More Matter: Essays And Criticism

(Paperback)

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A superlative collection from the late, great John Updike, the finest American critic and essayist of his time With a fiction writer's affectionate, shaping hand, Updike explores everything from the nature of evil and the philosophical content of literature to the wreck of the Titanic and the infuriating phenomenon of unopenable parcels. Exploring the work of both his peers and his predecessors, there are numerous fascinating pieces on literature, but Updike also gives sharp-eyed impressions of the other arts, from film to photography to painting, as well as honing in, with his peerless acuity, on the incidental and overlooked details that constitute so much of our lives.

Reviews

A modern master, the finest writer working in English -- Ian McEwan
He is both a superb unraveller and a super accepter of the contradictions of the world . . . we should simply be grateful that he is there with his fine, discriminatory prose * Sunday Times *

Author Bio

John Updike was born in 1932 in Shillington, Pennsylvania. He is the author of over fifty books, including The Poorhouse Fair; the Rabbit series (Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit Is Rich; Rabbit At Rest); Marry Me; The Witches of Eastwick, which was made into a major feature film; Memories of the Ford Administration; Brazil; In the Beauty of the Lilies; Toward the End of Time; Gertrude and Claudius; and Seek My Face. He has written a number of collections of short stories, including The Afterlife and Other Stories and Licks of Love, which includes a final Rabbit story, Rabbit Remembered. His essays and criticism first appeared in publications such as the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books, and are now collected into numerous volumes. Collected Poems 1953-1993 brings together almost all of his verse, and a new edition of his Selected Poems is forthcoming from Hamish Hamilton. His novels, stories, and non-fiction collections have won have won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award, the American Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Rosenthal Award and the Howells Medal. Updike graduated from Harvard College in 1954, and spent a year at Oxford's Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. From 1955 to 1957 he was a member of staff at the New Yorker, and he lived in Massachusetts from 1957 until his death in January 2009.