Updike

Biographies cum Literary Criticism books can sometimes be dry but Begley's "Updike" reads like something from the New York Times bestselling fiction list. `Updike" is like Madmen on steroids. It briefly covers Updike's childhood in a small Pennsylvania town and then quickly moves into his Harvard years in the `50's and on to his work at the New Yorker Magazine and his best selling, award winning, (including two Pulitzer's) novel writing career. I've never been an Updike fan though his literary influence is undeniable so over the years I've repeatedly tried to enjoy his books to no avail. It's not that I can't recognize how lovely his writing is it's his attitude toward women that I find off putting. Concurrent with this Bio I started to reread the first in his Rabbit series "Rabbit, Run" and hit the same wall. His descriptions and thoughts about women are insulting.

I've been a fan of the AMC series "Madmen" since it began and it deals with the same attitudes and cultural influences with all the prejudices that were current then, most personally, of course, it's the marginalization of women that rancors most. I kept wondering while reading "Rabbit, Run" why "Madmen" doesn't offend yet Updike's writing does. I suppose the answer is that "Madmen" is careful to see things from a 21st century sensibility with more subtly. Updike wasn't one to mince words. He flat out wrote what he saw around him and maybe felt personally. I can't think that those two were too vastly different but Begley urges us to remember that Rabbit was a character and that we shouldn't project Updike onto him yet at the same time Begley emphasizes how extremely biographical Updike's writing was. It's a tough sell which makes it even more surprising how much sympathy as well as admiration Begley is able to infuse into his insights about Updike. "Updike" is a real page turner unlike few literary bios/criticism I've read. I'm sure this is due largely to Begley writing and research skills but he also knew Updike slightly as a young child. Adam Begley is the son of writer Louis Begley*. Updike's engaging fun loving personality impressed Adam as a child. There's no dry research apparent in Begley's book. Perhaps this personal involvement is why.

*Louis Begley is best known for his books on relationships mostly romantic ones. "About Schmidt" was made into a movie starring Jack Nicholson and Kathy Bates. In my opinion both the book and the movie are excellent.

In this absorbing biography by Adam Begley - for whom, when Begley was a toddler, John Updike once juggled oranges - Begley returns the favor and juggles the many strands of Updike's life, and crafts a tale out of it. Begley has apparently read everything which Updike wrote, and describes the virtues of Updike's writing as a combination of "keen observation, stylistic brilliance and painful emotional honesty."

In reading Updike's novel CENTAUR for a fiction writing-literature class at NYU, I came upon a sentence so beautiful I had to mentally step back. At the next class, another student commented on the particular perfection of a sentence in the novel. Other students agreed it had struck them, too. It was the same sentence. In reading the first novel of Updike's Rabbit series, I felt compelled to type a list of the descriptions Updike used. They were poetry and art in one. In this biography, we read that Updike studied art at Oxford, after Harvard, and wrote verse for the NEW YORKER. Poetry and art leavened his fiction. Critic Whitney Balliett describes Updike's style in which a "poet's care and sensitivity lie lightly on every word on each hand-turned sentence, in each surprising and exact metaphor and simile".

How did Updike become a virtuoso? What was the nature of his virtuosity? What was he like as a man, husband, father and friend?

This book provides the answers to those questions. So, what IS unique about Updike and his work? As he comes across in this biography, Updike is endlessly quotable. He had a facility with words. He possibly could write more quickly than he could read, Begley suggests. As an only child, he found comfort in belonging as an adult - to a congregation, a poker club or a golf group. His fiction is mainly autobiographical - "every incident with any pith turned up later somewhere else," Updike acknowledged. You get the sense he lived to write, not wrote to live. And that perhaps he enjoyed his writing life more than his real life.

This book notes Updike said that he believed his writerly duty was to "give the mundane its beautiful due". His male characters are composites of his complex self. He could be charming and a tad malicious, and so could his characters. He had the I.Q. of a genius. He taught one summer session at Harvard to 12 lucky students. One recalls: "What was unforgettable was how smart he was." Afterwards, Updike returned to his first love, writing, commenting: "Teaching takes a lot of energy. It uses somehow the very brain cells that you should be writing with."

One of the best ways to get to know Updike is to read his actual words. This book is richly littered with Updike's witty quotes which illustrate how his mind worked. Some favorites:

* On reading Proust for the first time ~ "It was a revelation to me that words could entwine and curl so, yet keep a live crispness and the breath of utterance. I was dazzled by the witty similes...that wove art and nature into a single luminous fabric. This was not better writing, it was writing with a whole new nervous system."

