Assorted Prose

Author : John Updike
Publisher : Random House
Page : 289 pages
File Size : 53,8 Mb
Release : 2012-09-18
Category : Literary Collections
ISBN : 9780679645832

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Assorted Prose by John Updike Pdf

John Updike’s first collection of nonfiction pieces, published in 1965 when the author was thirty-three, is a diverting and illuminating gambol through midcentury America and the writer’s youth. It opens with a choice selection of parodies, casuals, and “Talk of the Town” reports, the fruits of Updike’s boyish ambition to follow in the footsteps of Thurber and White. These jeux d’esprit are followed by “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu,” an immortal account of Ted Williams’s last at-bat in Fenway Park; “The Dogwood Tree,” a Wordsworthian evocation of one Pennsylvania childhood; and five autobiographical essays and stories. Rounding out the volume are classic considerations of Nabokov, Salinger, Spark, Beckett, and others, the earliest efforts of the book reviewer who would go on to become, in The New York Times’s estimation, “the pre-eminent critic of his generation.” Updike called this collection “motley but not unshapely.” Some would call it a classic of its kind.

Author : Hedda Ben-Bassat
Publisher : Bucknell University Press
Page : 224 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 2000
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 0838754333

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Prophets Without Vision by Hedda Ben-Bassat Pdf

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

Author : Vladimir E. Alexandrov
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 849 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 2014-05-22
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781136601576

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The Garland Companion to Vladimir Nabokov by Vladimir E. Alexandrov Pdf

First published in 1995. This companion constitutes a virtual encyclopaedia of Nabokov, and occupies a unique niche in scholarship about him. Articles on individual works by Nabokov, including his short stories and poetry, provide a brief survey of critical reactions and detailed analyses from diverse vantage points. For anyone interested in Nabokov, from scholars to readers who love his works, this is an ideal guide. Its chronology of Nabokov's life and works, bibliographies of primary and secondary works, and a detailed index make it easy to find reliable information any aspect of Nabokov's rich legacy.

Author : Stanley Trachtenberg
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 138 pages
File Size : 46,7 Mb
Release : 1993-09-24
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0521438845

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New Essays on Rabbit Run by Stanley Trachtenberg Pdf

The essays in this collection examine the technical mastery and thematic range of John Updike's novel Rabbit Run.

Author : John McTavish
Publisher : BoD – Books on Demand
Page : 203 pages
File Size : 46,5 Mb
Release : 2018-01-01
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780718895372

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Myth and Gospel in the Fiction of John Updike by John McTavish Pdf

Big on style, slight on substance: that has been a common charge over the years by critics of John Updike. In fact, however, John Updike is one of the most serious writers of modern times. Myth, as this book shows, unlocks his fictional universe and repeatedly breaks open the powerful themes in his literary parables of the gospel. Myth and Gospel in the Fiction of John Updike also includes a personal tribute to John Updike by his son David, two essays by pioneer Updike scholars Alice and Kenneth Hamilton, and an anecdotal chapter in which readers share Updike discoveries and recommendations. All in all, weight is added to the complaint that the master of myth and gospel was shortchanged by the Nobel committee.

Author : John Neary
Publisher : SIU Press
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 52,6 Mb
Release : 1992
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0809317427

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Something and Nothingness by John Neary Pdf

John Neary shows that the theological dichotomy of via negativa (which posits the authentic experience of God as absence, darkness, silence) and via affirmativa (which emphasizes presence, images, and the sounds of the earth) is an overlooked key to examining and comparing the works of John Fowles and John Updike. Drawing on his extensive knowledge of both Christian and secular existentialism within the modern theology of Barth and Levinas and the contemporary critical theory of Derrida and J. Hillis Miller, Neary demonstrates the ultimate affinity of these authors who at first appear such opposites. He makes clear that Fowles's postmodernist, metafictional experiments reflect the stark existentialism of Camus and Sartre while Updike's social realism recalls Kierkegaard's empirical faith in a generous God within a kind of Christian deconstructionism. Neary's perception of uncanny similarities between the two authors--whose respective careers are marked by a series of novels that structurally and thematically parallel each other--and the authors' shared long-term interest in existentialism and theology support both his critical comparison and his argument that neither author is "philosophically more sophisticated nor aesthetically more daring."

Author : James A. Schiff
Publisher : University of Missouri Press
Page : 174 pages
File Size : 43,5 Mb
Release : 1992
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0826208711

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Updike's Version by James A. Schiff Pdf

Although many readers are aware of John Updike's Rabbit tetralogy, fewer have paid close attention to his other multivolume work, "The Scarlet Letter trilogy." In Updike's Version, James Schiff provides the first full-length critical analysis of Updike's trilogy since the publication of its final volume in 1988. He demonstrates how Hawthorne's classic novel of adulterous love and divided selves has become an American myth, and how Updike, in his trilogy, has sought to expand, update, and satirize that myth. The three volumes that make up the trilogy, A Month of Sundays (1975), Roger's Version (1986), and S. (1988), engage in a dialogue with Hawthorne's novel, commenting upon and altering the original story. To understand the nature of this dialogue, Schiff employs a methodolgy specifically suited to Updike's mythical method, in which special attention is given to reader expectation, parody, point of view, and principles of fragmentation and condensation. Updike's Version covers new ground in Updike's studies, revealing how the intertextual dialogue between Updike and Hawthorne is far more complex and extensive than has yet been acknowledged. Providing close and detailed readings of the novels, Updike's Version will be of major importance to students and scholars of John Updike, Nathaniel Hawthorne's canonical American text, and American literature in general.

