Bech Is Back

Bech #2

by John Updike

In this follow-up to A Book, Henry Bech, the priapic, peripatetic, and unproductive Jewish American novelist, returns with seven more chapters from his mock-heroic life. He turns fifty in a confusing blend of civic and erotic circumstances while publicizing himself in Australia and Canada. He marries a shiksa and travels with her to Israel, where she falls in love with the land, and to Scotland, where he does. And—sweating buckets! thinking big! minting miracles! — he writes an ingeniously tawdry bestseller. Bech’s aesthetic and moral embarrassments reveal acid truths about both his trade and our times.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Literature, Literary Fiction, Novels, Humor, American

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

John Hoyer Updike was an American writer. Updike's most famous work is his Rabbit series (Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit Is Rich; Rabbit At Rest; and Rabbit Remembered). Rabbit is Rich and Rabbit at Rest both won Pulitzer Prizes for Updike. Describing his subject as "the American small town, Protestant middle class," Updike is well known for his careful craftsmanship and prolific writing, having published 22 novels and more than a dozen short story collections as well as poetry, literary criticism and children's books. Hundreds of his stories, reviews, and poems have appeared in The New Yorker since the 1950s. His works often explore sex, faith, and death, and their inter-relationships.

He died of lung cancer at age 76.

Reviews

[Nood-Lesse · Rating 3 out of 5]

L’animo femminile è Il prototipo del labirinto

Dopo un intervallo di circa sei mesi, mi sono dedicato al secondo libro contenuto in Vita e avventure di Henry Bech, scrittore. Come nel primo, una serie di racconti collegati fra loro formano un romanzo. Ho trovato uno di essi “Tre illuminazioni nella vita di un autore americano” favoloso.
Bech non pubblica più niente da parecchi anni, non fosse per il progetto di lunga gestazione che è “Pensare in grande” sarebbe quasi un ex scrittore. Fin dalle sue prime pubblicazioni però c’è un collezionista, un tale di nome Marvin Federbusch, che compra tutte le edizioni dei suoi libri e poi gliele invia per posta affinché lo scrittore le restituisca autogratate

Il signor Bech sarebbe stato tanto gentile da firmare una prima edizione, se gli fosse arrivata con acclusa una busta imbottita, indirizzata e affrancata? Ma certamente, aveva acconsentito il giovane autore, lusingato dall’implicito accenno a una seconda edizione e piuttosto divertito dalla voce dell’altro…

Federbush con precisione tedesca invia a Bech tutti i suoi libri, anche quelli tradotti all’estero. Arriva il giorno in cui a Bech

prende il ghiribizzo di andare a trovare Federbusch. Con gli occhi della fantasia si vede trasformato in un dio sceso in terra, capriccioso come Zeus, splendente come Apollo.

Non voglio privare chi leggerà del piacere di leggere l’incontro fra scrittore e collezionista, mi limito a riportare un passo che mi è piaciuto molto

…vecchi Bech in edizioni démodé degli anni Cinquanta, ristampe di Bech con sgargianti copertine anni Settanta e il titolo in lettere d’argento come i romanzi di stregoneria, Bech in francese e in tedesco, in danese e portoghese, Bech antologizzato, analizzato, cartonato, Bech messo a riposo. I libri non stavano dritti in fila ma impilati su un fianco come legname, come lingotti equivoci, in quell’armadio senza luce insieme a... oh, tradimento! Insieme a collezioni altrettanto complete, fitte e splendidamente intonse di Roth, Mailer, Barth, Capote... Lo sportello fu richiuso prima che Bech potesse individuare tutti i compagni di letto irretiti dal promiscuo Federbusch.