* On his idea of a publisher ~ "gallant, wise and willing to lose money on a book."

* On the magazine NEW YORKER-ese where he worked ~ "big-town folksy"

* On his early success in writing ~ "I had given myself five years to become a 'writer', and my becoming one immediately has left me with an uneasy, apologetic sense of having blundered through the wrong door."

* On his first lecture in late Romantic poetry at Harvard ~ "As I settled into the first lecture, in my one-armed chair, my heart was beating like that of a boy with a pocket of heavy nickels as he walks through the door . . . of a candy shop. It would be bliss . . . I thought, to go on forever like this, filling in one's ignorance of English literature slot by slot, poet by poet, under the guidance of tenured wizards, in classrooms dating from the colonial era, while the down-drooping golden-leaved elm branches shivered in the sunlight outside in the Yard."

On Thomas Pynchon's writing ~ "like reading a very long Popeye strip, without the spinach."

John Updike also wrote reviews, and left his rules for review writing for reviewers to benefit from. An example of his review of Nabakov's ADA: "His prose has never . . . menaced a cowering reader with more bristling erudition, garlicky puns, bearish parentheses, and ogreish winks". Who writes reviews with this language?

Readers of Updike, writers and literature lovers will find much to enjoy and inspire in this comprehensive and incisive biography on Updike.

To undertake a biography of John Updike, one of the most prolific and talented writers of the last half of the 20th century is, to me, like climbing a very big mountain. You have to prepare well as the author, Adam Begley, demonstrates through his command of the copious material created in print by John Updike. Begley interviewed hundreds of people who knew Updike personally. Some of them knew him intimately. He tracks the amazing arc of Updike's life across his romantic involvements - some of them rather racy - as well as his writing achievements, his education, places he lived, worked and traveled, his families and his colleagues. The book presents copious examples of Updike's work and uses it well to describe how it originated in Updike's mind and experience and how it relates to real people and places. It would take a very long time to read everything written by John Updike from his hundreds of short stories to his novels, poems and even his cartoons. The author tells you enough about many of Updike's works that you, the reader, should be able to select a few to read if you are new to this author. If, like me, you have enjoyed some of Updike's novels, the book can help you decide what to read next as Begley tells you a bit about some of the major works. For example, I sort of lost track of John Updike after the Rabbit Angstrom series and was pleased to learn from Begley that Updike also wrote some adventure novels based upon his travels to intriguing places on much of the globe.

Updike experienced two long marriages, sequentially of course - and many affairs. Begley discusses all of this in a frank manner and pulls no punches when he thinks Updike needs to have the veneer peeled back so that the internal man can be seen. Interestingly, Updike's first wife was a source for material for the biography, but his second wife does not get any credits from Begley. She plays a major role in the book, but the author evidently did not gain any material from interviews with her. But, thanks to Updike's works and records, including a trove of correspondence and drafts, Begley had no want of material - quite the contrary. This book of over 500 pages belongs in the library of any serious reader of American novels and will be an aid to students who aspire to authorship. I found it fascinating and fun to read with many an "ahah" as new ( to me) tidbits of "inside" information were revealed.

Updike is a very well written biography of one of the Great American Writers. This book not only taught me about the life of Updike, but also about how to appreciate and better understand his writing. It was hard to read this and not go back and reread many of Updikes books, stories and poems. My only issue is that not much is devoted to the second half of Updike's life. Also, I couldn't help but wonder about this: Adultery played such an part of Updike's first marriage (which lasted a couple of decades, yet he seems to have been completely faithful to his second wife. At least, this book presented no evidence to the contrary. I find it a little hard to swallow that a man who was quite the lothario quit cold turkey and stayed cheat-free for the last 40 years of his life. That being said, this is a great literary bio of a literary giant.

I knew quickly from the New York Times review that I would love reading this memoir of John Updike. I never read any of his books, but I saw his touch in other parts of my life. My grandfather recently passed and at the funeral I remembered that his nickname for my grandmother was Rabbit. That always seemed a perculiar nickname, but now I'm almost certain that it has a connection to Updike's Rabbit tetralogy. The way that they reflect the fragility and the fury of the individual, about sexual freedom, guilt in America must have touched them as they raised their family.

