{"id":6590,"date":"2025-04-04T20:57:51","date_gmt":"2025-04-05T01:57:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/?p=6590"},"modified":"2025-04-04T21:28:32","modified_gmt":"2025-04-05T02:28:32","slug":"wjs-list-of-five-best-books-on-fame-includes-updike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/2025\/04\/04\/wjs-list-of-five-best-books-on-fame-includes-updike\/","title":{"rendered":"WJS list of five best books on fame includes Updike"},"content":{"rendered":"

In an April 4, 2025 post for The Wall Street Journal<\/em>, Craig Brown (Q: A Voyage Around the Queen<\/em>) revealed his choice for the five best books to tackle the subject of fame. Topping the list was David Kinney’s\u00a0The Dylanologists<\/em>, part-confession and part-reporting on Bob Dylan superfans and their antics, “a sharp and often hilarious book about the madness of fame and fandom.”<\/p>\n

\"\"Coming in at #2 was Donald Sassoon’s Becoming Mona Lisa,\u00a0<\/em>which traces the path to superstardom of Leonardo da Vinci’s most famous subject\/painting\u2014a study that Brown said “suggests that, contrary to popular and scholarly belief, posterity is a peculiarly fickle thing.”<\/p>\n

Number 3 on the list is John Updike’s\u00a0The Complete Henry Bech<\/em>:\u00a0 “John Updike\u2019s recurring character Henry Bech is the author of ‘one good book and three others, the good one having come first.’ Bech\u2019s reputation increases as his output declines, and he spends his time giving speeches, accepting awards, signing books and appearing on television. ‘The appetite for serious writing is almost entirely dead, alas, but the appetite for talking, walking authors rages in the land,’ Updike once said, in an ‘interview’ with who else but Bech, his lazy, Jewish alter-ego. Collected here in The Complete Henry Bech<\/em>, Updike\u2019s satirical vignettes on the absurd distractions offered by literary fame grow more accurate with each passing year.”<\/p>\n

Rounding out the list were Alethea Hayter’s\u00a0A Sultry Month,\u00a0<\/em>a work of historical fiction from the Charles Dickens and P.T. Barnum era, and Pat Hackett’s\u00a0The Andy Warhol Diaries<\/em>, an edited collection of 1000+ entries that makes it “shamefully hard to stop” reading.<\/p>\n

Five Best: Books on Fame<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In an April 4, 2025 post for The Wall Street Journal, Craig Brown (Q: A Voyage Around the Queen) revealed his choice for the five best books to tackle the subject of fame. Topping the list was David Kinney’s\u00a0The Dylanologists, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":818,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,32,53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-lists","category-updike-in-context"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6590","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\/818"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6590"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6590\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6601,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6590\/revisions\/6601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}