Bech Is Back: 2 - Softcover

Updike, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0449004538 ISBN 13: 9780449004531

Publisher: Random House Trade, 1998

Synopsis

The renowned Henry Bech is now fifty years old. In this wonderful classic novel, Bech reflects on his fame, travels the world, marries an Episcopalian divorcé e from Westchester, and--surprise to all--writes a book that becomes a runaway bestseller. If you've never read Updike before, there's no better place to start. If you've read him for years, you'll be delightfully reminded of John Updike's rightful place in the pantheon of quintessential American writers.

About this title

Review:

"Bech is back all right, but only after paying a large and painful price. . . . Updike reflects in these pages on the odd and unsettling ways in which art can impinge upon life, the ways in which a book acquires a life of its own that seems wholly unrelated to that of the person who created it, the ways in which celebrity separates those upon whom it is bestowed from reality."--The Washington Post

"Mr. Updike finds full scope for his gifts here: for sly and cheerfully malicious pensées on contemporary literary life; for busy observations on human behavior."--The New Yorker

"[Updike] at the top of his craft."--Time

About the Author:

John Updike was born in Shillington, Pennsylvania, in 1932. He graduated from Harvard College in 1954 and spent a year in Oxford, England, at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. From 1955 to 1957 he was a member of the staff of The New Yorker. His novels have won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Rosenthal Foundation Award, and the William Dean Howells Medal. In 2007 he received the Gold Medal for Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. John Updike died in January 2009.

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House Trade
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0449004538
• ISBN 13: 9780449004531
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192