Odd Jobs: Essays and CriticismRandom House Publishing Group, 2012 M12 4 - 1024 pages To complement his work as a fiction writer, John Updike accepted any number of odd jobs—book reviews and introductions, speeches and tributes, a “few paragraphs” on baseball or beauty or Borges—and saw each as “an opportunity to learn something, or to extract from within some unsuspected wisdom.” In this, his largest collection of assorted prose, he brings generosity and insight to the works and lives of William Dean Howells, George Bernard Shaw, Philip Roth, Muriel Spark, and dozens more. Novels from outposts of postmodernism like Turkey, Albania, Israel, and Nigeria are reviewed, as are biographies of Cleopatra and Dorothy Parker. The more than a hundred considerations of books are flanked, on one side, by short stories, a playlet, and personal essays, and, on the other, by essays on his own oeuvre. Updike’s odd jobs would be any other writer’s chief work. |
Contents
FIVE DAYS IN FINLAND AT THE AGE OF FIFTYFIVE | 3 |
THE PARADE | 14 |
FIRST WIVES AND TROLLEY CARS | 20 |
A PLAYLET | 29 |
ENVIRONS | 50 |
ESSAYS ON ASSIGNED TOPICS | 69 |
The Fourth of July | 79 |
TRIBUTES | 109 |
BRITISHERS | 483 |
THE OTHER AMERICANS | 521 |
THE EVIL EMPIRE | 560 |
In Love with the West | 646 |
As Others See Us | 660 |
Studies in PostHitlerian SelfCondemnation in Austria | 668 |
Rational Faith | 677 |
Levels and Levels | 685 |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
American appears artist beautiful became become begins body called century characters comes course critical dark death described early English exist eyes face fact fall father feel felt fiction four Franklin French girl give hand head heart hero human imagination interest Italy James John keep kind later least leave less letters light literary lives look meaning memory mind moral mother moved nature never night novel once perhaps play present published reader seems sense short side social story streets tells things thought tion took town translated turned University voice walk wife woman women writer written wrote young