And we start the new year with an interesting post:  a book critic (Leo Robson, The Guardian) reviewing a book critic (Craig Raine, and also James Walcott) who’s reviewing Updike’s book and art criticism, among other things.

In “More Dynamite: Essays 1990-2012 by Craig Raine—review,” posted on The Guardian online on Friday, December 27, 2013, Robson notes of both the main title reviewed and Critical Mass: Four Decades of Essays, Reviews, Hand Grenades and Hurrahs that “the only writer given extensive treatment in both these books is Updike.

“Wolcott praises the ‘deft, polite scalpeling’ Updike performs on Saul Bellow (he peels away the ‘rugged prettiness’ to locate an ‘agitated sluggishness’), and his capacity to ‘dig beneath the hype and confetti of a book’s reception’ (in this case, Kundera’s The Book of Laughter and Forgetting). But he also notes a ‘lack of heat and force,’ exactly the qualities Wolcott himself aims for and attains, and calls for more ‘plainspokenness, even a whiff of woodsmoke from the old slash-and-burn,’ just as Raine, writing about Updike’s essay on Andrew Wyeth, complains that at a certain point he ‘caves in,’ and dismisses as ‘ludicrously indulgent’ Updike’s comparison of Fairfield Porter to Matisse and Piero della Francesca.

“Updike stands as an object of worship to both Raine and Wolcott, a model of what can be done, except on those occasions when magnanimity limits honesty—cardinal virtue of any critic.”

Reviews and responses to the Library of America publication of John Updike: The Collected Stories are starting to appear. We’ll add to this list as entries become known to us.

“Tag Archives: John Updike: The Collected Stories.” Andrew Keyser. Portland (Oregon) Book Review. September 10, 2013. “Updike is one of those rare authors that appeals to a diverse group of people. Lovers of American [sic] will fit right into these stories, recognizing the daily joys and struggles of small-town America. Philosophers will find wisdom in over forty years of storytelling, and those that just want a good story will have no trouble finding many in these nearly two thousand pages.”

“My Hitherto Inadequately Superficial World; Reading John Updike’s stories.” Scott Dill. Books & Culture (Christianity Today). October 2013. “For one who comes to Updike looking for an existential defense of Christianity, as I did when I first read him, these stories may surprise in their essential playfulness.”

“John Updike: The Collected Stories.” Trevor. The Mookse and the Gripes. October 3, 2013. “Trevor” begins with a disclaimer—”I simply haven’t read them all or nearly enough to write a proper ‘review'”—but adds, “Still, I heartily recommend this collection. I want interested readers to know about this set, a set filled with notes and other supplemental material to really dive deeply into Updike’s extensive work across more than half a century.”

“Reading the John Updike stories: ‘Dentistry and Doubt.'” Jim Higgins. JSOnline (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel). October 16, 2013. In this blog entry Higgins notes that “‘Dentistry and Doubt’ is the first story in this collection to remind us that Updike is not only a chronicler of lust, but one of Christian faith and doubt as well.”

“Teller of Tales; The Definitive Updike, in two volumes.” William H. Pritchard. The Weekly Standard Book Review (Washington, D.C.). Vol. 19:7. October 21, 2013. Pritchard writes, “Since his death, my impression is that his reputation has slipped a bit, as if reading fiction about discontent, sorrow, and fear is not to play for high enough stakes.”

“The Curious Paradox of John Updike.” James Santel. The Millions. October 24, 2013. Santel writes that “almost five years after his death, Updike’s critics often seem to outweigh his admirers” and says, “Having read nearly 200 of Updike’s stories in rapid succession, I’m more sympathetic to the critics’ point of view than I had been. While not willing to go as far as Franzen, who argues that Updike was ‘wasting’ his ‘tremendous, Nabokov-level talent,’ I was surprised by how many of Updike’s stories impressed me while I read them, and how few left an impression. . . . The curious paradox of Updike is that he made art into a craft, but only rarely did he transcend craft to achieve art.”

