Alan Jenkins
Impassioned Attention
Hugging the Shore: Essays and Criticism
By John Updike
André Deutsch 920pp £21 order from our bookshop
The smiling, Bermuda-shorted figure on the jacket of John Updike’s new volume of essays and criticism looks engagingly pleased with the world and himself, and the first sentences of his Foreword tell us why:
Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea. At sea, we have that beautiful blankness all round, a cold bright wind, and the occasional thrill of a gleaming dolphin-back or the synchronized leap of silverfish; hugging the shore, one can always come about and draw even closer to the land with another nine-point quotation. This is a big book but perhaps a quarter of the words belong to other people.
It all sounds pretty good to someone who’s been shore-bound for years, and whose memory of dolphin-backs is not as fresh as it might be.
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'Humanity is inextricably bound up with the seas and oceans, which were used for communication and trade but also for war and the determined exploitation of peoples and resources.'
@margarettelinc1 on a global history of the seas and oceans.
http://ow.ly/CL8850xqzLH
'There is a chilling moment as he describes a gun hovering over him as its holder tries to make up his mind as to whether Lançon is dead or alive.'
Andrew Hussey reviews Philippe Lançon's extraordinary first-hand account of the Charlie Hebdo massacre.
http://ow.ly/3M8E50xqqrE
Tales from the New Bedlam: my piece on Tim Etchells' ENDLAND in the current Literary Review https://literaryreview.co.uk/tales-from-the-new-bedlam via @Lit_Review There's a paywall but the first bit's free . . .