Conversations with John Updike - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0878057005 ISBN 13: 9780878057009

Publisher: University Press of Mississippi, 1994

Synopsis

John Updike says: Any act of description is, to some extent, an act of praise, so that even when the event is unpleasant or horrifying or spiritually stunning, the very attempt to describe it is, in some way, part of that Old Testament injunction to give praise. Even though my books strike many people as immoral or morally useless, to me they are really moral investigations of how we live, and harsh, perhaps, because the standards are otherworldly. There was a tradition among my peers for frank and open talk, and I'd always been a rather shy, priggish, unexperienced adolescent. So maybe my revenge as a young adult was to put down all the dirty words that I'd always been a little shy about using. James Plath, a professor of English at Illinois Wesleyan University, is editor-publisher of "Clockwatch Review" and director of Hemingway Days Writer's Workshop and Conference in Key West.

About this title

From Booklist:

Having a discussion with John Updike must be a pleasure, so one would conclude from reading this collection of 32 interviews given by the fiction writer and poet between 1959 and last year and gathered in the latest volume of Mississippi's estimable series of collected interviews with major writers. Interviewers come at Updike from all angles, and he's not deflective; his intelligence, his views (not limited to literature but extended to life in general), and his articulateness come readily to the fore. Important in large literature collections where previous series titles have been popular or where there is particular Updike interest. Brad Hooper

About this edition

• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0878057005
• ISBN 13: 9780878057009
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 302
• Editor: James Plath