More Matter

Essays and Criticism

Fiction & Literature, Literary Theory & Criticism, American, Essays & Letters, Essays, Nonfiction, Entertainment, Humour & Comedy, General Humour
Cover of the book More Matter by John Updike, Random House Publishing Group
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: John Updike ISBN: 9780307488398
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group Publication: February 19, 2009
Imprint: Random House Language: English
Author: John Updike
ISBN: 9780307488398
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Publication: February 19, 2009
Imprint: Random House
Language: English

In this collection of nonfiction pieces, John Updike gathers his responses to nearly two hundred invitations into print, each “an opportunity to make something beautiful, to find within oneself a treasure that would otherwise remain buried.” Introductions, reviews, and humorous essays, paragraphs on New York, religion, and lust—here is “more matter” commissioned by an age that, as the author remarks in his Preface, calls for “real stuff . . . not for the obliquities and tenuosities of fiction.” Still, the novelist’s shaping hand, his gift for telling detail, can be detected in many of these literary considerations. Books by Edith Wharton, Dawn Powell, John Cheever, and Vladimir Nabokov are incisively treated, as are biographies of Isaac Newton, Abraham Lincoln, Queen Elizabeth II, and Helen Keller. As George Steiner observed, Updike writes with a “solicitous, almost tender intelligence. The critic and the poet in him . . . are at no odds with the novelist; the same sharpness of apprehension bears on the object in each of Updike’s modes.”

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

In this collection of nonfiction pieces, John Updike gathers his responses to nearly two hundred invitations into print, each “an opportunity to make something beautiful, to find within oneself a treasure that would otherwise remain buried.” Introductions, reviews, and humorous essays, paragraphs on New York, religion, and lust—here is “more matter” commissioned by an age that, as the author remarks in his Preface, calls for “real stuff . . . not for the obliquities and tenuosities of fiction.” Still, the novelist’s shaping hand, his gift for telling detail, can be detected in many of these literary considerations. Books by Edith Wharton, Dawn Powell, John Cheever, and Vladimir Nabokov are incisively treated, as are biographies of Isaac Newton, Abraham Lincoln, Queen Elizabeth II, and Helen Keller. As George Steiner observed, Updike writes with a “solicitous, almost tender intelligence. The critic and the poet in him . . . are at no odds with the novelist; the same sharpness of apprehension bears on the object in each of Updike’s modes.”

More books from Random House Publishing Group

Cover of the book Reading with Patrick by John Updike
Cover of the book Lines and Shadows by John Updike
Cover of the book Dead and Dateless by John Updike
Cover of the book The Radioactive Boy Scout by John Updike
Cover of the book Garfield Hams It Up by John Updike
Cover of the book No Greater Love by John Updike
Cover of the book No Place to Hide by John Updike
Cover of the book Sword in the Storm by John Updike
Cover of the book Keeper of the Dream by John Updike
Cover of the book Matchstick Men by John Updike
Cover of the book The Doula Guide to Birth by John Updike
Cover of the book A Mighty Long Way by John Updike
Cover of the book Unfinished Business by John Updike
Cover of the book Stacked Up by John Updike
Cover of the book Garfield Says a Mouthful by John Updike
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy