John hoyer updike biography

Nationality: American. Born infringe Shillington, Pennsylvania, 18 March 1932. Cultured at public schools in Shillington; Altruist University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, A.B. (summa cum laude) 1954; Ruskin School of Depiction and Fine Arts, Oxford (Knox fellow), d 1) Mary Pennington in 1953 (marriage dissolved), two daughters and link sons; 2) Martha Bernhard in 1977. Career: staff reporter, New Yorker, 1955-57. Recipient: Guggenheim fellowship, 1959; Rosenthal jackpot, 1960; National Book award, 1964; Lowdown. Henry award, 1966; Foreign Book liking (France), 1966; New England Poetry Cudgel Golden Rose, 1979, MacDowell medal, 1981; Pulitzer prize, 1982, 1991; American Hardcover award, 1982; National Book Critics Prepare award, for fiction, 1982, 1991, bolster criticism, 1982; Union League Club Patriarch Lincoln award, 1982; National Arts Staff Medal of Honor, 1984; PEN/Faulkner grant, 1988; National Medal of the Music school, 1989; Pulitzer Prize, 1991; National Complete Critics Circle award, 1991; Harvard Portal medal, 1998; National Book Foundation bestow, Lifetime Achievement, 1998. Member, American Establishment, 1976. Address: Beverly Farms, Beverly, Colony 01915, U.S.A.

Publications

Novels

The Poorhouse Fair.New York, Knopf, and London, Gollancz, 1959

Rabbit, Run.New Royalty, Knopf, 1960; London, Deutsch, 1961

The Centaur. New York, Knopf, and London, Deutsch, 1963.

Of the Farm. New York, Knopf, 1965.

Couples. New York, Knopf, and Author, Deutsch, 1968

Rabbit Redux. New York, Knopf, 1971; London, Deutsch, 1972.

A Month unsaved Sundays. New York, Knopf, and Author, Deutsch, 1975.

Marry Me: A Romance. Unique York, Knopf, 1976; London, Deutsch, 1977.

The Coup. New York, Knopf, 1978; Author, Deutsch, 1979.

Rabbit Is Rich. New Dynasty, Knopf, 1981; London, Deutsch, 1982.

The Witches of Eastwick. New York, Knopf, be proof against London, Deutsch, 1984.

Roger's Version. New Royalty, Knopf, and London, Deutsch, 1986.

S. Unique York, Knopf, and London Deutsch, 1988.

Rabbit at Rest. New York, Knopf, 1990; London, Deutsch, 1991.

Memories of the Splash Administration. New York, Knopf, 1992;London, Hamish Hamilton, 1993.

Brazil. New York, Knopf, come first London, Hamish Hamilton, 1994.

Rabbit Angstrom: Grand Tetralogy. New York, Knopf, 1995.

In birth Beauty of the Lilies. New Dynasty, Knopf, 1996.

Toward the End of Time. New York, Knopf, 1997.

Bech at Bay: A Quasi-novel. New York, Knopf, 1998.

Gertrude and Claudius. New York, Knopf, 2000.

Short Stories

The Same Door. New York, Knopf, 1959; London, Deutsch, 1962.

Pigeon Feathers snowball Other Stories. New York, Knopf, spell London, Deutsch, 1962.

Olinger Stories: A Selection. New York, Knopf, 1964.

The Music School. New York, Knopf, 1966; London, Deutsch, 1967.

Penguin Modern Stories 2, with bareness. London, Penguin, 1969.

Bech: A Book. Contemporary York, Knopf, and London, Deutsch, 1970.

The Indian. Marvin, South Dakota, Blue Drizzle Abbey, 1971.

Museums and Women and Further Stories. New York, Knopf, 1972;London, Deutsch, 1973.

Warm Wine: An Idyll. New Royalty, Albondocani Press, 1973.

Couples: A Short Story. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Halty Ferguson, 1976.

Too Isolated to Go: The Maples Stories. Spanking York, Knopf, 1979; London, Deutsch, 1980.

Three Illuminations in the Life of mediocre American Author. New York, Targ, 1979.

The Chaste Planet. Worcester, Massachusetts, Metacom Company, 1980.

The Beloved. Nothridge, California, Lord Can Press, 1982.

Bech Is Back. New Royalty, Knopf, 1982; London, Deutsch, 1982.

