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Hugging the Shore

Essays and Criticism

Essays and Criticism

By John Updike

By John Updike

By John Updike

By John Updike

Best Seller
Paperback $25.00

Jan 15, 2013 | ISBN 9780812983784

Ebook $11.99

Jan 15, 2013 | ISBN 9780679645849

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    Hugging the Shore by John Updike
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    About Hugging the Shore

    WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD
     
    “Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea,” writes John Updike in his Foreword to this collection of literary considerations. But the sailor doth protest too much: This collection begins somewhere near deep water, with a flotilla of short fiction, humor pieces, and personal essays, and even the least of the reviews here—those that “come about and draw even closer to the land with another nine-point quotation”—are distinguished by a novelist’s style, insight, and accuracy, not just surface sparkle. Indeed, as James Atlas commented, the most substantial critical articles, on Melville, Hawthorne, and Whitman, go out as far as Updike’s fiction: They are “the sort of ambitious scholarly reappraisal not seen in this country since the death of Edmund Wilson.” With Hugging the Shore, Michiko Kakutani wrote, Updike established himself “as a major and enduring critical voice; indeed, as the pre-eminent critic of his generation.”

    About Hugging the Shore

    WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD
     
    “Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea,” writes John Updike in his Foreword to this collection of literary considerations. But the sailor doth protest too much: This collection begins somewhere near deep water, with a flotilla of short fiction, humor pieces, and personal essays, and even the least of the reviews here—those that “come about and draw even closer to the land with another nine-point quotation”—are distinguished by a novelist’s style, insight, and accuracy, not just surface sparkle. Indeed, as James Atlas commented, the most substantial critical articles, on Melville, Hawthorne, and Whitman, go out as far as Updike’s fiction: They are “the sort of ambitious scholarly reappraisal not seen in this country since the death of Edmund Wilson.” With Hugging the Shore, Michiko Kakutani wrote, Updike established himself “as a major and enduring critical voice; indeed, as the pre-eminent critic of his generation.”

    Read An Excerpt

    Read An Excerpt

    Also by John Updike

    Selected Poems
    Olinger Stories
    S.
    Buchanan Dying
    Picked-Up Pieces
    See all books by John Updike

    Also by John Updike

    Selected Poems
    Olinger Stories
    S.
    Buchanan Dying
    Picked-Up Pieces
    See all books by John Updike

    About John Updike

    JOHN UPDIKE is the author of more than sixty books, eight of them collections of poetry. His novels won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle, and the William Dean Howells Medal of the American… More about John Updike

    About John Updike

    JOHN UPDIKE is the author of more than sixty books, eight of them collections of poetry. His novels won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle, and the William Dean Howells Medal of the American… More about John Updike

    Product Details

    Category: Literary Collections | Literary Criticism

    Paperback | $25.00
    Published by Random House Trade Paperbacks
    Jan 15, 2013 | 896 Pages | 6-1/8 x 9-1/4 | ISBN 9780812983784

    Category: Literary Collections | Literary Criticism

    Ebook | $11.99
    Published by Random House
    Jan 15, 2013 | 896 Pages | ISBN 9780679645849

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    Praise

    “No living American novelist can match Updike in the range and responsiveness of his reading. . . . [Literature is] a house with many mansions, and in Hugging the Shore Updike gives a splendid, striding tour.”—James Wolcott, Harper’s
     
    “These reviews are models of craft—and something more. . . . Hugging the Shore bristles with erudition, energy, and (quietly asserted) high seriousness; it is also one of the year’s most entertaining books.”—Bruce Allen, The Christian Science Monitor
     
    “[Updike’s is] a body of literary criticism unmatched in range, discrimination and eloquence by any American novelist since Henry James.”—The Boston Globe

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