Prophets Without Vision

Prophets Without Vision PDF Author: Hedda Ben-Bassat
Publisher: Bucknell University Press
ISBN: 9780838754337
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
Ben-Bassat (English, Tel Aviv U.) discusses crises of ideology and identity in the fiction of contemporary American authors. She contends that the fiction of John Updike, Flannery O'Connor, Grace Paley, James Baldwin, and Alice Walker has absorbed a diversity of prophetic modes from a diversity of

Prophets Without Vision

Prophets Without Vision PDF Author: Hedda Ben-Bassat
Publisher: Bucknell University Press
ISBN: 9780838754337
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
Ben-Bassat (English, Tel Aviv U.) discusses crises of ideology and identity in the fiction of contemporary American authors. She contends that the fiction of John Updike, Flannery O'Connor, Grace Paley, James Baldwin, and Alice Walker has absorbed a diversity of prophetic modes from a diversity of

Becoming John Updike

Becoming John Updike PDF Author: Laurence W. Mazzeno
Publisher: Camden House
ISBN: 1571135111
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
When John Updike died in 2009, tributes from the literary establishment were immediate and fulsome. However, no one reading reviews of Updike's work in the late 1960s would have predicted that kind of praise for a man who was known then as a brilliant stylist who had nothing to say. What changed? Why? And what is likely to be his legacy? These are the questions that Becoming John Updike pursues by examining the journalistic and academic response to his writings. Several things about Updike's career make a reception study appropriate. First, he was prolific: he began publishing fiction and essays in 1956, published his first book in 1958, and from then on, brought out at least one new book each year. Second, his books were reviewed widely - usually in major American newspapers and magazines, and often in foreign ones as well. Third, Updike quickly became a darling of academics; the first book about his work was published in 1967, less than a decade after his own first book. More than three dozen books and hundreds of articles of academic criticism have been devoted to Updike. The present volume will appeal to the continuing interest in Updike's writing among academics and general readers alike. Laurence W. Mazzeno is President Emeritus of Alvernia University. Among other books, he has written volumes on Austen, Dickens, Tennyson, and Matthew Arnold for Camden House's Literary Criticism in Perspective series.

The Widows of Eastwick

The Widows of Eastwick PDF Author: John Updike
Publisher: Random House Digital, Inc.
ISBN: 0345517512
Category : Rhode Island
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
After traveling the world to exotic lands, Alexandra, Jane, and Sukie -- now widowed but still witches -- return to the Rhode Island seaside town of Eastwick, "the scene of their primes," site of their enchanted mischief more than three decades ago. Diabolical Darryl Van Horne is gone, and what was once a center of license and liberation is now a "haven of wholesomeness" populated by hockey moms and househusbands acting out against the old ways of their own absent, experimenting parents. With spirits still willing but flesh weaker, the three women must confront a powerful new counterspell of conformity. In this wicked and wonderful novel, John Updike is as his very best - a legendary mster of literary magic up to his old delightful tricks.

Couples

Couples PDF Author: John Updike
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0679645721
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 577

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Book Description
“Trapped in their cozy catacombs, the couples have made sex by turns their toy, their glue, their trauma, their therapy, their hope, their frustration, their revenge, their narcotic, their main line of communication and their sole and pitiable shield against the awareness of death.”—Time One of the signature novels of the American 1960s, Couples is a book that, when it debuted, scandalized the public with prose pictures of the way people live, and that today provides an engrossing epitaph to the short, happy life of the “post-Pill paradise.” It chronicles the interactions of ten young married couples in a seaside New England community who make a cult of sex and of themselves. The group of acquaintances form a magical circle, complete with ritualistic games, religious substitutions, a priest (Freddy Thorne), and a scapegoat (Piet Hanema). As with most American utopias, this one’s existence is brief and unsustainable, but the “imaginative quest” that inspires its creation is eternal. Praise for Couples “Couples [is] John Updike’s tour de force of extramarital wanderlust.”—The New York Times Book Review “Ingenious . . . If this is a dirty book, I don’t see how sex can be written about at all.”—Wilfrid Sheed, The New York Times Book Review