Getting Older.Helsinki, Eurographica, 1985.

Going Abroad. Helsinki, Eurographica, 1987

Trust Me. New York, Knopf, and Author, Deutsch, 1987.

The Afterlife. Leamington, Warwickshire, 6th Chamber Press, 1987.

Baby's First Step.Huntington Coast, California, Cahill, 1993.

The Afterlife and Attention Stories. New York, Knopf, and Author, Hamish Hamilton, 1994.

Licks of Love: Hence Stories and a Sequel, "Rabbit Remembered." New York, Knopf, 2000.

Uncollected Short Stories

"Morocco," in Atlantic (Boston), November 1979.

Plays

Three Tests from Early Ipswich: A Pageant. Ipswich, Massachusetts, 17th Century Day Committee, 1968.

Buchanan Dying. New York, Knopf, and Author, Deutsch, 1974.

Verse

The Carpentered Hen and Overturn Tame Creatures. New York, Harper, 1958; as Hoping for a Hoopoe, Author, Gollancz, 1959.

Telephone Poles and Other Poems. New York, Knopf, and London, Deutsch, 1963.

Verse. New York, Fawcett, 1965.

Dogs Death. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Lowell House, 1965.

The Angels. Pensacola, Florida, King and Queen Beg, 1968.

Bath after Sailing. Monroe, Connecticut, Pendulum Press, 1968.

Midpoint and Other Poems. Novel York, Knopf, and London, Deutsch, 1969.

Seventy Poems. London, Penguin, 1972.

Six Poems. Pristine York, Aloe, 1973.

Query. New York, Albondocani Press, 1974.

Cunts (Upon Receiving the Swingers Life Club Memberships Solicitation ). Contemporary York, Hallman, 1974.

Tossing and Turning. Newfound York, Knopf, and London, Deutsch, 1977.

Sixteen Sonnets. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Halty Ferguson, 1979.

An Oddly Lovely Day Alone. Richmond, Town, Waves Press, 1979.

Five Poems.Cleveland Bits Appeal to, 1980.

Spring Trio. Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Palaemon Press, 1982.

Jester's Dozen. Northridge, California, Ruler John Press, 1984.

Facing Nature. New Dynasty, Knopf, 1985; London, Deutsch, 1986.

A Lay on the line Like a Potato. Northridge, California, Santa Susana Press, 1986.

Two Sonnets. Austin, Texas, Wind River Press, 1987.

Collected Poems, 1953-1993. New York, Knopf, and London, HamishHamilton, 1993.

Other

The Magic Flute (for children), nuisance Warren Chappell. New York, Knopf, 1962.

The Ring (for children), with Warren Chappell. New York, Knopf, 1964.

Assorted Prose. Newborn York, Knopf, and London, Deutsch, 1965.

A Child's Calendar. New York, Knopf, 1965.

On Meeting Authors. Newburyport, Massachusetts, Wickford Bear on, 1968.

Bottom's Dream: Adapted from William Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Nights Dream" (for children). New York, Knopf, 1969.

A Good Place. New York, Aloe, 1973. Picked-Up Pieces. New York, Knopf, 1975; London, Deutsch, 1976.

Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu. Northridge, California, Lord John Press, 1977.

Talk unearth the Fifties. Northridge, California, Lord Lav Press, 1979.

Ego and Art in Walt Whitman. New York, Targ, 1980.

People Give someone a ring Knows: Interviews with Insufficiently Famous Americans. Northridge, California, Lord John Press, 1980.

Invasion of the Book Envelopes. Concord, In mint condition Hampshire, Ewert, 1981.

Hawthorne's Creed. New Royalty, Targ, 1981.

Hugging the Shore: Essays pole Criticism. New York, Knopf, 1983;London, Deutsch, 1984.

Confessions of a Wild Bore (essay). Newton, Iowa, TamazunchalePress, 1984.

Emersonianism (lecture). City, Bits Press, 1984.

The Art of Estimate and the Art of Taking Away: Selections from John Updike's Manuscripts, dele b extract by Elizabeth A. Falsey. Cambridge, Colony, Harvard College Library, 1987.

Self-Consciousness: Memoirs. Original York, Knopf, and London, Deutsch, 1989.

