About this product

Product Identifiers

PublisherBoydell & Brewer, Incorporated

ISBN-101571139370

ISBN-139781571139375

eBay Product ID (ePID)204254056

Product Key Features

Number of Pages270 Pages

Publication NameBecoming John Updike : Critical Reception, 1958-2010

LanguageEnglish

SubjectAmerican / General

Publication Year2015

TypeTextbook

AuthorLaurence W. Mazzeno

Subject AreaLiterary Criticism

SeriesLiterary Criticism in Perspective Ser.

FormatTrade Paperback

Dimensions

Item Height0.7 in

Item Weight15 Oz

Item Length9 in

Item Width6.1 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceScholarly & Professional

Reviews[A] masterful appraisal of Updike's literary reception. . . . [E]ssential reading for those who want to gain a full understanding of [Updike's] oeuvre. JOHN UPDIKE REVIEW Updike scholarship owes a debt to Laurence W. Mazzeno [who has] produce[d] a clear, well-organized, and useful reference work. . . . [A]n engaging narrative of Updike's career . . . . In the years to come, I have little doubt that those of us interested in Updike will be reaching for [this book]. . . . [It] is clearly an important contribution to Updike studies. RESOURCES FOR AMERICAN LITERARY STUDY [H]ighly competent. . . . Becoming John Updike is the most substantial review of Updike criticism to date, and it is likely that it will continue to prove interesting and useful reading for anyone working on Updike far into the future. . . . Although it is an impossible task to fully summarize the great accumulated mass of fifty years of Updike studies, Mazzeno succeeds in providing a sense of the arc of Updike's fate in the American intellectual culture. THE AMERICAN STUDIES JOURNAL [A]n invaluable volume . . . for scholars and even for inquisitive [general] readers, as well as a tribute to John Updike's work. EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF AMERICAN STUDIES Mazzeno is adept at presenting the positive and the negative -- and the opposing -- views that Updike's work evoked during the more than 50 years he was a productive writer. . . . This volume well reflects Updike's identity as both a polemical figure and an indispensable cultural touchstone. . . . Recommended. CHOICE

Dewey Edition23

Series Volume Number69

Dewey Decimal813.54

SynopsisWhen John Updike died in 2009, tributes from the literary establishment were immediate and fulsome. However, no one reading reviews of Updike's work in the late 1960s would have predicted that kind of praise for a man who was known then as a brilliant stylist who had nothing to say. What changed? Why? And what is likely to be his legacy? These are the questions that Becoming John Updike pursues by examining the journalistic and academic response to his writings. Several things about Updike's career make a reception study appropriate. First, he was prolific: he began publishing fiction and essays in 1956, published his first book in 1958, and from then on, brought out at least one new book each year. Second, his books were reviewed widely - usually in major American newspapers and magazines, and often in foreign ones as well. Third, Updike quickly became a darling of academics; the first book about his work was published in 1967, less than a decade after his own first book. More than three dozen books and hundreds of articles of academic criticism have been devoted to Updike. The present volume will appeal to the continuing interest in Updike's writing among academics and general readers alike. Laurence W. Mazzeno is President Emeritus of Alvernia University. Among other books, he has written volumes on Austen, Dickens, Tennyson, and Matthew Arnold for Camden House's Literary Criticism in Perspective series., A study of the journalistic and academic reception of the writings of one of the great American writers of the late twentieth century. When John Updike died in 2009, tributes from the literary establishment were immediate and fulsome. However, no one reading reviews of Updike's work in the late 1960s would have predicted that kind of praise for a man who was known then as a brilliant stylist who had nothing to say. What changed? Why? And what is likely to be his legacy? These are the questions that Becoming John Updike pursues by examining the journalistic and academic response tohis writings. Several things about Updike's career make a reception study appropriate. First, he was prolific: he began publishing fiction and essays in 1956, published his first book in 1958, and from then on, brought out atleast one new book each year. Second, his books were reviewed widely - usually in major American newspapers and magazines, and often in foreign ones as well. Third, Updike quickly became a darling of academics; the first book about his work was published in 1967, less than a decade after his own first book. More than three dozen books and hundreds of articles of academic criticism have been devoted to Updike. The present volume will appeal to the continuing interest in Updike's writing among academics and general readers alike. Laurence W. Mazzeno is President Emeritus of Alvernia University. Among other books, he has written volumes on Austen, Dickens, Tennyson, and Matthew Arnold for Camden House's Literary Criticism in Perspective series., A study of the journalistic and academic reception of the writings of one of the great American writers of the late twentieth century. When John Updike died in 2009, tributes from the literary establishment were immediate and fulsome. However, no one reading reviews of Updike's work in the late 1960s would have predicted that kind of praise for a man who was known then as a brilliant stylist who had nothing to say. What changed? Why? And what is likely to be his legacy? These are the questions that Becoming John Updike pursues by examining the journalistic and academic response tohis writings. Several things about Updike's career make a reception study appropriate. First, he was prolific: he began publishing fiction and essays in 1956, published his first book in 1958, and from then on, brought out atleast one new book each year. Second, his books were reviewed widely - usually in major American newspapers and magazines, and often in foreign ones as well. Third, Updike quickly became a darling of academics; the first book about his work was published in 1967, less than a decade after his own first book. More than three dozen books and hundreds of articles of academic criticism have been devoted to Updike. The present volume will appeal to the continuing interest in Updike's writing among academics and general readers alike. Laurence W. Mazzeno is President Emeritus of Alvernia University. Among other books, he has written volumes on Austen, Dickens, Tennyson,and Matthew Arnold for Camden House's Literary Criticism in Perspective series., A study of the journalistic and academic reception of the writings of one of the great American writers of the late twentieth century.

LC Classification NumberPS3571.P4Z7825 2015