On the blog First Things, Stephen H. Webb considers Adam Begley’s biography and charges, “Begley portrays Updike as a man who could not stop writing and as a writer who could not stop thinking about himself. For Begley, in fact, Updike comes across as America’s first (and finest) blogger.”
But he adds, “Begley does not get to the heart of the man because he does not grasp the soul of his faith.”
Moreover, Webb writes, “Without getting to the heart of what he most cherished in his personal experiences, Begley’s Updike comes off as a grandiloquent and compulsive chronicler of his own thoughts and actions.”
Webb adds, “That the meager theological fare of liberal Protestantism was still enough to prompt people like himself to gather regularly just to say thank you to God was perverse evidence for Updike that the modern world still left room for miracles. In fact, gratitude was so important to him that I would call it the sum of both his piety and his art, and I don’t know how anyone can read his work in this era of resentment and entitlement without feeling grateful for him.”