A bit of a shorter one today, because I think I got burnt out/became very lazy writing those taxing four paragraph ones, and so I need a hard-earned rest. This is an important job; writing haphazard reviews of old books on a blog that nobody reads (although I do keep getting hits somehow from this one guy's website where he tries to scam people with software that'll make you a bazillionaire). Plus, it's kind of a short book anyway.
Bech: A Book
 |
| Random House |
John Updike
1970
"From infancy on, we are all spies; the shame is not this but that the secrets to be discovered are so paltry and few."
I've been gravitating towards post-war American literature more and more over the past few years, exploring and discovering the work of a large number of authors with never-ending bibliographies and having a lot of fun doing so, but I'd never picked up a book by John Updike before, which is perhaps odd because there's quite a lot of them. Nevertheless, his name and reputation encouraged me to pick Bach: A Book off the shelves, as well as its apparent shortness meaning that if I didn't like it I could still finish it quickly (oh, and the cheap prices of charity bookshops also helped the decision). After a quick bit of research involving a website that begins with a W, I discovered that Bech: A Book is actually a collection of short stories regarding the life of the titular character, originally published in the 1960's by The New Yorker. As a result, rather than being a typical novel with an overarching plot and structured story, these stories comprise a character study of a man who himself represents a playful, but thoughtful look at the nature of the author in general and, supposedly, of John Updike himself.
Henry Bech is a Jewish author with a three-book bibliography that he hasn't added to in about five years. Instead, Bech seems content to mull over the successes and failures of his previous works in similar conversations with those who will indulge him. He's considered somewhat of a modern US literary icon, to such an extent that, in the first three stories compiling this compilation, Bech has been sent as a sort of cultural envoy to Eastern European countries, namely Romania, Bulgaria and Russia. It's these three installments that I enjoyed the most out of anything in this collection, as Updike paints a compelling picture of an American author experiencing new surroundings as an alien, having absorbing conversations with the locals and constantly re-evaluating his place as a cultural export. There's lots of character development here, as Updike establishes one of the key character points that travels through this narrative; Bech is an unconventional womanizer, attracting them with his own thoughtful intensity and being unable to resist falling in love with each new attraction he meets. Unfortunately I wasn't as interested in the four extracts in this book, where Bech in his American homeland continues his unproductiveness to instead muse on his own life, while picking up a new female companion in seemingly every chapter. While the themes are similar to the Eastern European exploits, these chapters lacked any characters that I found interesting to interact with Bech.
As a first time Updike reader, I mostly enjoyed this book. I'm certainly keen to read more novels from him, particularly a more conventional narrative rather than a compendium like this. There are two further Bech collections which I may one day take a look at, but for now I see this book as a kind of introduction to Updike's memorable prose style and distinguished way of looking at the world.
Henry Bech is a Jewish author with a three-book bibliography that he hasn't added to in about five years. Instead, Bech seems content to mull over the successes and failures of his previous works in similar conversations with those who will indulge him. He's considered somewhat of a modern US literary icon, to such an extent that, in the first three stories compiling this compilation, Bech has been sent as a sort of cultural envoy to Eastern European countries, namely Romania, Bulgaria and Russia. It's these three installments that I enjoyed the most out of anything in this collection, as Updike paints a compelling picture of an American author experiencing new surroundings as an alien, having absorbing conversations with the locals and constantly re-evaluating his place as a cultural export. There's lots of character development here, as Updike establishes one of the key character points that travels through this narrative; Bech is an unconventional womanizer, attracting them with his own thoughtful intensity and being unable to resist falling in love with each new attraction he meets. Unfortunately I wasn't as interested in the four extracts in this book, where Bech in his American homeland continues his unproductiveness to instead muse on his own life, while picking up a new female companion in seemingly every chapter. While the themes are similar to the Eastern European exploits, these chapters lacked any characters that I found interesting to interact with Bech.
As a first time Updike reader, I mostly enjoyed this book. I'm certainly keen to read more novels from him, particularly a more conventional narrative rather than a compendium like this. There are two further Bech collections which I may one day take a look at, but for now I see this book as a kind of introduction to Updike's memorable prose style and distinguished way of looking at the world.
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