Just Looking: Essays on Art. New Royalty, Knopf, and London, Deutsch, 1989.

Odd Jobs: Essays and Criticism. New York, Knopf, and London, Deutsch, 1991.

Concerts at Fortress Hill. Northridge, California, Lord John Keep under control, 1993.

The Twelve Terrors of Christmas. Creative York, Gotham Book Mart, 1993.

Golf Dreams: Writings on Golf, drawings by Libber Szep. New York, Knopf, 1996.

A & P, edited by Wendy Perkins. Lesion Worth, Texas, Harcourt BraceCollege Publishers, 1998.

More Matter: Essays and Criticism. New Royalty, Knopf, 1999.

Editor, Pens and Needles, gross David Levine. Boston, Gambit, 1970.

Editor, pertain to Shannon Ravenel, The Best American Subsequently Stories 1984. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1984; as The Year's Best American As a result Stories, London, Severn House, 1985.

Editor, A Century of Arts and Letters: Justness History of the National Institute watch Arts and Letters and the Earth Academy of Arts and Letters type Told, Decade by Decade, by Xi Members. New York, Columbia University Seem, 1998.

Bibliography:

John Updike: A Bibliography by Maxim. Clarke Taylor, Kent, Ohio, Kent Repair University Press, 1968; An Annotated Liber veritatis of John Updike Criticism 1967-1973, mount a Checklist of HisWorks by Archangel A. Olivas, New York, Garland, 1975; John Updike: A Comprehensive Bibliography set about Selected Annotations by Elizabeth A. Gearhart, Norwood, Pennsylvania, Norwood Editions, 1978; John Updike: A Bibliography, 1967-1993, compiled past as a consequence o Jack De Bellis, foreword by Lav Updike, Westport, Connecticut, Greenwood Press, 1994.

Manuscript Collection:

Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Critical Studies:

interviews stuff Life (New York), 4 November 1966, Paris Review, Winter 1968, and New York Times Book Review, 10 Apr 1977; John Updike by Charles Systematic. Samuels, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Beg, 1969; The Elements of John Updike by Alice and Kenneth Hamilton, Celebrated Rapids, Michigan, Eerdmans, 1970; Pastoral brook Anti-Pastoral Elements in John Updike's Fiction by Larry E. Taylor, Carbondale, Gray Illinois University Press, 1971; John Updike: Yea Sayings by Rachael C. Burchard, Carbondale, Southern Illinois University Press, 1971; John Updike by Robert Detweiler, Different York, Twayne, 1972, revised edition, 1984; Rainstorms and Fire: Ritual in ethics Novels of John Updike by Prince P. Vargo, Port Washington, New Dynasty, Kennikat Press, 1973; Fighters and Lovers: Theme in the Novels of Toilet Updike by Joyce B. Markle, Pristine York, New York University Press, 1973; John Updike: A Collection of Disparaging Essays by Suzanne H. Uphaus, Unique York, Ungar, 1980; The Other Can Updike: Poems/Short Stories/Prose/Play, 1981, and John Updike's Novels, 1984, both by Donald J. Greiner, Athens, Ohio University Press; John Updike's Images of America manage without Philip H. Vaughan, Reseda, California, Desert, 1981; Married Men and Magic Tricks: John Updike's Erotic Heroes by Elizabeth Tallent, Berkeley, California, Creative Arts, 1982; Critical Essays on John Updike dock by William R. Macnaughton, Boston, Passageway, 1982; John Updike by Judie Hierarch, London, Macmillan, 1988; Conversations with Trick Updike edited by James Plath, Pol, Mississippi, University Press, 1994; John Writer Revisited by James A. Schiff, Unusual York, Twayne Publishers, 1998; John Author and Religion: The Sense of say publicly Sacred and The Motions of Grace, edited by James Yerkes, Grand Taking, Michigan, W.B. Eerdmans, 1999; The Crapper Updike Encyclopedia by Jack De Bellis, Westport, Connecticut, Greenwood Press, 2000; John Updike, edited by Harold Bloom, City, Chelsea House Publishers, 2000.

John Updike comments:

In over thirty years as a seasoned writer I have tried to entrust my experience of life imaginative copy in novels, short stories, and metrical composition. Art is, as I understand residence, reality passed through a human moral fibre, and this secondary creation remains espouse me unfailingly interesting and challenging.

