or even a disappointment but a bearable inevitability that the boy with the golden pen, the twinkly talking head, had been a human being after all.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Wall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“As a biographer, Begley has a great many strengths -- concision, eloquence, an eagle eye -- and few of the usual shortcomings.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Wall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“An indispensable guide to the man and his work. . . . Begley sees Updike’s strengths and his weaknesses, and presents the full measure of the man in this engrossing and fair-minded book.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Associated Press\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“An honorable book. . . . Updike’s exquisite words flowed, some felt, too freely and too amiably. . . . But it’s one of the achievements of Begley’s book that it so acutely demonstrates how it all, in fact, didn’t come so easily. . . . Begley is a gifted literary critic.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eDwight Garner, The New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“A brilliant biography. . . . A delightfully rich book. . . . Highly readable. . . . The joys of \u003ci\u003eUpdike\u003c\/i\u003e are based on discovering the autobiographical content of the tens of thousands of details that populate Updike’s vast fictional universe.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eOrhan Pamuk, The New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“’You have to give it magic,’ John Updike explained of the stuff on the page; Adam Begley has done him proud, offering up Updike the man and Updike the writer in an exuberant, stunningly choreographed pas de deux.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eStacy Schiff\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Adam Begley’s brilliant evocation of our own literary giant should be required  reading for Americans; \u003ci\u003eUpdike\u003c\/i\u003e illumines a particular era with John Updike’s own ferocity and tenderness.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eJayne Anne Phillips\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“On the evidence of this judicious new biography, John Updike recorded in his fiction the most painful events in his life. . . . Begley demonstrates that Updike was more complicated than the twinkly public persona he created for himself.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eRobert Wilson, The American Scholar\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Adam Begley tells the story of John Updike’s life in art with brilliant tautness,  as if he were writing a novel. He has rendered a portrait of the writer that shimmers with truth. This is literary biography at its highest level of excellence.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eJanet Malcolm\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“A superb achievement. . . . A book that, in its evocation of a brilliant but flawed personality, conjured via the skillful deployment of just-so details and a subtle hint of haunting existential grace, is in some ways as rewarding as Updike’s best fiction.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eScott Stossel, The Boston Globe\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Harper","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44888645664997,"sku":"NP9780061896453","price":29.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780061896453.jpg?v=1730229520","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/updike-isbn-9780061896453","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}