Modern Classics Henry Bech: Amazon.ca: Books

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1.0 out of 5 stars Buy the Rabbit series instead, May 5 2002

By	julia scheeres (Berkeley, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Complete Henry Bech (Hardcover)

After reading Updike's other brilliant slice-of-americana, the Rabbit Angstrom series, this collection was very disappointing and a bit hard to choke down. It deals with an aging Jewish writer who suffers from writer's block and a promiscuity that is simply ridiculous. It doesn't contain any of the historical socio-political markers that add a dimension to the Rabbit series, nor a pinch of the art that made that compilation so involving.

The author has his decaying protagonist bedding down with young women left and right. What 26-year-old would screw a 73-year-old, unless there was mucho dinero in the mix and she showered with lysol afterwards to relieve her disgust? I mean, come on! As a young woman, the thought strikes me as revolting...as the perverse fantasies of an aging man that should best be kept to himself, not published for public ridicule.

Do yourself a favor, buy Rabbit instead.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Updike's best fiction, with one large caveat, Jan 1 2002

By	Eric Krupin (Salt Lake City, UT) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Complete Henry Bech (Hardcover)

I've always considered Updike much more valuable for his superlative book reviews than for his, to my mind, more-sizzle-than-steak fiction. (If you dig past the nostalgic plethora of period detail in the Rabbit books, there really isn't a great deal there.) But 20 years after accidentally discovering Henry Bech on the shelves of the public library (just as Updike has said he likes to imagine people encountering his books), his hapless exploits with women and the Muse continue to provide me with unfailing pleasure. It's a fine service to American literature to have them all - including the previously uncollected story "His Oeuvre", one of the best - gathered together between one set of hardcovers.

There is however, I'm sad to say, a big ugly boil on the butt of this otherwise handsome volume: the semi-infamous "Bech Noir", in which Updike, seemingly grown disgusted with the continuing durability of his character, jerks him through a sour ludicrous pantomime - the sheer awfulness of which makes it almost impossible to look at him the same way again. .... It's as if Frank L. Baum, around the fourth or fifth Oz book, had Dorothy move to Los Angeles where she became a crack whore. After that, the valedictory tale in which Bech most implausibly receives the Nobel Prize comes across as simply another gesture of contempt - whether towards the Swedish Academy, for honoring the even-less-qualified Toni Morrison rather than himself, or towards the reader, I can't say. All I can tell you - strange advice, I know - is to skip those two stories if you haven't been contaminated by them already.

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5.0 out of 5 stars "Must" reading for all John Updike fans, May 22 2001

By	Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Complete Henry Bech (Hardcover)

Henry Bech is John Updike's playfully irreverent alter ego and has charmed readers with aesthetic dithering and a seemingly inexhaustible libido. Now all of Updike's Henry Bech stories have been compiled in one volume, including the final, series-capping story "His Oeuvre". This outstanding Everyman's Library edition of The Complete Henry Bech is "must" reading for all John Updike fans and a very highly recommended addition to school and community library literary collections.

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1.0 out of 5 stars Buy the Rabbit series instead
After reading Updike's other brilliant slice-of-americana, the Rabbit Angstrom series, this collection was very disappointing and a bit hard to choke down. Read more

Published on May 5 2002 by julia scheeres

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