"Begley's biography, shows that Updike's writing and ultimately his entire life were shaped by his attachment to the ordinariness of his suburban middle-class life, and his desire to reach beyond its boundaries. In a way, what Melville did for whales, Updike did for upper-middle-class life in suburban America: He produced partly allegorical realist novels containing an encyclopedic array of the thousands of facets of human experience, all collected with loving attention to his subject matter." - Orphan Pamuk of the NY Times

Adam Begley opens this extraordinarily detailed examination of John Updike's life and work by telling the story of a young journalist who got a first hand taste of exactly how John Updike used the events in his own life as the subjects of his fiction. It was 1983, and Updike, then 50, had a best-seller to his credit, Rabbit is Rich, the third book in his Rabbit tetralogy. Bill Ecenbarger was researching a story on Updike for the Philadelphia Inquirer in the great writer's boyhood Pennsylvania hometown, when he met Updike's mother, a writer herself and a strong influence on the writer throughout his life. Linda Hoyer Updike invited the young man back to her isolated farmhouse to meet her son, who had come home, she said, to change out the storm windows on her house. Though at first reluctant, Updike took Ecenbarger on a tour of his boyhood haunts in Berks County, PA, providing the basis for an excellent article. But there was another story to come -- this one by Updike. The July 4, 1983 issue of The New Yorker, which published more than 140 of Updike's stories over the decades, featured a short story called "One More Interview," a very lightly fictionalized version of Ecenbarger's visit. As Begley relates, "Updike had transcribed verbatim their exchanges."

Reading Begley's book, it's easy to discover how common a practice it was for Updike to do just this. From his earliest stories to his controversial best seller Couples, Updike found little in his life, from his parents to his friends to his marriage to his infidelities, off limits for his fiction. He even stated baldly more than once that he considered fiction to be reality with a few things adjusted. Because Updike was not always the most honorable or pleasant man, despite his usual public sheepish grin and charming aw-shucks manner, the resulting portrait of the artist as a young, middle aged, and old man is a muddy, at times unpleasant one, with more than a tad of TMI (too much information) to find the man likeable.

Begley's exhaustive work is a "literary biography," that is, he writes about Updike as an author, and draws on Updike's fiction to illustrate what the author was living through and thinking at each stage of his life. Updike's true-to-life work made that job if not easy, then at least less difficult. Begley clearly read all of Updike's oeuvre, including his correspondence, his drafts, the later editions of his work that included text changes, and studied both popular and scholarly reviews of the author's work, not all of which was positive. Reading the biography, one is both enthralled by Begley's thoroughness, and almost equally bogged down by the frequent and detailed quotes from Updike's writing that Begley uses to illuminate the various periods of the author's life.

The biography is proof positive that the most creative among us are not necessarily the best human beings. Updike was a very competitive writer, friendly with many other authors but just as equally jealous of others' success. Most problematic to this reader were the details of Updike's serial infidelities, starting early in his first marriage to Mary Updike, the mother of his four children, but apparently ending when he married his second wife, Martha, with whom he was having an affair while still living with Mary. Mary Updike contributed many reflections to Begley's research, as did Updike's children. Martha, however, for whom Begley clearly has great disdain, did not offer any thoughts to the biography.

As great and influential writer as Updike deserves a thorough and complete biography, and Begley has definitely provided us with that. The long and extensive quotes from Updike's work are certainly appropriate to this bio, even though the way they are used to illustrate Updike's life sometimes seems little more than gossip. Given all that, Begley's work is so well-researched, well-written, and fascinating as to overcome its deficiencies.

This biography was ok, Updike's books are
ok and so was the man. None of it really excited me.
I liked his books and this bio stated what I always felt.
He was writing himself. Thats ok. He was a farm boy,
he was brilliant, he was the apple of his mothers eye.
He went to Harvard and he was compelled to write. This
bio and the recently read Salinger bio showed
their need to put thought to paper. Writing was as breath
to each of these men, and perhaps to all writers
Updike, unlike Salinger was not a recluse,
however, he was far from warm and fuzzy.
Seems not true to his character but Updike had brief periods
of being a womanizer.....perhaps to enrich his novels?
Begley gave insight to much of Updike's literature.
I recommend this book as a source of information
more than a enjoyable read.

Around 1990, shortly after I had arrived in the United States, me and my wife were living in Ipswich MA. Then, after one more landlord had sold out from under us, we heard that 26 ½ E. Street was for rent. Our friends nodded sagely, and said “Oh yes, that’s the Updike house.”