I libri accatastati come legname. Si mettono così i libri morti, quelli che non abbiamo intenzione di consultare, quelli che ci hanno deluso e annoiato. I libri sono vivi solo quando stanno in piedi, uno a fianco all’altro, quando è possibile estrarli dopo aver scorso impazientemente i titoli alla ricerca di quello occorrente. Solo chi non li ha letti e non ha intenzione di leggerli può disporli come lingotti equivoci, asciugamani, lenzuola.
Lo sportello fu richiuso.. ma non vi sembra di vedere la scena in cui il promiscuo collezionista cerca di nascondere la biancheria degli altri scrittori?
Purtroppo nessuno degli altri racconti è all’altezza di “Tre illuminazioni nella vita di un autore americano”, Bech in qualità di ambasciatore letterario degli Stati Uniti, viene inviato un po’ ovunque nel mondo (Russia, Canada, Africa, Bulgaria) a rintuzzare attacchi alla letteratura americana e a flirtare con le donne indigene che subiscono il suo fascino.
Updike ha fatto di Bech un ebreo perché ebrea era la triade di scrittori che imperava all’epoca (Roth, Malamud, Bellow) e con la sua solita ironia, lo ha spedito in Terra Santa insieme alla moglie cattolica.. Già perché in tarda età lo scrittore si sposa e sua moglie lo obbliga a pensare in grande.

A chi non avesse mai letto Updike e volesse provarlo consiglio “Le Lacrime di mio padre” e “Scene da un matrimonio”, sono approdi più agevoli alla sua prosa.

COLONNA SONORA
The Platters - Smoke Get In Your Eyes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfBbo...

[Hamish · Rating 4 out of 5]

At this point in my life, I place more importance on prose styling than any other aspect of a novel. Updike is, to me, one of the greatest prose stylists there is. His wording is beautifully descriptive and evocative, he’s very clever and creative in his word choices, and he imbues everything with this feel that’s very hard to describe. His prose gives his work a very languid pacing, where everything he’s describing feels slightly dreamlike and slightly melancholy. I love this feel; it’s why I can read anything he wrote during his peak, regardless of what he was writing about. And that’s good, because he’s often mired in ugliness: Ugly situations, ugly personalities, ugly beliefs. I’ve decided that his peak is through around 1975 or ’76, and after that there’s a decrease in dreaminess and an increase in ugliness (where he seemed to stubbornly insist on emphasizing every shortcoming he was criticized for). Here we get a number of stories written on either side of that divide. Those on the better side are among his best, those on the weaker side have been spared the worst of his shortcomings. This might be his last genuinely good book.

[Douglas Cosby · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars -- It is hard to deny that Updike is one of the all-time most talented masters of the English language. He is also very much of the times in which he writes. A few of his later books went for the timeless, fable approach; but the real Updike, full of the meaty 100-word run-on sentences that made him famous, is smothered with the smells and emotions of his now. It's hard to say that he offered a man-on-the-street view because of the eloquence and complexity of his language, but every one of his characters (and I'm talking about his male characters, because he can't write women) is mired in the particular cynicism and bias of his (both the character's and Updike's) era. This can lead to mildly cringy misogyny and racism, of which Updike's fiction has been fairly accused. His writing also has a New Englander type of self-absorption that to me is actually more brave than haughty, because it is fully aware of its self, warts and all, but can come across as off-putting.

In his Bech series, Updike gives us what a smash-up of himself and Saul Bellow or Philip Roth might look like, although it still just feels like Updike as a Jewish atheist. Bech turns out to be a sort of Larry David, but not nearly as funny. This is not to denigrate Updike or the Bech series because it's not really supposed to be funny -- it is a frank look at what that little pocket of the US was doing and feeling at the time, as seen through the eyes of a skeptical literary daemon. However, as with the Rabbit series, this, the second book, is not as good as the first. I haven't read the third, Bech At Bay, but I bet it reverts us back to Updike's normal, high-quality mean. More to come on this.

[Harold Griffin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This volume starts very slowly, with more of Bech's travels, annotated with much more detail than I cared to try to absorb. However, the tale picks up momentum about halfway through, when Bech and bride travel to Scotland ("MacBech"), and the ensuing long chapter/story "Bech Wed"
somewhat rewards a reader's perseverance.