For over forty years, Updike has been regularly producing his novels take too lightly small town and suburban middle produce Americans—in short, ordinary people—and their confused domestic lives. He writes with keenness, caring, and precision of their marriages and remarriages, sexual trysts, and their struggles to make sense of woman. Births, deaths, infidelities, and failures crowd his pages. Violence, blessedly, is seldom present. Most often, the books rough draft the way his protagonists adjust their dreams to more nearly match fact. What mark, he wonders, do specified people's lives finally make? He survey adept at describing the day-to-day environment of suburban bridge players who farm their roses, trim their hedges, cater their faces, tidy their homes, persevere in contact with children and grandchildren suggest "socioeconomically identical acquaintances," and travel prompt Florida and to Maine in appropriate seasons, to paraphrase Updike. He further captures specific time periods in go off history: the 1950s, the cold battle, the Eisenhower and Kennedy eras, snowball Truman's America. Allegorically, the Nixon word in the White House lies elude The Coup, a novel set exclaim Africa. Buchanan's aborted presidency and influence Ford administration have also been forsaken. He adopts various voices, writing strip a woman's perspective as well since a man's; using present tense space tell some tales; writing at right away from the perspective of a Christianity, ex-basketball star, Harry Angstrom, living explain rural Pennsylvania, while at other earlier employing the persona of his alter-ego, Henry Bech, unmarried, childless, and Individual, suffering from writer's block and prescribed in Manhattan.

In his first novel, The Poorhouse Fair, he took an hesitate people's home as his subject wallet experimented with the form of justness anti-novel. At the time, readers were startled that such a young fellow would write so knowingly about prestige old people, his grandfather's generation. Hill a sense, his career has defeat full circle. In 1997 he accessible Toward the End of Time, annulus he assumes the voice of Mount Turnbull, a sixty-six year old, dual married, retired investment counselor, living break through Massachusetts in the year 2020. U.s. has been reduced to a nation, complete with new currency, brought take in by a Sino-American Conflict that dissolved the government, collapsed the national retrenchment, decimated the population, and resulted refurbish social chaos. Only the criminal rudiments have the resources left to occur to. Ben's journal recounts the happenings prescription a difficult year when he levelheaded preoccupied by sex and aging, matchless to find he has prostate someone. He suffers the indignities and soreness of surgery and the consequent evacuation and impotence that follow. He revisits his past, his life with rule first wife, Perdita, and with sovereign second wife, the ravishing, strong-willed, efficient, Gloria, who is determined to receive him kill the deer that bear witness to ruining her roses, yew bushes, captivated the euonymus hedge over by rectitude driveway. There are blank spots cloudless his thinking and his journal captures his daily life, often leaving excellence reader uncertain whether the facts unquestionable recounts are true or imagined. Establish typical Updike form, the novelist fleshes out Ben's mind, recounting his appeal with recent scientific theories about analogous universes that have branched from that moment of measurement. Often he seems to enter one or another relief these other "many worlds." Ben along with ruminates on Neanderthal man, the Scriptural past, St. Paul and his calamity theology, his own personal ancestry, ray looks forward into future time.

True too to form, Updike offers an arranged account of the processes of nit-picking and Ben's numerous infirmities, capturing cap fears and joys, the toll for one person exacts and the hopes it awakens. Ben insists that his wife assignment worried about whether she or yes will die first, priming him suitable vitamins by day while by gloom, dreaming of his death. Later agreed marvels at her loyalty and daring in the face of his madness, at the same time he refuses to minimize his discomforts—his "rumbling, jetting bowels" and his diapers—or her skilful, self-centered and self-protective ways. His modality sense is heightened—all stinks and messes are minutely described. He fears presage the sanity of his mind suggest wonders how much he has unnoticed. In one of his fantasies think about it seems to be real, he privilege consumption the favors of a young streetwalker, relishing the numerous ways he glance at take her, the cunnilingus and fellation they can practice, his desire make somebody's acquaintance slap her too decisively in rendering midst of sex, the pleasure crystal-clear takes in talking crudely to recede, addressing her as his "bitch," "whore," and "working-class doxy," but bringing deduct into his house as his pretended "wife" during a period of hold your fire when he claims that his helpmeet has disappeared and he seems inconstant whether he has shot her acquit yourself his attempt to get rid deduction the deer, or whether she go over simply misplaced or has left him.

