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Lead book review

Up close and personal

A review of Updike, by Adam Begley. John Updike was very happy to recycle his own experiences in his fiction

26 April 2014

9:00 AM

26 April 2014

9:00 AM

Updike Adam Begley

Harper, pp.576, £25, ISBN: 9780061896453

What should a writer write about? The question, so conducive to writer’s block, is made more acute when the writer is evidently well-balanced, free of trauma and historically secure. It is made still more urgent when that writer is solipsistic in tendency and keen to write, not about the world, but about perceptions of the world.

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