Our new landlords lived in the larger part of the house, and the apartment we had was not so full of Updike memories. Eventually they showed us the rest of the house, including Updike’s study. Although it was not large he had a great view of the busy part of Ipswich. We also saw the marks he gouged in the floor paint with his heels as he sought inspiration.

But Updike had already made Ipswich famous by his book, Couples. Thinly disguising the town as “Tarbox,” he wrote of a group of friends who not only played sports and socialized together, but also slept with each other. It was probably the first novel of its kind that described a life in “The post-pill paradise.”

Updike came from a sleepy part of Pennsylvania, and life seemed worse when he moved from a small town to the country. But his mother was a would-be novelist (and got herself published in the end) and Updike was born a creator. He went to Harvard and soon gained a name there, and achieved a major aspiration – to be published in The New Yorker.

Adam Begley has done a great job with this book. The New Yorker’s Janet Malcolm described it “as if he was writing a novel.” But that’s understandable given that Updike greatly described his life in his novels. Quite often, Begley quotes a paragraph from one of Updike’s books or short stories, and then carries on in his own words.

Updike was a clear-eyed observer of the human condition. As well as a whole series of short stories and several books he had two series – the Rabbit stories, and the tales of Henry Bech. From the first story, Rabbit Run, “Rabbit” Angstrom tries to break free from his life. Henry Bech is Updike’s alter ego, but with an ability to fall into trouble at any minute.

Updike became famous and his books sold very well. He sold the house to friends and moved to a much better house in Ipswich. His philandering led him to confess to his wife. She replied that she had been unfaithful before him. Eventually he left his wife, wooed the wife of the couple he’d sold his old Ipswich house to, and they became married.

You may have come across Updike’s work in the adaption of his novel “The Witches of Eastwick.” This movie starred Cher, Susan Sarandon, and Michelle Pfeiffer as the witches, who are intrigued by a new man who moves into the large house in Eastwick. This man is Jack Nicholson who has a devilish way with the women.

The front cover of the book shows a smiling Updike and what I take to be Crane’s Beach, where Ipswich meets the sea. If Updike turned to his right he would see the Crane house, which was used for the exterior shots in “The Witches of Eastwick.”

Just when I thought that I had lost touch with Updike, it turns out that he had spent a year in the town of Georgetown - the next town over. He died in 2009 in the tony town of Beverly Farms. I doubt you could read this book without wanting to read Updike’s work. That’s how I felt after finishing it. Begley keeps the story moving and you don’t want to give up. I highly recommend it.

Adam Begley's book depicts the life of John Updike, using as its base, his literary works. It is explained how the more one reads Updike's work the more we can see his own experiences. His writings are described as well as his life. Interviews with relatives and friends also add to clarifying this writer's time.

His personal disappointments and struggles are well described as are his obsessions and affairs with various women. We learn how he put friends and neighbors under his scrutiny for his works such as 'Couples'.

There is much detail here as well as an exploration into the depth and uniqueness of Updike's writing. One does not have to have read his books, although if you have not you will probably want to put at least a few on your reading list.

This fascinating biography of the late writer, John Updike, was written by Adam Begley, son of fiction writer Louis Begley. The author focuses on the relationship between Updike's life and his fiction writing, finding many similarities between them. it emphasizes Updike's tremendous energy and wide-ranging talent, which included novels, short stories, poetry, art review, literary review, and even a book about golf. I recommend this biography to all Updike fans and especially to those who have read many of his works. This is one of the best books I have read this year.

