Due Considerations: Essays and Criticism (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780345499004)

A page-turning collection of essays and literary criticism on topics ranging from books, writers, poker, cars, faith, and the American libido--from one of the most gifted American writers of the twentieth century and the author of the acclaimed Rabbit series.

"[Updike is] one of the best essayists and critics this country has produced in the last century."--The Los Angeles Times

Here Updike considers many books, some in introductions--to such classics as Walden, The Portrait of a Lady, and The Mabinogion--and many more in reviews, usually for The New Yorker. Ralph Waldo Emerson and the five Biblical books of Moses come in for appraisal, along with Uncle Tom's Cabin and The Wizard of Oz.

Contemporary American and English writers--Colson Whitehead, E. L. Doctorow, Don DeLillo, Norman Rush, William Trevor, A. S. Byatt, Muriel Spark, Ian McEwan--receive attentive and appreciative reviews, as do Rohinton Mistry, Salman Rushdie, Peter Carey, Margaret Atwood, Gabriel Garc僘 M疵quez, Haruki Murakami, G?ter Grass, and Orhan Pamuk.

In factual waters, Mr. Updike ponders the sinking of the Lusitania and the "unsinkable career" of Coco Chanel, the adventures of Lord Byron and Iris Murdoch, the sexual revolution and the advent of female Biblical scholars, and biographies of Robert Frost, Sinclair Lewis, Marcel Proust, and S ren Kierkegaard.

Reading Due Considerations is like taking a cruise that calls at many ports with a witty, sensitive, and articulate guide aboard--a voyage not to be missed.

Author: John Updike
ISBN-10: 034549900X
ISBN-13: 9780345499004
Publisher: Random House Trade
Language: English
Published: 09/30/2008
Pages: 736
Format: Paperback
Weight: 1.65lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.10w x 1.60d

Review Citation(s):
New York Times Book Review 11/02/2008 pg. 24