Above all, this book should help those who haven’t read all of Updike’s work recognize his extraordinary ability and...
This appreciation of John Updike’s 40-year literary career is remarkable for its concise, critical assessments of nearly every one of the writer’s 48 books.
Updike, next to Joyce Carol Oates, is probably our most prolific major living writer. He is still best-known for the tetralogy of novels chronicling the life of former high-school basketball star Harry Angstrom, which include Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit Is Rich; and Rabbit at Rest. Of these, only Rabbit, Run is widely taught at universities. Pritchard (Talking Back to Emily Dickinson, 1998) believes the academic and general public’s neglect of Updike’s collected works derives in part from a lack of identification with Updike’s self-proclaimed Pennsylvanian point of view and a lack of affinity with his middle-class treatment of strong social issues (such as religion, politics, and sex). As diverse as the American reading public is, this doesn’t seem awry, but Pritchard strives to demonstrate how the value of Updike’s work rests as much on the elasticity and consistently high quality of the writing as on Updike’s ability to ape the raw events of his own life and times and transform them into raw material for his fiction. Pritchard assesses three or four books per chapter, moving chronologically from The Carpentered Hen (Updike’s first) to Gertrude and Claudius (his latest). Though the assessment of Updike’s realistic “documentary” novels takes up the bulk of the book, a distinct chapter is given over to what Pritchard calls “extravagant fictions” (the novels The Coup, The Witches of Eastwick, Roger’s Version, and S), as well as one chapter for Updike’s life as a critic and reviewer, and another for his poetry and memoir. Only Updike’s forays into art criticism, sports commentary, and playwriting are overlooked.
Above all, this book should help those who haven’t read all of Updike’s work recognize his extraordinary ability and understand his unique contribution to 20th-century American literature.Pub Date: Sept. 25, 2000
ISBN: 1-58642-002-X
Page Count: 326
Publisher: Steerforth
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
© Copyright 2025 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.
