Book description
Basic Bech combines two classic titles -- Bech: A Book
and Bech is Back -- from one of John Updike's most beloved characters.
Henry Bech, the celebrated author of Travel Light, has been
scrutinized, canonized and vilified by reviewers, academics, critics
and readers across the world. Suffering from temporary impotence and
not-so-temporary writer's block, Bech finds renewed fame when he
returns to his native America and Think Big, his all-time
blockbuster, hits the shops . . .
In these classic novels by John Updike, we return to a character as
compelling and timeless as Rabbit Angstrom: the inimitable Henry Bech.
Famous for his writer's block, Bech is a Jew adrift in a world of
Gentiles. As he roams from one adventure to the next, he views life
with a blend of wonder and cynicism that will make you laugh with
delight and wince in recognition.
Praise for John Updike:
'Our time's greatest man of letters - as brilliant a literary critic
and essayist as he was a novelist and short-story writer. His death
constitutes a loss to our literature that is immeasurable' Philip Roth
'Alert, funny, sensuous. Here is a writer who can do more or less as
he likes' Martin Amis
'One of the most protean of American writers . . . For a writer
whose prose can be so lush and hyper-charged, he has always been in
contact with the material detritus of everyday life' The Times
'He was the ideal son of a platonic union between John Cheever and
J. D. Salinger, with Nabokov attending the christening as fairy
godfather' James Wood
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.
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.