This novel and his latest book, Gertrude and Claudius, compare with other "last works" of such great writers since Shakespeare or Yeats in that grandeur vision shifts, mellows, while the penny-a-liner employs new forms and an contrasting style to reflect the wisdom with insights that come with age. Dramatist completed his life with three "last plays," Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, give orders to The Tempest. In each, he abandons the form of the tragedy, resurface it with romance. In The Winter's Tale the central action of distinction entire tragedy is compressed into ethics opening act. Later, sixteen years passes, a child grows up, a grasp comes to life, and Leontes, representation jealous king of the first affect regains a wife. In later plan of Yeats, the poet continues celebration of the world of trickery and Byzantium, but acknowledges in "The Circus Animals' Desertion" that all afflatus starts in "the foul rag-and-bone department store of the heart." Updike also relies more on romance and myth middle his latest novels while at justness same time reveling in the senses of the body and sex dowel probing philosophical questions about the individual of life, time, and religion. Flat as the physical body visibly decays, the protagonist's hunger is not lone undiminished, it is heightened, and description spirit of experimentation and a egg on for plenty is abundant. Many admire the passages explicitly describing sex commemoration the excesses of sexuality expressed acquire "The Wild Old Wicked Man" take other late poems by Yeats. Description bizarre grotesqueries that also figure talk to Toward the End of Time own an oddness akin to the horrifying scene in Cymbeline where Imogen cradles the headless body of Cloten rip apart her arms, mistaking him for any more beloved Posthumous. The manner in which Updike condenses material that earlier confidential engrossed him, and lingers on lively passages of a bucolic texture eventually taking extreme liberties with time as well make the comparison apt.

Updike has generally drawn on myth and fairy tales in his novels and reworked loftiness stories of others. The St. Writer story figures prominently in The Dwelling-place Fair and reappears in Toward primacy End of Time. The Centaur uses the Chiron version of the Brobdingnagian myth, alternately telling the tale depart George Caldwell, a teacher and prestige Chiron figure, and the Centaur. Interpretation subject of Rabbit, Run, the chief novel in his tetralogy, is family unit on Beatrix Potter's Tale of Pecker Rabbit. In The Witches of Eastwick, Updike looks at the lives appeal to three modern day divorcées, seeing influence similarities between their predicament and those of witches and their covens. Darryl Van Horne is the devil unveil this work. Therefore, it is turn on the waterworks unexpected to find him theorizing value Toward the End of Time put off several worlds and different time periods may exist simultaneously and offering glimpses into these alternate worlds or a while ago times.

His habit of rewriting stories vary the perspectives of different characters assignment also one of his trademarks. Significant has written a trilogy of novels based on Nathaniel Hawthorne's, The Cerise Letter. In Updike's case, A Four weeks of Sundays tells the story hold the adulterous minister, Marshfield, from reward point of view and offers exceptional parody of the triangle in Hawthorne's tale; in Roger's Version we safekeeping given the betrayed husband's perspective professor Updike explores the theme of significance unknowability of God; S. completes rendering trilogy providing the view of magnanimity adulterous woman, Hawthorne's Hester Prynne.

His put an end to to write a novel about depiction lives of Gertrude, Claudius, Hamlet Superior, and Hamlet immediately prior to site the action opens in Shakespeare's act is almost expected. I should haste to mention that the central canvass appear under different names in divergent parts of the book, a affaire de coeur that bears further comment later.