Adam Begley's major claim is that John Updike was primarily an autobiographical writer. And much of this book is showing the relation between the life and the work. This is done in to use a favorite Updike word in a ' lucid' way. Begley quotes Updike on his own writing practice. "Creative excitement has invariably and only come to me when I felt I was transforming with a lively accuracy some piece of experienced reality to the page." This transformation is described throughout the book and illuminates both Updike's writing and his life.
Updike was the center of his own parents and grandparents world , and clearly as we all are but perhaps with special emphasis, the center of his own world. Begley time and again shows how experiences from his life are taken as basis for the Literature. He tells the story of Updike's relations with his parents, his particularly close relationship with the mother who dreamed of his taking flight, of Updike's long New Yorker connection, his special relationship with editor William Maxwell, his critical decision to leave the City and literary journalism for total dedication to his own creative work in Beverly Massachusetts, his relationship with his first wife, the adulterous 'Couples' years, the break- up of his first- marriage, the story of his second marriage, the story of his literary fortunes, and the slight turn-down in the last years, his great dedication,, his masterful professionalism, his religious devotion and questioning, his relationship to the small town world , and to the city, his love and criticism of America, etc etc. Updike was a tremendously rich and varied writer whose great cultural understanding and breadth informed the non- fiction work.
My sense is that this work is reasonable, balanced, fair and does the man and his work justice.
PS Begley is not uncritical of Updike and the theme of his selfishness, and his total dedication to his life task involved hurting others is also part of the story. But there is throughout the feeling of a biographer who is sympathetic to his subject and is doing his best to be fair to him while being informative and interesting to his readers.
PPS This is a masterful work. It shows the connection between the life and the writer and the stories that emerge from it in a very clear and close way.
PPPS There are questions about the life of Updike that are not answered here. The depiction of Updike's life with his second wife gives the feeling that she somehow controlled and dominated his life at the expense of his relationship with children and grandchildren. A gatekeeper she apparently did her best to give him the time and space he needed for his work. But the feeling of their relationship and especially his feeling for her is not made clear.
PPPPPS There is a suggestive paragraph in which Updike's aspirations for his children, and to some extent his disappointment with their career choices is described. But we get no real sense of his relationship with the children and grandchildren. We do get a feeling that he was a far more devoted father than interested grandfather. But it would have been interesting to know Begley's take on the way Updike felt about the closest members of his family.

Adam Begley's biography of John Updike is almost the perfect companion to the latter's prodigious output, novels, short stories and reviews. Updike was a one of a kind author in his ability to turn the mundane of everyday life (usually his) into precise, thought provoking reading that certainly provides a refuge from the confusion and noise of everyday life. even though the subject matter is the same. To a major extent Updike's biography parallels his entwinement with the New Yorker, in essence telling two stories at once. His competition with his mother and they independently using Berks County PA as a common stepping stone to their literary output are well covered as is Mr. Updike's unsurprising but frightening habit of looking at each and every interaction as a the basis of a short story. Mr. Begley's opening chapter "A Tour of Berks County" illustrates this perfectly. As is the purpose of any biography, the present one compels the reader to revisit the original source materials with additional insight and appreciation. Four rather than five stars? The footnotes. In this uncorrected proof version the asterisks in the text are minuscule nearly indistinguishable from the uneven surface of the newsprint quality paper used in this print version. Hopefully this is corrected in the published book - along with the far too many errors in including prepositions. Also, on page 334, the author notes in a footnote that redux as in "Rabbit Redux" was, according to Updike, brought back into circulation by him. Our biographer goes on to point out that the stem of redux, duc- is shared with educate. It is unclear what the point of this comment is - unless Mr. Begley is crediting Mr. Updike with the role of educator. One final point, triggered by this biography and the Berks/Tarbox focus as a major part of Mr. Updike's output is a certain similarity to a contemporary whose output was, like Updike's, thinly veiled autobiography, Mr. Dennis Potter.

Adam Begley's exhaustive, engaging and every once in a while repetitive biography of John Updike takes up a difficult task" How do you write a biography about a man who exposed just about every aspect of his life in his fiction? The answer is you check and double check, then bring in other sources. Rather than bring us vivid descriptions of his boyhood and writing life-- after all, they appear in Updike's stories -- Begley offers his interpretations of Updike's writing (along with asides weighing the relative merits of each examined story, poem or novel) and fits the work into what he was doing at the time.

The biography takes us from Updike's birth and life with his schoolteacher dad and frustrated-writer (and somewhat volatile) mother, occasionally comparing the stories each wrote about the same event. He then follows Updike to Harvard, New York and Massachusetts, offering interpretations on why Updike did some things (leave a staff job at The New Yorker, move to the suburbs, write about dictators) and dealing frankly with the infidelity that fueled much of his fiction. He also does a good job describing the many facets of Updike's personality. Updike played the clown in groups and the humble egghead in interviews; but he also had an enormous regard for his work and a ferocious drive to create art on the level of Henry Green and Marcel Proust. Begley draws on a wealth of sources beyond Updike's own writing and finds contradictions; for example, Updike offered conflicting reasons of why is first novel, "The Poorhouse Fair," didn't get published by Harper. This biography will add many layers of appreciation to anyone's reading of Updike's works and could inspire young writers to follow Updike's path as a free-lance writer of fiction and criticism.