In my view, Updike is unsuccessful in creating an authentically "Jewish" author-protagonist. Bech seems indistinguishable from many of Updike's non-Jewish personae. But ethnicity aside, the tale of Bech, married to his ex-flame's sister, prodded to crank out a new book, provides tolerably amusing thoughts on marriage, writing and publishing. In any case I became, for the first time, interested in Bech's fate.

Nowhere near Updike's best, but engaging enough that I will now blow the dust off of "Bech at Bay" and see this trilogy through to the bitter or sweet end.

[Stephen Hoogerhyde · Rating 3 out of 5]

A continuation of what Updike began in Bech: A Book, this is the story of his imaginary literary alter ego. As one reviewer stated, if Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom is Updike's right-hand character, Henry Bech is his left-hand.

The "novel" is actually seven short stories, following Bech as he travels through various countries, among them Canada, Australia, Israel, and Scotland. The last two stories are set in New York. As befits a narrative of a writer's life, the writing is very detailed and blessed by a large vocabulary. If you are not an Updike fan, it may be a bit tedious at times, since there is more description than narration, more rumination than perambulation. Updike likes long paragraphs and even longer sentences.

Still, it is fun to see Updike slyly poking at the literary world and its denizens.

[Pontus Ridderstedt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bitvis rolig satir (på 70-talssätt, så man studsar till vid några formuleringar) om den judiska författarlivet, men tappar lite ös mot slutet

[Sean Kinch]

“I sit at home reading Dickens and watching Nixon. And nibbling pickles. And picking quibbles. Recurrently.”

[K · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the only Updike book I've ever finished. His Rabbit books are way too dreary and sexist. His other stuff hasn't seemed as interesting in a subject matter way, and it's turf covered by other authors I like better (Richard Ford, Richard Russo, etc.). But I tried "Bech is Back," and I was very pleased.

The book is a series of short stories that each would stand alone, but which are chronologically arranged vignettes about the protagonist, Henry Bech. Updike had written about him in the past in short stories, and this is him in mid-life. As each story/chapter unfolds, you get a little more of a glimpse of Bech's personal history, his worldview and his life as a writer. The tales are shrewd and very often funny -- with funny not being a part of my prior experience with Updike, and hugely welcome here.

The book is a sendup of writers, especially New York-based writers, and of the people who put intellectuals on a pedestal. It's also a wry look at being Jewish in the 2nd half of the 20th century in the US, which was a pinnacle for Jews' safety, wealth and cultural influence. (That security has been punctured in the last couple of years thanks to the nationalism and racism stirred by an unnamed reality TV host who became our nation's worst-ever president.)

The writing is crisp, with metaphors and similes that are so smart that it makes you realize why you could never be a renowned writer. The insights about life come from Bech's interior monologue as well as his sharp interchanges with his wife, whom he marries as part of his middle-age crisis.

So what is the plot? Henry Bech wrote a great novel as a young man, and he wrote another one or two decent novels, and then some junk. At the time the book opens, he hasn't written anything deeper than a fluffy magazine article in a decade. Think: Joseph Heller, J.D. Salinger, Harper Lee. While he hasn't quite become a recluse like Salinger, he's become revered like him, due to the assumption that the "big" book he's working on will be his best yet. And Updike has fun explaining how this period of silence has been interpreted as a sign of Bech's genius.

Bech survives on royalties from the reissuance of his good and bad works, as well as fees for appearances at colleges and as a US cultural attache. Those appearances provide the early chapters in this book, as he blunders through visits to Africa and Eastern Europe when it was still behind the Iron Curtain and a trip to the Caribbean to autograph 20,000-plus copies of his best novel. Those chapters are tremendous black humor; they're not quite as raw as Evelyn Waugh, but close. And Bech manages affairs along the way, as he's determinedly single, but magnetically drawn to women of all types (and they to him as a big-time author).

