Due Considerations: Essays and Criticism [Paperback]

The master speaks in this latest collection of what Updike calls his freelancing. What a pleasure to survey literature from his perspective. Beautiful language, fascinating views of technique in others' writings, and brilliant, poignant comments on so many times and places in the American experience. Like a modern day Hawthorne, or a latter day Edmund Wilson, we hear the master novelist review recent literature and the times with an extraordinary eye for the moral and aesthetic values of our literary times. As Updike knows full well, he's been lucky in his chosen profession; many are called but few are chosen to stay self-employed as fiction writers over such a long, illustrious career. A member of a vanishing breed in the inditer tribe, we are fortunate to enjoy the mature reflections of this senior scribe.
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It's a heavy book. On the outside of it "Due Considerations" appears as one of those intimidating tomes that sit with stentorian authority on the shelves of academic potentates or literary agents, somewhat worshipped, and rarely opened. It can seem intimidating. One could be tempted to just hold it for a few minutes and savor its weightiness, reflecting on the fact of the treasure one bears: a voluminous collection of essays and criticisms by one of the most prolific and perspicacious men of letters of the twentieth century.

Then open it, and something remarkable happens. Rather than being ushered into a rarefied world of abstract ideas and abstruse language, John Updike welcomes the reader into the warm room of his mind, filled with the rich furnishings of his intimate, personal reflections on the the genius of others. Anyone is welcome. All that's required of a reader of "Due Considerations" is a disposition of curiosity, and a passion for life.

Within minutes you'll find yourself immersed. You can start anywhere--that's one of the many beauties of "Due Considerations". It seems there's not an author, breathing or otherwise, that Updike hasn't read and examined with thoughtful and affectionate precision. Melville, Thurber, Hawthorne, Baum, Beerbaum, English fiction, American fiction, biography, non-fiction, art, other languages--they're all here, spilling over each other despite the editor's obvious attempts to organize and categorize. Life, art, and language, seem, in Updike's loving hands, connected and continuous.

And then there's EB White, and Orhan Pamuk, and Henry Petroski, and oh, yes, did I mention Fernanda Eberstadt? On the way, take a detour into the world of conceptual art, and the modern political situation in China. Updike may have lived a mere 76 years, but he's packed at least five centuries of human experience into his literary soul.

For both serious and casual readers this makes "Due Considerations" a candy store. No doubt for everyone there are a few favorite authors examined here, and the chance to learn of many more. Old friends and new, Updike makes little distinction. He flings open doors on emerging and established artists like an engaging, eager host.

Despite its disparate subjects, Updike's journeys through the human existence do have a central unifying theme, though even he seems reluctant to confront it directly. It's his quest for the spiritual, a longing for the existence and knowledge of God, which seems to compel him most completely, and which eludes him continually. In his exegesis of Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" he opines "From the absoluteness of "me" a great deal of religious consolation can be spun. The self is pitted against the vast physical universe as if the two were equal." Is this a statement of fact in his mind, or a deep seated wish? Whichever, his search for the essence of humanity came a long way in his remarkable life, and did its part to move the human psyche closer towards parity with that elusive "absolute self."

This one man literary university seems to out-do even himself, as he reviews a vast assortment of mostly literary works, this time delving into such items as 2 books on the Lusitania sinking, a Turkish Nobel winner (yet still Mr. Updike is an also ran in this contest), lots of foreign authors, most notably perhaps McKeon's "Atonement", and tons more. As always, not a wasted word, so even someone like this reviewer can appreciate and even follow everything written here. Nice to see his comments often intersect with my own thoughts on occasion. And the great thing about this author's review collections is you can always check into them whenever you get the urge, and can "brush up" on simply vast realms of great writing, knowledge, and even fun!

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