I love to read biographies and assessments of authors/actors/artists and their body of work. I feel like I got both in "Updike" and I feel like I may have enjoyed it more as a casual reader of Updike's work.

I have read some of his articles and one book. I wouldn't call myself a "fan," so I approached this with a distant that made the journey through the man's life very interesting and engaging to read as a standalone. However, I think dedicated Updike readers will also find value in the connections Begley draws between the author's work and life.

Adam Begley has captured the man and author John Updike in this biography. Begley correlates Updikes life and his literary works throughout the biography. Begley himself proves to be an excellent writer; he also proves himself to be intimately familiar with the literary works of Updike--his novels, memoirs, short stories, poems, essays and letters. Begley's knowledge of the literature of Updike allows him to adroitly intersperse excerpts, interpretations and comments about it throughout the life story of Updike. Rarely does a page go by in which Begley is not extracting portions of literature and matching them to life events.

This biography is thorough and dense. I can't think of any biography being more comprehensive about Updike and his literature. The only area where this book could be viewed as lacking is in the area of Updike's children. Begley often mentions the children but avoids much depth or elaboration on their lives, professions, activities, etc. He stays on Updike the man and his works.

I was somewhat familiar with Updike prior to reading this book but only from the distance of having read a few of his novels and stories. I became interested in his biography and learning about his history and progression as a writer. In my view, Updike is not a likeable character. He seems to have been narcissistic and self-indulgent at the expense of his moral character and relationship to others. In his Preface to Milton’s Paradise Lost, C.S. Lewis describes Satan’s world as “a world of misery and a world of lies and propaganda, wishful thinking and incessant autobiography.” I found Updike's life to be on of "incessant autobiography" which can be annoying to read. Begley makes the appalling behavior of Updike bearable by his good writing and steady transitions.

For any fan of Updike, you will find this to be top-notch.

I have always loved reading Updikes books starting in high school all the way through college. I have re-read a few of them each time coming to a different conclusion each time. So when I saw this I was very excited to read. There were so many things I never knew about his children and family that I just could not put down. This is a exciting, fast read. So detailed by someone who really did their homework to give us a first hand look at the brilliant author.

We lost a great author but boy the work he left behind will last for generations to come.

Big thumbs up!

This was a very well researched and well written biography. The author clearly has a long and thorough knowledge of Updike and his stories. It moves briskly and the author's analysis of Updike's writings is well done and interesting.

I don't have the requisite level of Updike expertise to hail this biography as "definitive," but it certainly comes close in both breadth and detail. Though sufficiently footnoted to suit literary historians, this is an outstanding book that will reward anyone with 500 pages worth of curiosity about the subject.

I expected somewhat of a biography and got a very complicated analytical format of matching New Yorker story characters with Updike's developing life. Put it down after 120 pages. It's not a book you can skim thru.

After reading this biography, I have more details of Updike's life, but he remained as elusive to his biographer as he seemed to be to most of the people who knew him. Updike's sentences glitter, but the scope of his stories is narrowly autobiographical. I gave all my Updikes away to our library's book sale a decade or so ago, because his relentless misogyny was so off-putting I didn't want to give him shelf space in my house. This biography did nothing to change my opinion. His poems, however, are much better than his prose.

(The star rating above is a general review for Updike's work) I intend to read the book after I am finished with my current project, but I have a question for Updike aficionados out there: does anyone know if anything still remains? Are there any unpublished stories out there, novel fragments, poems that, even as long as five years after his death, have yet to see the light of day? I discovered the work of Updike in college and read everything I could, good and bad, that he had written. I would be happy to read as much as a laundry list that might remain. Is there anything looming on the horizon waiting to be edited, collected, and published?

A lifelong Updike fan, I'm loving this biography. Haven't finished yet: going into the pieces Begley cites, and enjoying them all the more. The honesty and respect with which Begley shares, with us, his work with the writer and the family : remarkable.

Remembering no Updike read in my youth, although there very well may have been some, Adam Begley's book left me wanting to read none. Updike starts off confusing and draggy, starts coasting at Harvard and flying in New York, only to hit a wall in Ipswich. John Updike comes across as a self-obsessed mama's boy, a favorite son always craving special attention from a woman in one adulterous affair after another; until he ends up with a second wife who is like both a dominating mommy and daddy, shielding him from most of the outside world, including his own children. And all the "Early Acclaim For Updike" comments on the back of the ARC are from women! That is too funny.

