{"id":3094,"date":"2015-09-12T10:36:20","date_gmt":"2015-09-12T15:36:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/?p=3094"},"modified":"2015-09-12T10:36:20","modified_gmt":"2015-09-12T15:36:20","slug":"blogger-defends-updikes-literary-criticism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/2015\/09\/12\/blogger-defends-updikes-literary-criticism\/","title":{"rendered":"Blogger defends Updike’s literary criticism"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"John<\/a>The New Yorker & Me<\/strong><\/em> blog featured a post on September 11, 2015\u00a0titled “In Praise of John Updike’s Criticism (Contra James Wood).”<\/a>\u00a0The blogger takes exception with Woods’ assessment of Updike’s criticism, which surfaces in a Slate<\/em> interview (18 August 2015) with Isaac Chotiner.<\/p>\n

Chotiner complains, “I felt like he was always just sort of going through the motions of telling me what the book was about,” and Wood piles on:<\/p>\n

“The maddening equilibrium of [Updike’s]\u00a0critical voice\u2014never getting too upset or too excited\u2014enacted, I always felt, a kind of strategy of containment, whereby everything would be diplomatically sorted through, and somehow equalized and neutralized, and put on the same shelf\u2014and always one rung below Updike himself.”<\/p>\n

This blogger responds, “Well, there’s no accounting for taste. The great literary critic of my life is Updike. His reviews are like no others; they show how criticism can be a breathtaking art in itself.”<\/p>\n

As “an offset against Wood’s sour remarks” the blogger\u00a0quotes a passage from an Orhan Pamuk review of Adam Begley’s recent biography and also cites a dozen favorite and memorable passages from Updike’s criticism to prove that Updike’s\u00a0reviews, like his fiction and poetry, was full of insights, as well as his omnipresent appreciation for language itself. Photo credit: Tom Bachtell.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The New Yorker & Me blog featured a post on September 11, 2015\u00a0titled “In Praise of John Updike’s Criticism (Contra James Wood).”\u00a0The blogger takes exception with Woods’ assessment of Updike’s criticism, which surfaces in a Slate interview (18 August 2015) … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-person-singular"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3094"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3094\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3096,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3094\/revisions\/3096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}