But in the middle of the book, Bech has unexpectedly decided to marry Bea, the nice sister of a hard-edged women he had an affair with. Bea is Episcopalian and divorced, with teenage twin daughters, a young son, and a large house in the suburbs. Bech uproots himself from his beloved Upper West Side of Manhattan and tries to fit in. His observations on life in Westchester County are hilarious, as he believes his role has switched from that of the muse-recluse that he's considered by intellectuals to a Harpo Marx among the rich Christians. This feeling is explored in two other chapters, one a visit to the Holy Land, which has Bea spellbound and Bech nauseated, and one to Scotland (Bea's family emigrated from Scotland), which has Bech spellbound and Bea bored. Too funny.

Anyway, in the next-to-last story, the longest, Bea has nagged him to finish his novel, and he turns it in to great acclaim ("Bech is Back"), even though he knows it's not very good. He becomes rich and famous, with a movie option on his newest book. But he gets a reality check from Bea's sister, his former lover, and things more or less crash from there. Yet, having a life that's a mess is actually what he's most comfortable doing, so that's the final complicating twist.

In sum, this is a really strong book that's worth a 2nd reading, with note-taking of the amazing images and analogies. And if you like satires about the intellectual life and the lives of the privileged, then add this to your collection.

[James F · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of stories originally published separately, but all dealing with the same character, Henry Bech, so that it works as a novel as well. Bech is a (fictitious) famous American Jewish author of the fifties and sixties, an anti-hero but not quite as unlikeable as Rabbit in the Rabbit Angstrom series. He is narcissistic, irresponsible, conservative, and generally a jerk, but he avoids responsibilities from the beginning rather than after they are obligations, as with Rabbit.

Unlike Updikes's earlier works that I have read, this book is written in a humorous, modernist style rather than a realistic style, so the exaggerations are expected rather than a fault. This is not a great book, not even as good as his earliest stories, but still somewhat enjoyable reading, especially for someone who grew up in that period and gets the literary and other allusions.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bech is Back is a collection of short stories by John Updike about Henry Bech, a Jewish American writer who hasn't published a book in a decade and spends much of his time on US government or university-sponsored speaking tours. These stories are, in the main, acutely informed by Updike's skill with details, whether he's writing about Africa, Australia, the Middle East or Middle America. They are witty, ironic, and well-played against the somewhat stolid figure of a writer who isn't exactly "blocked" and isn't exactly lazy and certainly doesn't think he deserves any special consideration for whatever it is that has stalled his wobbly arc into the literary firmament. He knows people are nicer to him than he deserves, even when engaging in anti-American rants, but the truth is that being perplexed about himself and the world isn't a terribly painful fate for Bech. He sees modern life as a kind of show, a somewhat faded, jaded repetition of historical enmities, passions, and ill-conceived prejudices.

A devout or practicing Jew? No, of course not. A writer who is as significant among other Jewish writers like Bellow and Roth? No, of course not. An uncertain personality capable of being hounded into finishing his (probably) last novel, Think Big, by an Episcopalian divorcee he has married because she's easier to take than her sister, with whom he carried on a long affair? Yes, absolutely.

Bech doesn't have a north star, an ideal, a vision of how he thinks life ought to be. He's open to suggestions, seldom terribly offended, not given to big fights, willing, in Think Big, to wade into soap opera type melodrama. What a surprise, then, that Think Big makes it big, selling well, pulling down a few middling to decent reviews.That's enough to stir him to sleep yet again with his wife's sister, and of course, just looking at the two afterward, though they're fully dressed, his wife KNOWS! So he's shipped back from NYC's northern suburbs, living the life of the manor, to a two-room apartment in Manhattan, and that's not altogether the worst fate imaginable...for Bech.

As for Updike, well, he clearly wrote these stories to have fun with them. He burlesques the world, he burlesques his contemporary fellow writers (Bellow, Roth, etc.) And he does this with that eye for detail--and ear for detail--that enriches his style beyond mere word choice.

