More matter : essays and criticism / John Updike.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Updike, John.

Language:

English

Physical Description:

pages : illustrations ; cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Knopf : Distributed by Random House, 1999.

Summary:

Updike's 50th book and fifth collection of assorted prose brings together eight years worth of essays, criticism, addresses, introduction, and paragraphs about himself and his work. 46 illustrations.

Contents:

Large Matters

Matters of State

Freedom and Equality: Two American Bluebirds 3

The State of the Union, as of March 1992 16

Letter to a Baby Boomer 22

The Fifties 25

Gender and Health

The Disposable Rocket 30

Women Dancing 33

Get Thee Behind Me, Suntan 37

V 41

Lust 42

The Song of Solomon 46

Literature

Religion and Literature 50

Fiction: A Dialogue 63

Print: A Dialogue 65

A Different Ending 70

The Burglar Alarm 72

The Glittering City 79

Geographical, Calendrical, Topical

On the Edge 97

People Wrapped to Go 100

One Big Bauble 102

The Twelve Terrors of Christmas 106

That Syncing Feeling 107

Paranoid Packaging 109

Hostile Haircuts 111

Glad Rags 113

Addressing the Scandal Glut 114

Manifesto 116

Car Talk 118

The Gentlemen of Summer 120

Bodies Beautiful 121

Golf in the Land of the Free 123

The Vineyard Remembered 128

The Sun the Other Way Around 130

The Cold 133

Matter under Review

To "The Seducer's Diary," a chapter of Either/Or 139

To The Complete Shorter Fiction of Herman Melville 144

To The Age of Innocence / Edith Wharton 165

To Surviving: The Uncollected Writings of Henry Green 170

To The Best American Short Stories 1984 178

To Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews / edited by George Plimpton 187

To Writers on Writers / Graham Tarrant 194

To Heroes and Anti-Heroes / photographs by the Magnum Cooperative 196

To The Art of Mickey Mouse / edited by Craig Yoe, Janet Morra-Yoe 202

To My Well-Balanced Life on a Wooden Leg / Al Capp 210

American Past Masters

Reworking Wharton 214

The Key-People 231

Laughter from the Yokels 242

Stevens as Dutchman 250

Wilson as Cape Codder 252

The Critic in Winter 253

An Ohio Runaway 260

Happiness, How Sad 268

Cheever on the Rocks 279

Sirin's Sixty-Five Shimmering Short Stories 287

North American Contemporaries

Recruiting Raw Nerves 291

Doctorpoe 299

Excellent Humbug 299

The Good Book as Cookbook 305

Him and Who? 311

Mayhem at the Hospital 312

Tummy Trouble in Tinseltown 314

Soap and Death in America 317

Awriiiighhhhhhhht! 320

Stones into Bread 325

Barney Looks Back 331

People Fits 334

Overseas

Mandarins 338

Proust Died for You 344

Camus Made New 346

Omniumgatherum 347

Man Is an Island 348

Muriel Goes to the Movies 352

God Save Ingushetia 355

"Live" Spelled Backwards 358

On the Edge of the Post-Human 363

Nightmares and Daymares 365

Undelivered Remarks upon Awarding the 1992 GPA Book Award in Dublin 366

Idle Thoughts of a Toiling Tiler 370

Dark Walker 371

Angels in Holland 371

Vagueness on Wheels, Dust on a Skirt 374

Life Was Elsewhere 380

Of Sickened Times 386

Gender Benders 394

Other Continents

A Woman's Continent 397

A Heavy World 405

Between Montparnasse and Mt. Pelee 409

Nobody Gets Away with Everything 411

Shadows and Gardens 415

Mountain Miseries 420

Two Anglo-Indian Novels 425

A Note on Narayan 432

Medleys

Glasnost, Honne, and Conquistadores 434

Posthumous Output 442

Novel Thoughts 453

Elusive Evil 464

Biographies

The Properties of Things 481

Such a Sucker as Me 489

Man of Secrets 499

Not Quite Adult 509

Large for Her Years 516

Cubism's Marketeer 524

Smiling Bob 530

This Side of Coherence 538

The Man Within 552

Shirley Temple Regina 561

Things as They are

An Undeciphered Residue 571

At the Hairy Edge of the Possible 578

Things, Things 586

Box Me, Daddy, Eight to the Bar Code 591

The Flamingo-Pink Decade 595

The Liberation of the Legs 598

She's Got Personality 603

Among Canines 610

Fine Points 611

Oh, It Was Sad 621

2000, Here We Come 632

Visible Matter

Movies

The Old Movie Houses 641

Samson and Delilah and Me 644

Legendary Lana 645

M.M. in Brief 656

The Vargas Girl 658

Genial, Kinetic Gene Kelly 660

Photos

The Domestic Camera 667

A Bookish Boy 671

An Ecstatic State 674

A Woman's Burden 676

Descent of an Image 677

Introduction to The Writer's Desk / Jill Krementz 681

Introduction to The First Picture Book

Everyday Things for Babies / Mary Steichen Calderone, Edward Steichen 684

Facing Death 692

Nadar's Swift Tact 696

Art

Fast Art 703

The Revealed and the Concealed 708

Fun Furniture 716

Acts of Seeing 721

Big, Bright, and Bendayed 725

A Case of Monumentality 731

Verminous Pedestrians and Car-Tormented Streets 733

Funny Faces 740

The Sistine Chapel Ceiling 749

The Frick 750

Personal Matters

Updike and I 757

Me and My Books 758

The Short Story and I 762

Introduction to Self-Selected Stories 767

Foreword to Love Factories 770

Foreword to "Brother Grasshopper" 773

Note on "A Sandstone Farmhouse" 774

Note on "Playing with Dynamite" 775

Foreword to "The Women Who Got Away" 776

Note on "My Father on the Verge of Disgrace" 776

Karl Shapiro 776

Three New Yorker Stalwarts / William Shawn, William Maxwell, Brendan Gill 779

Note for an Exhibit of New Yorker Cartoons 787

My Cartooning 787

Cartoon Magic 790

Christmas Cards 797

A Childhood Transgression 799

Remembering Pearl Harbor 801

Reflections on Radio 803

Remembering Reading, Pa. 804

An Hour of the Day 805

Home in New England 805

Introduction to Concerts at Castle Hill 807

Accepting the Bobst Award 810

Foreword to John Updike: A Bibliography 811

Accepting the National Book Critics Circle Award 813

Accepting the Howells Medal 815

Introduction to the Easton Press Edition of the Rabbit Novels 816

Henry Bech Interviews Updike 821

"Special Message" for the Franklin Library Edition of Memories of the Ford Administration 825

"Special Message" for the Franklin Library Edition of Brazil 827

"Special Message" for the Franklin Library Edition of In the Beauty of the Lilies 830

"Special Message" for the Franklin Library Edition of Toward the End of Time 832

Two Belated "Talk of the Town" Stories ("TV in NYC," "Amazon.com") 834

Foreword to the French translation of Facing Nature 838

Humor These Days 840

An Answer to a Usual Question 841

Books That Changed My Life 842

Five Remembered Moments of Reading Bliss 843

Remembering Reading Don Quixote 844

The Ten Greatest Works of Literature, 1001-2000 846

Accepting the Campion Medal 850

Remarks on Religion and Contemporary Literature 848

Accepting the National Book Foundation Medal 853.

Notes:

Includes index.

ISBN:

0375406301