New Releases by John Updike

"Four novels trace the life of Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom against the changing American society from the sixties to the eighties."--

Updike''s personal look at art--both classic and contemporary--in a collection of twenty-three brilliant pieces. 200 illustrations, 150 in color.

A born-again computer whiz kid bent on proving the existence of God on his computer meets a middle-aged divinity professor, Roger Lambert, who''d just as soon leave faith a mystery. Soon the computer hacker begins an affair with professor Lambert''s wife -- and Roger finds himself experiencing deep longings for a trashy teenage girl.

Here is trust betrayed--and fulfilled. Here are parents struggling to maintain that fragile claim on their offspring''s childish awe. Here are husbands and wives as only Updike knows them. Here is life as we live it, in 22 stories of uncommon beauty and pathos from a master storyteller at the peak of his brilliant career. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD "Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea," writes John Updike in his Foreword to this collection of literary considerations. But the sailor doth protest too much: This collection begins somewhere near deep water, with a flotilla of short fiction, humor pieces, and personal essays, and even the least of the reviews here--those that "come about and draw even closer to the land with another nine-point quotation"--are distinguished by a novelist''s style, insight, and accuracy, not just surface sparkle. Indeed, as James Atlas commented, the most substantial critical articles, on Melville, Hawthorne, and Whitman, go out as far as Updike''s fiction: They are "the sort of ambitious scholarly reappraisal not seen in this country since the death of Edmund Wilson." With "Hugging the Shore, " Michiko Kakutani wrote, Updike established himself "as a major and enduring critical voice; indeed, as the pre-eminent critic of his generation."

Stories that trace the decline and fall of a marriage, a history made up of the happiness of growing children and shared life, and the sadness of growing estrangement and the misunderstandings of love.

"It is, quite simply, Updike''s best novel yet." NEWSWEEKA deftly satirical portrait of life and love in a suburban town as only Updike can paint it.From the Paperback edition.