[James Askari · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bech roars back at the age of fifty with Think Big, a satire on the television industry, a romp, a satire that skewers and seems to traduce all Gentiles, a succes d'estime, and a work with a complicated gestation, into which he is goaded by his wife Bea, whose sister was his previous mistress (and becomes his mistress again). This follow-up to the first Bech collection is more frankly a set of squibs, mostly published in Playboy rather than in The New Yorker. More than before, the reason to read them is the apercus, including in travel-writing like pieces with a political slant (Israel, the Scottish Highlands), and the one-liners, the transporting discombobulating metaphors set in richly heterogeneous paragraphs (like the thin Virgin Island sand like 'coffee grounds' or the author's face flashed up during an arts programme interview, 'pouchy and classy like a golf bag'). Israel is a 'ghetto of farms', 'a miscarriage of passé fervour'.

Bea moves Bech (her children call him 'Mr Bech', then 'Uncle Henry') to her Westchester house, where she lived with her ex Rodney, who, as her relationship with Bech sets, becomes a paragon of responsibility (he didn't always like trading bonds, but every day he was on the 7.31). When the slates start coming off the roof, there's a motivation for Bech--for seven seasons--to batter through his writer's block. His heroine, who has Emma Bovary's fate, takes inspiration from various short-term mistresses, the daughter of the last of the Tory lairds in London, a Steiner schoolteacher interested in him only as a literary figure, whom he seems to have conjured whole from his imagination. Bea is hard-headed about how he should unselfconsciously throw herself into writing as she is not about her own domestic travails: the sensible one of her twins has started, the other informs her, having sex with a spotty male in their retinue. Bech acts out, telling Judy and Ann to stop making trouble for their mother with their nasty cunts. His imaginative engagement, though, is always with Manhattan, which he lyricises in burlesque rainstorms and shadow lesbian menages, returning to find everything changed at his old publisher. By now he has his eye on the elegant hands of his editor's assistant. His paperback rights sell for ten million, a sum he is concerned to keep out the clutches of Bea's divorce lawyer.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Following his Bech debut, it's now, although the year is again unspecified, in the mid-Seventies, as the long-dormant mid-fifties author again enters Updike's imagination, and then ours, on another series of cultural talks. This time, not Eastern European bloc, but Francophone West Africa, Colombia, Israel, Canada, and Australia. And for a second stint, Bech is spun about as a hapless spokesman for a now-discredited, insufficiently radical, and irredeemably racist U.S. Sounds familiar. Updike does a bit of deft derring-do, as he juxtaposes the dizzying whirl of dinners, debates, and dalliances dizzyingly.

Then, it's Scotland, where his new wife traces her roots. Before he settles down in Westchester County, away from his uptown haunts. Updike introduces the tendency of Bech to appropriate intimate experiences and allegiances which upset or undermine those of Bea. Such as Gentiles as stereotypes, and women as stock figures for Bellow- or Roth-ish contempt. This sets up realistically conveyed marital tensions which Bech stirs up within his stepchildren. One slight flaw is that those three adolescents feel underwritten and distant. But, filtered as is the entire novel through a limited consciousness of Bech, if in an indirect voice skillfully deployed, detachment may be very intentional.

He finally makes good on his fourth novel, Think Big. Updike revels in the pressures exerted by a Manhattan P.R. machine and his publisher who exemplify the end of the old-fashioned, Jewish-led, firms which flourished in mid-century. Now, they're eclipsed by the profit-driven corporations for whom books represent another commodity. Updike in a splendid paragraph mimics the patter of how various real-life reviewers such as Gore Vidal and a pitch-perfect George Steiner weigh in on Bech.

I feared the last section was veering off into an alternate scenario Tom Wolfe might have skewed, if in less feverish style given Updike's tone. But he managed to bring this middle volume of the trilogy, no easy feat, into a thoughtful denouement, however brief. The final part of Bech is Back does edge away from the previous Bech, a Book and the sequel, so it leaves me wondering what's ahead for not only the.protagonist, but those around him, as he sidles I assume out of late middle age, into...who knows?

