John Updike

Rodgers (literature, Bard College) brings together 20 essays by literature scholars from the US and Canada who survey the work of John Updike and critical responses to it. New essays on his career, life, and influences, as well as new and reprinted essays on the critical contexts of his writing consider major themes, characters, motifs, and issues in his work, such as its social and historical context. Individual essays discuss comparisons to William Dean Howells; his semiautobiographical characters; and popular and scholarly responses and analyses to such works as Pigeon Feathers, and Other Stories, Seek My Face, The Centaur, Couples, Museums and Women, Of the Farm, the Rabbit series, Bech: A Book, Gertrude and Claudius, In the Beauty of the Lilies, and his Scarlet Letter trilogy. Annotation 穢2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)