Author : Alfred Bendixen,James Nagel
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 536 pages
File Size : 52,9 Mb
Release : 2020-08-24
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781119685647

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A Companion to the American Short Story by Alfred Bendixen,James Nagel Pdf

Author : James Plath
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 295 pages
File Size : 44,6 Mb
Release : 2016-08-26
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9781611461060

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John Updike's Pennsylvania Interviews by James Plath Pdf

Updike remains both a critical and popular success; however, because Updike asked that his personal letters not be published the only way that Updike scholars and fans can read more of the author’s candid and insightful remarks is to revisit some of the many interviews he granted—most of which are difficult to locate or obtain. Updike wrote about his home town of Reading in Berks County, Pennsylvania for much of his adult life, setting most of his early fiction and all of his award-winning novels in his home state. In John Updike’s Pennsylvania Interviews, James Plath has compiled the first collection of interviews that illustrates and helps to explain the bond between one of America’s greatest literary talents and his beloved Pennsylvania. Included in this volume are interviews and articles by Mark Abrams, Leonard W. Boasberg, Carl W. Brown, Jr., David Cheshire, Marty Crisp, Sean Diviny, John Mark Eberhart, William Ecenbarger, Elizabeth Greenwood, Ruth Heimbuecher, Dorothy Lehman Hoerr, Jim Homan, Tom Knapp, Karen L. Miller, Steve Neal, Richard E. Nicholls, Sanford Pinsker, James Plath, Bruce Posten, Carole Reber, Pamela Rohland, Carlin Romano, Daniel Rubin, Stephan Salisbury, Charles R. Shaw, Ellen Sulkis, Heather Thomas, Stanley J. Watkins, Michael L. Wentzel, and Robert F. Zissa.

Author : Robert Sheppard
Publisher : Northcote House Pub Limited
Page : 125 pages
File Size : 40,8 Mb
Release : 2007
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780746311493

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Iain Sinclair by Robert Sheppard Pdf

Iain Sinclair has a growing reputation as a novelist and writer of documentary non--fiction. This study covers his major works, but also seeks to trace the connections between the writings and his earlier books of poetry. Indeed, it traces the intertextual curve of Sinclair's entire oeuvre, and demonstrates that its unity lies in the very desire to make connections between disparate cultural experience, for example between the context of avant garde poetry that Sinclair emerged from, and the world of pulp fiction that he has negotiated as a book dealer and an editor.

Author : Richard Orodenker
Publisher : Hall Reference Books
Page : 280 pages
File Size : 47,7 Mb
Release : 1996
Category : Literary Collections
ISBN : UOM:39015037425249

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The Writers' Game by Richard Orodenker Pdf

Surveying the vast body of nonfiction writing devoted to baseball and exploring the recurrent themes and myths that typify it, the book gives special attention to the familiar essay, the in-depth personal profile, and the memoir or autobiography, while never skirting seminal works of baseball lore, whether early sports guide, dime novel, or oral history. The result is a dozen thematically arranged chapters that inspect the works of scores of writers - including Christy Mathewson, Stephen Crane, Donald Hall, Jim Bouton, Roger Angell, and Annie Dillard - and provide a thoroughly entertaining compendium of the history and culture of baseball.

Author : Laurence W. Mazzeno
Publisher : Camden House
Page : 272 pages
File Size : 52,6 Mb
Release : 2013
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781571135117

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Becoming John Updike by Laurence W. Mazzeno Pdf

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.

Author : Alan Spiegel
Publisher : University of Missouri Press
Page : 316 pages
File Size : 47,7 Mb
Release : 1998
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 0826211828

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James Agee and the Legend of Himself by Alan Spiegel Pdf

James Agee's literary reputation has grown enormously since his death in 1955. He wrote novels, short stories, poetry, film criticism, screenplays, and investigative journalism, but these accomplishments earned him only a modest public reputation during his brief life. Ironically, Agee's greatest recognition as a writer came posthumously, when his novel A Death in the Family won the Pulitzer Prize. In James Agee and the Legend of Himself, Alan Spiegel examines these accomplishments and treats Agee not simply as a celebrity, journalist, or "Depression" writer but as a self-interrogating literary artist who created a homemade legend from his earliest family memories, sifting his experience through an automythology composed of his mother, his father, and himself.

Author : Joseph Dewey,Steven G. Kellman,Irving Malin
Publisher : University of Delaware Press
Page : 236 pages
File Size : 52,8 Mb
Release : 2002
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0874137853

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UnderWords by Joseph Dewey,Steven G. Kellman,Irving Malin Pdf

Don DeLillo's 1997 masterwork Underworld, one of the most acclaimed and long-awaited novels of the last twenty years, was immediately recognized as a landmark novel, not only in the long career of one of America's most distinguished novelists but also in the ongoing evolution of the postmodern novel. Vast in scope, intricately organized, and densely allusive, the text provided an immediate and engaging challenge to readers of contemporary fiction. This collection of thirteen essays brings together new and established voices in American studies and contemporary American literature to assess the place of this remarkable novel not only within the postmodern tradition but within the larger patterns of American literature and culture as well. By seeking to place the novel within such a context, this lively collection of provocative readings offers a valuable guide for both students and scholars of the American literary imagination.

Author : Tony Hilfer
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 287 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 2014-09-25
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781317871248

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American Fiction Since 1940 by Tony Hilfer Pdf

In this remarkable book, Tony Hilfer provides a major survey of the wealth of post-war American fiction. He analyses the major modes and genres of writing, from realist to postmodernist metafiction and black humour, the fiction of social protest, women's writing, and the traditions of African-American, Southern and Jewish-American fiction. Key writers discussed include William Faulkner, Norman Mailer, Ralph Ellison, Saul Bellow, Joseph Heller, Vladimir Nabokov and Joyce Carol Oates. The book concludes by exploring contemporary trends through detailed case-studies of Donald Barthelme and Toni Morrison.