The Cambridge Companion to John Updike

The Cambridge Companion to John Updike PDF Author: Stacey Olster
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 113982743X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 319

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Book Description
John Updike is one of the most prolific and important American authors of the contemporary period, with an acclaimed body of work that spans half a century and is inspired by everything from American exceptionalism to American popular culture. This Companion joins together a distinguished international team of contributors to address both the major themes in Updike's writing as well as the sources of controversy that Updike's writing has often provoked. It traces the ways in which historical and cultural changes in the second half of the twentieth century have shaped not just Updike's reassessment of America's heritage, but his reassessment of the literary devices by which that legacy is best portrayed. With a chronology and bibliography of Updike's published writings, this is the only guide students and scholars of Updike will need to understand this extraordinary writer.

Updike and the Patriarchal Dilemma

Updike and the Patriarchal Dilemma PDF Author: Mary O'Connell
Publisher: SIU Press
ISBN: 9780809319497
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
A disturbing element exists, O'Connell determines, in both the texts of the Rabbit novels and in the critical community that examines them. In the novels, O'Connell finds substantial evidence to demonstrate patterns of psychological and physical abuse toward women, citing as the culminating example the mounting toll of literally or metaphorically dead women in the texts.

John Updike

John Updike PDF Author: Bob Batchelor
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313384045
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
One of the world's greatest writers, John Updike chronicled America for more than five decades. This book examines the essence of Updike's writing, propelling our understanding of his award-winning fiction, prose, and poetry. Widely considered "America's Man of Letters," John Updike is a prolific novelist and critic with an unprecedented range of work across more than 50 years. No author has ever written from the variety of vantages or spanned topics like Updike did. Despite being widely recognized as one of the nation's literary greats, scholars have largely ignored Updike's vast catalog of work outside the Rabbit tetralogy. This work provides the first detailed examination of Updike's body of criticism, poetry, and journalism, and shows how that work played a central role in transforming his novels. The book disputes the common misperception of Updike as merely a chronicler of suburban, middle-class America by focusing on his novels and stories that explore the wider world, from the groundbreaking The Coup (1978) to Terrorist (2006). Popular culture scholar Bob Batchelor asks readers to reassess Updike's career by tracing his transformation over half a century of writing.

Updike Ignored

Updike Ignored PDF Author: James A. Schiff
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 552

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Book Description


Of the Farm

Of the Farm PDF Author: John Updike
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141912510
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 144

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Book Description
Of the Farm recounts Joey Robinson's visit to the farm where he grew up and where his mother now lives alone. Accompanied by his newly acquired second wife, Peggy, and an eleven-year-old stepson, Joey spends three days reassessing and evaluating the course his life has run. But for Joey and Peggy, the delicate balance of love and sex is threatened by a dangerous new awareness.

The John Updike Encyclopedia

The John Updike Encyclopedia PDF Author: Jack De Bellis
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313007209
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 584

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Book Description
John Updike is one of the most seminal American writers of the 20th century and one of the most prolific as well. In addition to his best-selling novels, he has written numerous poems, short stories, reviews, and essays. His writing consistently reveals stylistic brilliance, and through his engagement with America's moral and spiritual problems, his works chronicle America's hopes and dreams, failures and disappointments. Though he is an enormously popular writer, the complexity and elegance of his works have elicited growing scholarly attention. Through several hundred alphabetically arranged entries, this book provides both casual and serious readers an exceptional guide to his life and writings. Whether the reader is seeking a novel summary, an authoritative analysis of subjects, elucidation of an allusion, or a point about Updike's life or manner of composition, the encyclopedia is indispensable. A chronology summarizes the major events in Updike's career, while an introductory essay examines his progress as a writer, from his crafted light verse and informed reviews to his innovative novels and stories. The entries that follow summarize Updike's books, describe all major characters, explain allusions, identify major images and symbols, analyze principal subjects, discuss his life and career, and draw on the most significant scholarship. Entries include bibliographies, and the volume closes with a list of works for further reading.