John Updike

"Bech at Bay and Before"

Published October 5, 2000 11:32PM (EDT)

From Harvard to a staff position on The New Yorker, John Updike turned his brainy pedigree into a successful career as a novelist, essayist and critic. His novels "Rabbit, Run" (1960), "Couples" (1978) and Pulitzer winner "Rabbit is Rich" (1981) exemplify his sophisticated take on contemporary middle-class tragedy. One of contemporary fiction's most prolific writers, Updike has also written numerous short stories and poems, as well as engineered a group-written mystery story on the Internet.

"Bech at Bay and Before," his 49th book, chronicles the varied literary and personal life of Henry Bech, a New York writer, from Vietnam through the sagging end of the Seventies, and up into the post-Gutenbergian world of the Nineties.

Listen to an excerpt from "Bech at Bay and Before," (Random House Audio) read by actor Ron Rifkin.


By the staff of Salon Books



Related Topics ------------------------------------------