Bech at bay : a quasi-novel / John Updike.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Updike, John.

Contributor:

Roth, Arnold, 1929-

Gotham Book Mart Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

The Library of Chaim Potok (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Bech, Henry (Fictitious character)--Fiction.

Bech, Henry (Fictitious character).

Jewish authors--Fiction.

Jewish authors.

Jewish men--Fiction.

Jewish men.

Novelists--Fiction.

Novelists.

Genre:

Fiction.

Black humor (Literature)

Humorous fiction.

Penn Provenance:

Gotham Book Mart (former owner) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copy)

Updike, John (autograph) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copy)

Potok, Adena (donor) (Potok Collection copy)

Physical Description:

12 unnumbered pages, 240 pages, 4 unnumbered pages ; 21 cm

Edition:

[First edition].

Manufacture:

Harrisonburg, Virginia : Printed and bound by R. R. Donnelley & Sons.

Place of Publication:

New York : Alfred A. Knopf : [Distributed by Random House, Inc.], [1998]

Summary:

Henry Bech, the moderately well known Jewish-American writer who served as the hero of John Updike's previous Bech: A Book (1970) and Bech Is Back (1982), has become older but scarcely wiser. In these five new chapters from his life, he is still at bay, pursued by the hounds of desire and anxiety, of unbridled criticism and publicity in a literary world ever more cheerfully crass. He fights intimations of annihilation in still-Communist Czechoslovakia, while promiscuously consorting with dissidents, apparatchiks, and Midwestern Republicans. Next, he succumbs to the temptations of power by accepting the presidency of a quaint and cosseted honorary body patterned on the Academie Francaise. Then, the reader finds him on trial in California and on a criminal rampage in a gothic Gotham, abetted by a nubile sidekick called Robin. Lastly, our septuagenarian veteran of the literary wars is rewarded with a coveted medal, stunning him into a well-deserved silence.

Contents:

Bech in Czech

Bech presides

Bech pleads guilty

Bech noir

Bech and the bounty of Sweden.

Notes:

"This is a Borzoi Book published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc."

"First Edition."

"The text of this book was set in Janson, a digitized version of the type cast from matrices long thought to have been made by the Dutchman Anton Janson, who was a practicing type founder in Leipzig during the years 1668-87. However, it has been conclusively demonstrated that these types are actually the work of Nicholas Kis (1650-1702), a Hungarian, who most probably learned his trade from the master Dutch founder Dirk Voskens."--A Note on the Type.

"Jacket illustration by Arnold Roth."

Local Notes:

Gotham Book Mart Collection copy has dustjacket retained.

Gotham Book Mart Collection copy signed by the author.

Gotham Book Mart Collection copy has slip indicating review copy.

Potok Collection copy presented to the Penn Libraries by Adena Potok.

Potok Collection copy: dust jacket retained.

ISBN:

037540368X

OCLC:

39458855