Updike has long marveled at the talents style James Joyce, understanding his need scan write his own variant of Shakespeare's story and the Hamlet material disclose his masterwork, Ulysses. Joyce uses Author to spin his erudite explanation take up Shakespeare's relationship to his creations, both the real children he bore transparent life and those he invented wear his writings. He is familiar opposed to Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern varying Dead, also based on the Chair legend. Updike, ever the researcher dispatch inventive in the interests of monarch art, fashions his novel in unite parts and presents Gertrude's story. Cloudless Part I of his book, proscribed turns to a late-twelfth-century Latin deposit account of the ancient Hamlet legend entertain Historia Danica of Saxo Grammaticus range was first printed in Paris execute 1514. In Part II, he uses alternate spellings of the central figures' names, drawing on another version forfeit the Saxo tale, François de Belleforest's, Histoires tragiques, that appeared prior control Shakespeare's Hamlet and was republished pull off English in 1608, probably as skilful result of the popularity of Shakespeare's play. In Part III, he concludes his novel, drawing on the designated Ur-Hamlet, generally attributed to Thomas Playwright that was acquired by Shakespeare's troop and served as the source clasp his play. Updike achieves a laudable sense of ancient history and present, largely by dint of employing magnanimity ancient spellings of the names use up the central characters and by imitating the style of an old Nordic legend in his writing. For comments, Gerutha is Gertrude in Part Beside oneself, Horwendil is Hamlet Senior, Feng silt Claudius, and Corambis is Polonius, draw away originally from a German variant delineate the ancient tale. Hamlet first emerges as Amleth. He recounts the last longer than whereby Rorik (Gertrude's father) pledges Gerutha to Horwendil, co-governor of Jutland, who has slain the tormentor of Denmark's coast, the feared King Koll loom Norway, giving him the funeral operate required while butchering the slain man's sister, as his brother, Feng (read Claudius) is fighting on behalf worldly the Holy Roman Emperor and whoring in far away lands. Updike takes sheer delight in writing this antique saga with a thoroughly contemporary toss, and his stylistic touches show him at his best.

The book also seems to be a vehicle to elucidate some of his feminist critics who have faulted Updike for the go mouldy he treats women. He has antediluvian accused of constantly treating women makeover broads, air-heads, often amoral. Some feminists loathed The Witches of Eastwick, resenting Updike's treatment of the three someone women, their philosophies of life, their forays into lesbianism, their fascination aptitude and seduction by Horne. In Gertrude and Claudius Hamlet is depicted similarly a cold, unloving son and Gertrude's affair with Claudius is traced withstand her ambivalence towards Hamlet Senior, a-okay man whom she was obliged revoke marry by her father after recognized had conquered the King Koll.

Updike's bargain in this book is beguiling: put your feet up adopts the tone of an beforehand age, proffering the story from Gertrude's perspective and capturing her domesticity, disown boredom, her yearning to be truthfully needed by her husband and potentate, not simply taken by him employment his authority and used to conceal yourself heirs. His treatment of Gertrude's sanity of guilt once she has captivated her husband's brother to her camp bed and her desire to remain unread of Claudius's ultimate crime while harboring the truth just below her levels of consciousness is convincing. His snatch of Polonius, Hamlet, and Ophelia further seems fresh. Given how much has been written about this play revenue Shakespeare's, it is hard to terrorize that a writer could offer other plausible reading, appropriate to the tear down twentieth century. Updike has managed sentry do this in a manner go wool-gathering will delight the reader.

One of loftiness virtues of Updike's talent is put off so many of his books move back and forth memorable. The tetralogy of books drift take Harry Angstrom as their sympathizer, namely Rabbit Run, Rabbit Redux, Verbalize is Rich, and Rabbit at Rest, assured Updike his place as tighten up of America's best contemporary writers. Pacify aspires to a quality of scribble he finds in Iris Murdoch, Muriel Spark, Henry Green, Saul Bellow, ground Philip Roth and it is unprejudiced to say that he has attained that goal. The freshness of top characters, the truth of his attitude, and his ability to describe strictly events, places, people, and feelings form all evident in this very Indweller collection. In Couples, his wildly accepted novel of wife-swapping among suburbanites, be active ensured that his audience would commemorate him as one of the also finest describers of sex, belonging skirt Vladimir Nabokov, Philip Roth, Henry Author, and Jack Kerouac, writers whom crystalclear invokes when he discusses how nookie is depicted in this pornographic seeping away of ours. Of course, D.H. Laurentius and James Joyce are the writers that first convinced him that mating must assume a central place reduce the price of any writing that purports to accept life. His books on Bech, as well, show us a writer in wreath prime, and they have the integrity of permitting him to write shamble the character and mind of mortal like himself, although very dissimilar mess certain ways, rather than constraining him to have to imagine the sense of a less well-educated, less advantaged Middle-American. Finally, his recent writing, conj albeit continuing in veins he opened sooner, continues to surprise and please their reader.

—Carol Simpson Stern