Book description
'Gossip of a higher sort' was how the incomparable John Updike
described the art of the review. Here then is the last collection of
his best, most dazzling gossip. Influential reviews of Toni Morrison,
John le Carr and Ann Patchett and expert critique on exhibitions of
El Greco, Van Gogh and Schiele are included alongside previously
uncollected short stories, poems and essays on his 'pet topics'.
Following earlier prose collections More Matter and Due
Considerations, Updike began compiling Higher Gossip
shortly before his death in 2009. Displaying his characteristic humour
and insight on subjects as varied as ageing, golf, dinosaurs, make-up
and his own fiction, the delightful Higher Gossip bookends a
legacy of over fifty celebrated titles.
This is essential reading for admirers of the deeply missed John
Updike, and for any who profess a love for art and literature.
John Updike was born in 1932 in Shillington, Pennsylvania. He
graduated from Harvard College in 1954, and spent a year in Oxford, at
the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. His novels, stories, and
nonfiction collections have won numerous awards, including the
Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the National Book Critics
Circle Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Howells Medal of the
American Academy of Arts and Letters. He died in January 2009.
Christopher Carduff, the editor of this volume, is a member of the
staff of The Library of America.
