More Matter: Essays and Criticism

By John Updike

Book Overview

John Updike's fiftieth book and fifth collection of assorted prose, most of it first published in The New Yorker , brings together eight years' worth of essays, criticism, addresses, introductions,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0375406301
• ISBN13: 9780375406300
• Release Date: September 1999
• Publisher: Knopf
• Length: 928 Pages
• Weight: 3.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.5" x 2.0" x 6.7"

Customer Reviews

Forget the feud, read the reviews!

I could plump just as vigorously for any of Updike's other collections of non-fiction ("Hugging The Shore" is my sentimental favorite, probably because it was my first) but since this, being the most recent, is the one I am likeliest to persuade you to buy, I'll say here that he seems to me virtually the ideal book reviewer: unfailingly interesting and articulate, fair minded, broad searching, neither too breezy nor long-winded. The feud set off by his filing Tom Wolfe's "A Man In Full" under Entertainment rather than Literature (not, to my mind, a seriously disputable judgement) is a very silly bit of sibling bickering, not even as compelling in its own tiny dimensions as the old hostilities between Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal. (Any geezers out there who remember the ink spilled over that one?) That it has taken away even a small bit of the attention that should have been paid to Updike's delightfully long-lived vitality in this field is a downright shame.

Love him or leave him, he's the best we've got

Nowhere on the modern scene do we find a writer with an appettite as voracious as John Updike's. Thankfully, Updike has the skill and savvy to handle his way around just about any subject with artfulness and dignity, so that his appetite never seems to consume his talent. Only Updike would be able to put together a collection like this for the third time without having to let it flounder in sub-par material-- most writers wouldn't stand up through just one such collection. Each piece, with only the rarest of exceptions, finds its feet and leads the reader someplace interesting and substantial. Most of all, this collection shows that Updike is just plain good at the modern essay. He has such a nice, consistent balance of content and flair, that reading his pieces becomes enjoyable no matter what the subject interests of the reader may be. Reading his collections can be a sort of tour-de-force clinic in the art of the essay: this one is no exception. Read it as an exercise in appreciation for the master of modern literary form.

Updike rules!

Usually I'd be happy to let Updike fend for himself, but the misguided comments below finally got my goat. His status as a first-rate critic--not to mention a first-rate novelist and essayist--is so glaringly apparent that I must take Mr. Finn's remarks as perverse contrarianism. And that goes double for his loopy defense of Tom Wolfe, whose amusing and observant novels can't hold a candle to the brilliance of Updike's Rabbit Angstrom series. Do you really believe that 100 years from now, old men will be uttering lines from "A Man in Full" on their deathbeds? What an absurdity!

His Best Book of Essays Yet

As varied as HUGGING THE SHORE, but far more eloquent and intorspective. His remarks on Welty are the best I've ever read and he is not afraid to be honest about literure's flavor of the month: Tom Wolfe. (Agree with him or not, he presents a thought provoking argument and isn't that what an essay is for. His comments about Melville add to the previous work, but stand on their own. Updike is a stud!

Book of the year by our greatest writer

No matter where you open this one up, there's something interesting to read about, described in beautiful prose. The range and variety of topics and styles of essay are astounding.