“John Updike Gives the Mundane Its Beautiful Due.” Jeff Tompkins. PopMatters. November 14, 2013. “Any collection of 186 stories by the same author is bound to have its share of duds. Updike was such a pro that even his minor efforts maintain the same meticulous finish; the misfires usually result from his experimenting with form or subject matter, and offer the inherent interest of a major talent testing its boundaries.”

March 31, 2009 was the publication date for Endpoint, Updike’s final collection of poems. These are the reviews of which we’re aware.

“Endpoint and Other Poems.” Publishers Weekly. March 30, 2009. “Many delights but few real surprises await Updike’s admirers in this last book of poems from the prolific essayist and novelist, completed only weeks before his death.”

“The New Yorker: ‘Endpoint’—Poems by John Updike.” Cliff Garstang. Perpetual Folly. March 18, 2009. “The speed with which this book is being produced no doubt makes good business sense, but seems grisly to me, particularly if the excerpt in TNY is an indication of the overall subject matter.”

“‘Endpoint and Other Poems’ by John Updike.” Carmela Ciuraru. March 31, 2009. “These last poems are tender, nostalgic but never sentimental.”

“Endpoint and Other Poems.” Ray Olson. Booklist Online. April 1, 2009. Olson writes that “these are personal but not egotistic poems. It seems as though Updike were aiming to record the end of the life of a successful enough American middle-class male, and in his novelist’s voice.”

“Updike’s ENDPOINT: Light at Sunset.” W. Scott Smoot. The Word Sanctuary. April 11, 2009. “In his writing, Updike never shied from the darkest and foulest parts (however often I wished he had), but he always highlighted ‘whatever is good, whatever is true, whatever is just’ in the subject at hand,” Smoot writes. “Nine years after AMERICANA, he turns that same light on his own aging and death in ENDPOINT AND OTHER POEMS.”

“’Endpoint: And Other Poems,’ by John Updike.” Nicholas Delbanco. San Francisco Chronicle. April 12, 2009. “. . . it’s doubly a shock and revelation when the palate darkens and the poetry goes deep. The titular series, ‘Endpoint,’ seems to this reader an act of sustained self-examination, and very brave.”

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B.A. Nilsson wrote a review of Updike’s Always Looking that was published on May 29, 2013. In it, he concludes, “The heightened language . . . reminds us that paintings, like novels, best reward those inclined to linger with them the longest.

“Updike’s success as a critic and social observer, which he pursued as ardently as he did his fiction, came from his ability to convey intelligent insight with a compellingly accessible voice,” Nilsson writes.

Amien Kacou has reviewed Updike’s “Terrorist” for Perspectives on Terrorism: a journal of the Terrorism Research Initiative. It’s a lengthy, scholarly article that the editor notes “takes a research article format, which is a nontraditional approach; it offers a thesis, based on an extended, footnoted philosophical study.” It appears online in Vol. 6, No. 4-5 (2012).

Here’s the link, with thanks to Larry Randen for calling it to our attention.

A book-review blogger who goes by the name of “The Feminist Texican” reviewed Updike’s Rabbit Is Rich on audiobook yesterday and came to the conclusion that Updike is “a big ol’ racist, misogynist asshole.” Here’s the link, for those who are curious. Thanks to Ronny Parkerson for calling it to our attention.

Here are reviews of Higher Gossip that have come to our attention. Check back. The list will grow:

“Higher Gossip: Essays and Criticism.” Publishers Weekly. 12 September 2011. “The hallmarks of his agile, eloquent prose are evident throughout . . . .”

“Higher Gossip.” Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review). 15 September 2011. “A potpourri of pieces from the busy pen of the gifted Updike (1932-2009) who shows that he could write convincingly about nearly anything.”

“Higher Gossip: Essays and Criticism.” Brad Hooper. Booklist Online. 15 October 2011. “Lines to remember jump out left and right. This one is in reference to Raymond Carver, ‘Some hard times are part of every writer’s equipment.'”

“‘Higher Gossip: Essays and Criticism’ by John Updike.” William H. Pritchard. The Boston Globe. 28 October 2011. “As a whole these varied pieces partake of the major aims of all art: to ‘sidestep mortality with feats of attention, of harmony, of illuminating connection’; to give, in the final words of the introduction to collected early stories, ‘the mundane its beautiful due.'”

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