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  • Published: 7 February 2013
  • ISBN: 9780241965863
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook

More Matter

Essays and Criticism




More Matter is a collection of John Updike's best-loved critical essays and reflections.

From the journals of John Cheever to the Queen of England, More Matter is a lively discussion on contemporary art, issues and people, told from the inimitable perspective of Pulitzer prizewinner John Updike. Wide ranging, incisive, witty and always superbly written, it has something to say about almost everyone - from Graham Greene to Bill Gates to Mickey Mouse - and everything - from sexual politics to spiritual matters to unopenable packages. It provides any number of intimate glimpses into how this remarkable mind works.

Praise for More Matter:

'Unlike most journalism, Updike's occasional writing is so exquisite as to repay multiple readings' Publishers Weekly


'More Matter
attests to Mr. Updike's remarkable versatility and to his ardent drive to turn all his observations into glittering, gossamer prose. . . . In his strongest pieces, Mr. Updike's awesome pictorial powers of description combine with a rigorous, searching intelligence to produce essays of enormous tactile power and conviction' New York Times

'More Matter will leave even his closest followers amazed. . . . Updike can write about anything, in any form and at any length, and do it with intelligence and knowledge and grace and agility and wit-and oh, the prose' Pittsburgh Tribune Review

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.
%%%More Matter is a collection of John Updike's best-loved critical essays and reflections.

From the journals of John Cheever to the Queen of England, More Matter is a lively discussion on contemporary art, issues and people, told from the inimitable perspective of Pulitzer prizewinner John Updike. Wide ranging, incisive, witty and always superbly written, it has something to say about almost everyone - from Graham Greene to Bill Gates to Mickey Mouse - and everything - from sexual politics to spiritual matters to unopenable packages. It provides any number of intimate glimpses into how this remarkable mind works.
Praise for More Matter:
'Unlike most journalism, Updike's occasional writing is so exquisite as to repay multiple readings' Publishers Weekly

'More Matter attests to Mr. Updike's remarkable versatility and to his ardent drive to turn all his observations into glittering, gossamer prose. . . . In his strongest pieces, Mr. Updike's awesome pictorial powers of description combine with a rigorous, searching intelligence to produce essays of enormous tactile power and conviction' New York Times

'More Matter will leave even his closest followers amazed. . . . Updike can write about anything, in any form and at any length, and do it with intelligence and knowledge and grace and agility and wit-and oh, the prose' Pittsburgh Tribune Review
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.

  • Published: 7 February 2013
  • ISBN: 9780241965863
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook

About the author

John Updike

John Updike was born in 1932, in hillington, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Harvard College in 1954, and spent a year in Oxford, England, at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. From 1955 to 1957 he was a member of the staff of The New Yorker, and since 1957 has lived in Massachusetts. He is the father of four children and the author of more than fifty books, including collections of short stories, poems, essays, and criticism. His novels have won the Pulitzer Prize (twice), the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Rosenthal Award, and the Howells Medal. A previous collection of essays, Hugging the Shore, received the 1983 National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism.

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