More literary and amorous adventures enjoyed and endured by “the semi-obscure American author” previously celebrated in Bech: A Book (1970) and Bech is Back (1982) . Henry Bech—hands down, Updike’s happiest invention—might be called the temperamental obverse of his creator’s blue-collar everyman, “Rabbit” Angstrom (as well as an interesting analogue to Cynthia Ozick’s Ruth Puttermesser). A Jewish novelist of minimal achievement (seven books in forty years, including “the Kerowacky” Travel Light and his putative magnum opus The Chosen), he’s an “author of prose haiku” (passim); a failed lover, husband, and father; and—in the current incarnation—an aging celebrity wrestling with the demands of his undiminished libido and flickering literary fame. Updike surveys what ought to be Henry Bech’s declining years in five related stories (parts of which appeared, inevitably, in The New Yorker). “Bech in Czech” recounts a “cultural visit” to Prague during which the 60ish author is both aroused and chagrined by the vigorous energies his embattled host country exhibits. “Bech Pleads Guilty” takes him to L.A. and a lawsuit provoked by his derogatory magazine article about a Hollywood agent. And the concluding “Bech and the Bounty of Sweden” finds the elderly reprobate possessed of both an infant daughter and—to the horror of a scandalized literary establishment—the Nobel Prize. These three—thinly plotted “stories” enlivened by inspired noodling—are easily outmatched by their longer counterparts: a hilarious account of their antihero’s tenure heading a moribund society of artists (“Bech Presides”); and the even better (brilliantly titled) “Bech Noir”: a literally murderous expansion of Henry’s realization “that the literary world was a battlefield—mined with hatred, rimmed with snipers”—and that he’s mad as hell and doesn’t have to take it anymore. Updike unbound—at his most frolicsome and funniest. His best novel, “quasi” or not, in years.
Pub Date: Oct. 26, 1998
ISBN: 0-375-40368-X
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1998
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.
A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.
The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
