Conversations with John Updike

PLATH, James, edited by

ISBN 10: 0878057005 / ISBN 13: 9780878057009

Published by University Press of Mississippi, Jackson, Mississippi, 1994

About this Item

First edition. xxvi, 274pp. Glossy pictorial wrappers. Spine head lightly bumped, near fine.

Seller Inventory # 576384

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Conversations with John Updike
• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi, Jackson, Mississippi
• Publication Date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0878057005
• ISBN 13: 9780878057009
• Binding: Softcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Near Fine

About this title

Synopsis

John Updike says: Any act of description is, to some extent, an act of praise, so that even when the event is unpleasant or horrifying or spiritually stunning, the very attempt to describe it is, in some way, part of that Old Testament injunction to give praise. Even though my books strike many people as immoral or morally useless, to me they are really moral investigations of how we live, and harsh, perhaps, because the standards are otherworldly. There was a tradition among my peers for frank and open talk, and I'd always been a rather shy, priggish, unexperienced adolescent. So maybe my revenge as a young adult was to put down all the dirty words that I'd always been a little shy about using. James Plath, a professor of English at Illinois Wesleyan University, is editor-publisher of "Clockwatch Review" and director of Hemingway Days Writer's Workshop and Conference in Key West.

Synopsis

This collection includes 32 interviews given by John Updike to critics, scholars, talk-show hosts, reporters (national, international and local), a religious journal, a school student, and many more. They all combine to form a portrait of a novelist, short story writer and poet.