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Bezig met laden... Updikedoor Adam Begley
Bezig met laden...
Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek. John Updike is one of my favourite authors, and this is a BRILLIANT biography. Begley intertwines Updike's work with his writing- the level of autobiography in his every novel, poem and short story is brought out vividly, as Begley takes us through his life. From a happy childhood in Shillington, Pennsylvania, child of a not particularly successful teacher father ("The Centaur" !) and an ambitious, literary mother who relocates her family to a rural location ("The Centaur" again!); his time in Harvard, marriage, time in UK, working on the New Yorker ("Bech"!), kids, a rampant social life and yet a solid religious conviction ("Couples" !) As divorce, a broken family, remarriage and old age confront Updike, we again see echoes in the "Rabbit" tetralogy . Of course, I've only read a few of his many works and there are a vast amount of other works which Begley introduces us to, and through which I felt I gained a fair insight into the genial and hugely intelligent Updike. As remarked on by another reviewer, we do feel a lack of vision into Updike's second marriage; his second wife didn't involve herself in this work (unlike his first ) and it shows. But overall a truly excellent, erudite but uttely readable work. I am disappointed by UPDIKE by Adam Begley. More than a biography of his life it is a biography of his writing, down to each short story. So it was the structure that bother me. I would like to have known more about his life, though the author does work in his life into each piece of Updike's writing. Too long for too little.
Both this talent and a reverence for the ordinary problems of ordinary people were obvious in the first Updike novel I ever read, “Rabbit, Run” (1960), published in Turkish translation in 1971. This was a completely different, less dramatic but more believable and more intensely felt America than the one inhabited by Steinbeck’s California fruit pickers or Hemingway’s war-loving and assertive heroes, far from Faulkner’s gothic atmospheres crumbling under the weight of the past and of problems of race.
"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"-- Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
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