Odd Jobs: Essays and Criticism

By John Updike

Book Overview

John Updike's fourth collection of nonfiction is his biggest and richest yet. The years have brought to him an increasing number of odd jobs, to which he has wittily responded. Here he contemplates our national monuments, the female body, the Fourth of July, the Gospel of Matthew, other writers, moralists, aspects of science, and more.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679404147
• ISBN13: 9780679404149
• Release Date: October 1991
• Publisher: Knopf
• Length: 919 Pages
• Weight: 3.34 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.8" x 1.8" x 6.8"

Customer Reviews

Great Updike Essays

It's a shame that these earlier essays by Updike have gone out of print. Perceived in the same graceful style of his most famous essay collection, Hugging the Shore, which won the Pulitzer Prize, the readings in Picked Up Pieces are no less startling in their breathtaking insights and sympathetic readings of a wide range of authors and their works. Updike is so at ease with all aspects of the language and the culture that reading him is like a guided tour into the greatest pleasure and deepest instincts of the the literary terrain of the time. Highly recommended, and a vote to reprint these essays for our own time.