Bech Is Back

by John Updike

Book Overview

The renowned Henry Bech is now fifty years old. In this wonderful classic novel, Bech reflects on his fame, travels the world, marries an Episcopalian divorc?e from Westchester, and--surprise to all--writes a book that becomes a runaway bestseller. If you've never read Updike before, there's no better place to start. If you've read him for years, you'll be delightfully reminded of John Updike's rightful place in the pantheon of quintessential American...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0394528069
• ISBN13: 9780394528069
• Release Date: September 1982
• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
• Length: 195 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.3" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

How To Write a Modern Novel

First write a short story (all the time making sure it will be published in The New Yorker or Playboy); if it works, write another one, using the same character or characters; when you have written three or four of these, start thinking about grouping them together in book-form (remember: publish and republish your work as much as possible); then write a couple of cementing 'chapters' and offer it to the public as a novel. This is how John Updike has written (among other things) Bech is Back - his second book about a Jewish-American literary novelist prone to writer's block. The advantages of using the compositional method described above are clear: instead of that heavily programmatic, overdetermined, obsolete thing we call 'plot', one gets instead a sequence of snapshots, or a gallery of pictures. We get a book that has obviously evolved organically over time, pushing out roots into only the most fertile soil. We loose old-fashioned unity of design, but we do not miss it. This is writing like a cubist: the by turns judicious and whimsical assembling of fragments of truth, rather than the facile pursuit of an impossible illusion of coherent 'wholeness'. Not a word is wasted in this short, smart, clever, muscular punch of a book.