I got halfway through this biography and couldn't read any further. I was completely disillusioned about Updike when I read about his life, especially his life in Ipswich, Mass. and later. He was promiscuous,and that's an understatement. He would have f****d a donkey if it stood still long enough. I don't think I'll ever be able to read Updike again, given what I've come to know about him. The biography is not a hatchet job; it simply reports the facts. The author interprets the stories and novels. There is solid documentation. It's easy to read. But----.

In this absorbing biography by Adam Begley - for whom, when Begley was a toddler, John Updike once juggled oranges - Begley returns the favor and juggles the many strands of Updike's life, and crafts a tale out of it. Begley has apparently read everything which Updike wrote, and describes the virtues of Updike's writing as a combination of "keen observation, stylistic brilliance and painful emotional honesty."

In reading Updike's novel CENTAUR for a fiction writing-literature class at NYU, I came upon a sentence so beautiful I had to mentally step back. At the next class, another student commented on the particular perfection of a sentence in the novel. Other students agreed it had struck them, too. It was the same sentence. In reading the first novel of Updike's Rabbit series, I felt compelled to type a list of the descriptions Updike used. They were poetry and art in one. In this biography, we read that Updike studied art at Oxford, after Harvard, and wrote verse for the NEW YORKER. Poetry and art leavened his fiction. Critic Whitney Balliett describes Updike's style in which a "poet's care and sensitivity lie lightly on every word on each hand-turned sentence, in each surprising and exact metaphor and simile".

How did Updike become a virtuoso? What was the nature of his virtuosity? What was he like as a man, husband, father and friend?

This book provides the answers to those questions. So, what IS unique about Updike and his work? As he comes across in this biography, Updike is endlessly quotable. He had a facility with words. He possibly could write more quickly than he could read, Begley suggests. As an only child, he found comfort in belonging as an adult - to a congregation, a poker club or a golf group. His fiction is mainly autobiographical - "every incident with any pith turned up later somewhere else," Updike acknowledged. You get the sense he lived to write, not wrote to live. And that perhaps he enjoyed his writing life more than his real life.

This book notes Updike said that he believed his writerly duty was to "give the mundane its beautiful due". His male characters are composites of his complex self. He could be charming and a tad malicious, and so could his characters. He had the I.Q. of a genius. He taught one summer session at Harvard to 12 lucky students. One recalls: "What was unforgettable was how smart he was." Afterwards, Updike returned to his first love, writing, commenting: "Teaching takes a lot of energy. It uses somehow the very brain cells that you should be writing with."

One of the best ways to get to know Updike is to read his actual words. This book is richly littered with Updike's witty quotes which illustrate how his mind worked. Some favorites:

* On reading Proust for the first time ~ "It was a revelation to me that words could entwine and curl so, yet keep a live crispness and the breath of utterance. I was dazzled by the witty similes...that wove art and nature into a single luminous fabric. This was not better writing, it was writing with a whole new nervous system."

* On his idea of a publisher ~ "gallant, wise and willing to lose money on a book."

* On the magazine NEW YORKER-ese where he worked ~ "big-town folksy"

* On his early success in writing ~ "I had given myself five years to become a 'writer', and my becoming one immediately has left me with an uneasy, apologetic sense of having blundered through the wrong door."

* On his first lecture in late Romantic poetry at Harvard ~ "As I settled into the first lecture, in my one-armed chair, my heart was beating like that of a boy with a pocket of heavy nickels as he walks through the door . . . of a candy shop. It would be bliss . . . I thought, to go on forever like this, filling in one's ignorance of English literature slot by slot, poet by poet, under the guidance of tenured wizards, in classrooms dating from the colonial era, while the down-drooping golden-leaved elm branches shivered in the sunlight outside in the Yard."

On Thomas Pynchon's writing ~ "like reading a very long Popeye strip, without the spinach."

John Updike also wrote reviews, and left his rules for review writing for reviewers to benefit from. An example of his review of Nabakov's ADA: "His prose has never . . . menaced a cowering reader with more bristling erudition, garlicky puns, bearish parentheses, and ogreish winks". Who writes reviews with this language?

Readers of Updike, writers and literature lovers will find much to enjoy and inspire in this comprehensive and incisive biography on Updike.