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Book Summary and Reviews of Due Considerations by John Updike

Due Considerations by John Updike

Due Considerations

Essays and Criticism

by John Updike

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  • Published:
  • Oct 2007, 736 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

John Updike’s sixth collection of essays and literary criticism opens with a skeptical overview of literary biographies, proceeds to five essays on topics ranging from China and small change to faith and late works, and takes up, under the heading “General Considerations,” books, poker, cars, and the American libido. The last, informal section of Due Considerations assembles more or less autobiographical pieces—reminiscences, friendly forewords, comments on the author’s own recent works, responses to probing questions.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. It is hard to complain about too much of a good thing in this addition to the formidable Updike collection." - Publishers Weekly.

"One of our best novelists proves once again that he's one of our best writers. " - Kirkus Reviews.

This information about Due Considerations was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

John Updike Author Biography

Photo: George Bush Presidential Library

John Hoyer Updike was born in Reading, Pennsylvania in 1932. Up until the age of 13 he lived in Shillington, near Reading (where his father was a science teacher) before moving to Plowville, PA. As a child he suffered from psoriasis and stammered, but, with the encouragement of his mother, found an outlet in writing and reading - consuming mysteries by the likes of Erle Stanley Gardner, Ellery Queen, Agatha Christie and John Dickson Carr. He attended Harvard (which he chose because it was the home of the Harvard Lampoon - which he first contributed to, and later edited) where he majored in English. He once said, "My inability to read bravely as a boy had this advantage: when I went to college, I was a true tabula rasa, and received gratefully the imprint of my instructors' opinion...

... Full Biography

Name Pronunciation
John Updike: JON UHP-DYK

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