Vous voulez voir cette page en fran�ais ? Cliquez ici.

Quantity:

More Buying Choices

20 used & new from CDN$ 14.19

Have one to sell? Sell yours here

See larger image

Share your own customer images

Publisher: learn how customers can search inside this book.

The Complete Henry Bech (Hardcover)

by John Updike (Author)

3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)

List Price:	CDN$ 33.00
Price:	CDN$ 20.79 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over CDN$ 39. Details
You Save:	CDN$ 12.21 (37%)
	o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.ca. Gift-wrap available.

12 new from CDN$ 14.19 8 used from CDN$ 15.36

Frequently Bought Together

Rabbit Angstrom: The Four Novels: Rabbit, Run, Rabbit Redux, Rabbit is Rich, and Rabbit at Rest

Total List Price: CDN$ 125.00
Price For All Three: CDN$ 78.75

Show availability and shipping details

This item: The Complete Henry Bech by John Updike
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.ca.
Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over CDN$ 39. Details
Rabbit Angstrom: The Four Novels: Rabbit, Run, Rabbit Redux, Rabbit is Rich, and Rabbit at Rest by John Updike
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.ca.
Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over CDN$ 39. Details
The Early Stories: 1953-1975 by John Updike
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.ca.
Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over CDN$ 39. Details

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

Rabbit Angstrom: The Four Novels: Rabbit, Run, Rabbit Redux, Rabbit is Rich, and Rabbit at Rest

by John Updike

4.9 out of 5 stars (16) CDN$ 26.46

The Early Stories: 1953-1975

by John Updike

3.9 out of 5 stars (10) CDN$ 31.50

My Father's Tears and Other Stories

by John Updike

4.0 out of 5 stars (1) CDN$ 20.16

The Witches of Eastwick: A Novel

by John Updike

3.6 out of 5 stars (18) CDN$ 12.41

The Complete Short Stories

by Evelyn Waugh

CDN$ 23.94

› Explore similar items

Product Details

Hardcover: 544 pages
Publisher: Everyman's Library (Mar 27 2001)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0375411763
ISBN-13: 978-0375411762
Product Dimensions: 21.1 x 13.5 x 3.1 cm
Shipping Weight: 617 g

Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)

Amazon.ca Sales Rank: #117,383 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)
Popular in this category:
#15 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Authors, A-Z > ( U ) > Updike, John

Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

Product Description

From Publishers Weekly

Never as big as Rabbit, but a genial antihero in his own right, Henry Bech is John Updike's fictional alter ego, a Jewish writer with a weakness for women and literary awards. Now, three bestselling collections of Bech stories are gathered in one volume, under the title The Complete Henry Bech. Book-ended with a helpful introduction by Malcolm Bradbury and a new story, "His Oeuvre," the hefty Everyman's Library compendium is a monument to Updike's lighter moments.

Review

"A deft poke at what it means to be a writer in America." —New York Times

"In his extraordinarily productive career, John Updike has given us a multitude of memorable characters, but none more lovable than the high-minded, mild-mannered, rather hapless writer Henry Bech." —Chicago Tribune

"One of Updike’s best creations." —Life

"Bech is Updike’s alter ego, a mouthpiece for Updike’s often sarcastic, even caustic insight into writers and the writing life … [His] style is never more jubilantly elaborate than in a Bech book, and his intelligence never more provocatively displayed." —Booklist

"As imaginative territory, literary Manhattan has proved irresistible to Updike the satirist, and he has done it full justice and then some in his volumes of stories concerning the doings of New York novelist Henry Bech." —The New Criterion

"A mordantly comic look at literary life." —TIME

See all Product Description

Tag this product

(What's this?)

Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items.

What do customers ultimately buy after viewing this item?

	70% buy the item featured on this page: The Complete Henry Bech 3.0 out of 5 stars (4) CDN$ 20.79
	8% buy The Early Work of Philip K. Dick, Volume 2: Breakfast at Twilight and Other Stories CDN$ 18.63
	8% buy The Early Work of Philip K. Dick Volume 1: The Variable Man and Other Stories CDN$ 18.89
	8% buy Losing Mum and Pup: A Memoir 3.0 out of 5 stars (1) CDN$ 18.89

Explore similar items

Customer Reviews

4 Reviews

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

Average Customer Review

3.0 out of 5 stars (4 customer reviews)

Share your thoughts with other customers:

Create your own review

Most helpful customer reviews

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

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.

Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)

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)

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.

Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)

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

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.

Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)

Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review

› See all 4 customer reviews...

Most recent customer reviews

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