Bech Is Back
“Bech is back all right, but only after paying a large and painful price. . . . Updike reflects in these pages on the odd and unsettling ways in which art can impinge upon life, the ways in which a book acquires a life of its own that seems wholly unrelated to that of the person who created it, the ways in which celebrity separates those upon whom it is bestowed from reality.”—The Washington Post “Mr. Updike finds full scope for his gifts here: for sly and cheerfully malicious pensées on contemporary literary life; for busy observations on human behavior.”—The New Yorker “[Updike] at the top of his craft.”—Time