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Henry Bech, the moderately well known Jewish-American writer who served as the hero of John Updike's previousBech: A Book(1970) andBech Is Back(1982), has become older but scarcely wiser. In these five new chapters from his life, he is still at bay, pursued by the hounds of desire and anxiety, of unbridled criticism and publicity in a literary world ever more cheerfully crass. He fights intimations of annihilation in still-Communist Czechoslovakia, while promiscuously consorting with dissidents, apparatchiks, and Midwestern Republicans. Next, he succumbs to the temptations of power by accepting the presidency of a quaint and cosseted honorary body patterned on the Académie Française. Then, the reader finds him on trial in California and on a criminal rampage in a gothic Gotham, abetted by a nubile sidekick called Robin. Lastly, our septuagenarian veteran of the literary wars is rewarded with a coveted medal, stunning him into a well-deserved silence. It's not easy being Henry Bech in the post-Gutenbergian world, but somebody has to do it, and he brings to the task an indomitable mixture of grit and ennui.… (mais)
The last in the Bech trilogy sees our author moving into old age and...ultimate...recognition in the literary world. Made president of an elite - and utterly pseudo- group of top artists; experiencing the growing sue culture, over one off-the-cuff comment; taking up the new world of the Internet ("Envy and resentment poured toward him out of the American vastness, from every state including Hawaii and Alaska, like a kind of lateral sleet rattling on the tin roof of his rickety privacy."
Late fatherhood....and the highly readable if unbelievable chapter "Bech Noir" as Bech seeks to deal with some of those critics whose dismissive words have blighted his life. Probably the best of the trilogy: John Updike brilliantly evokes life in one's declining years.. ( )
Bech, with his fading skills and writer's block is a perfect paradigm for an achiever/academic in his descent. The funnier series in Updike's opus. ( )
Henry Bech, the moderately well known Jewish-American writer who served as the hero of John Updike's previousBech: A Book(1970) andBech Is Back(1982), has become older but scarcely wiser. In these five new chapters from his life, he is still at bay, pursued by the hounds of desire and anxiety, of unbridled criticism and publicity in a literary world ever more cheerfully crass. He fights intimations of annihilation in still-Communist Czechoslovakia, while promiscuously consorting with dissidents, apparatchiks, and Midwestern Republicans. Next, he succumbs to the temptations of power by accepting the presidency of a quaint and cosseted honorary body patterned on the Académie Française. Then, the reader finds him on trial in California and on a criminal rampage in a gothic Gotham, abetted by a nubile sidekick called Robin. Lastly, our septuagenarian veteran of the literary wars is rewarded with a coveted medal, stunning him into a well-deserved silence. It's not easy being Henry Bech in the post-Gutenbergian world, but somebody has to do it, and he brings to the task an indomitable mixture of grit and ennui.
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(3.5)
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Late fatherhood....and the highly readable if unbelievable chapter "Bech Noir" as Bech seeks to deal with some of those critics whose dismissive words have blighted his life.
Probably the best of the trilogy: John Updike brilliantly evokes life in one's declining years.. (