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Novelist Henry Bech returns for another round of literary and life adventure in Bech is Back, John Updike’s 1982 sequel to Bech: A Book (1970). The fame Bech accrued for his early creations, Travel Light (1955), Brother Pig (1958) and The Chosen (1963), shows no sign of waning. Even though his work-in-progress (saddled with the expectation-raising title Think Big) has been stalled for years and he’s published little of note for more than a decade, Bech—to his continuing amazement—is still in demand, passing the time (and staying solvent) by accepting invitations to make commencement speeches, attend conferences and award ceremonies at home and abroad. Updike’s stance throughout is staunchly ironic. Henry Bech—a Jew who doesn’t practice, a writer who doesn’t write—a paunchy, frizzy-haired man approaching fifty, with an irrational fear of emotional commitment and riddled with self-doubt, is agonizingly aware that he’s a fraud of sorts, feeding off past triumphs with nothing new to offer. Bech is Back—less a novel than a collection of linked stories—follows Bech to far-flung destinations where he is lionized by fusty tweed-clad academics, tempted by star-struck young fans, and often bemused by readers’ (mis)interpretations of his fiction. By the novel’s midpoint Bech, a confirmed bachelor, has surprisingly married. In the novella-length “Bech Wed,” Bech has reluctantly surrendered his New York apartment and moved to suburban Ossining, Westchester County, where he’s living with Bea, sister of former girlfriend Norma, and Bea’s offspring from a previous marriage. Here, surrounded by neighbours who have walked straight out of a short story by John Cheever, Bech is badgered and inspired by his new wife into resurrecting the Think Big manuscript and plowing through to the end of the story. With consummate wit, Updike describes Bech’s ambivalence regarding the new novel’s merit and his experiences fumbling through the bewildering publication/promotion process at Vellem Press. Bech is Back may be minor Updike, but it is unfailingly entertaining, and readers will find evidence of the author’s astonishing verbal fluency on every page.

[Bonnie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bech is Back was first published in 1970. He was last heard of in Bech: A Book. Henry Bech is an American Jewish writer who has trouble coming up with ideas. So, in this book, he has simply added seven chapters to the first book. Kind of like Dickens did when he wrote and readers waited anxiously for the next installment. Bech produces authorial illuminations and roamed third world countries as a cultural ambassador. He turns fifty in a confusing blend of civic and erotic situations. He travelled to Australia and Canada. He marries and travels with his wife to Israel where his wife falls in love with the land and to Scotland where he falls in love with a woman. Then Bech writes a book on the illusion and reality, fame and art, as a post-modernist and he relies on this to spur him to continue writing books like Rabbit Run. Updike also wrote short stories and poetry and won the Pulitzer Prize for Rabbit is Rich. He was born in 1932 in Shillington, Pennsylvania in 1952 and attended Harvard. He is truly gift for American Literature.

[Myth Button · Rating 2 out of 5]

God, I keep giving this iconic Updike guy chances, and somehow he keeps managing to b loe them. Now I admit that his skill with English prose and language is impressive. That's a driving force of his appeal, as I've read in Updike reviews. But the problem is, do we really need these 100 sentences to ramble on about things that just end up kinda boring in the end? We get it, Updike, you can detail a scene so well that you can name all the little details I DON'T want to know about as well, like that one stain on the seat that may or may not be... ahem. And I'm not making that part up. That was in the book. Now these characters are more or less the same kinds of struggling adults with a recurring fixation on sex. Now the plot points in which Bech is trying to develop his next novel were pretty interesting, but they get drowned out by all these rambling two-page paragraphs that are going on about things I'm not going to take home with me at the end of the day. Somehow, this rambled more than Stephen King's The Stand at a quarter of its page count.

[Rodger Payne · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a quick read with quite a bit of humor. I laughed out loud several times. Maybe even many times. Some of the satire feels a little dated, and of course Bech is a selfish classic mansplainer, but the book is still a good read if only because of Updike's mastery of language.

The various chapters feel like short stories. I enjoyed Bech's travel to Scotland and the extended chapter about his marriage. While the title is literally included there and is explained by the publication of Bech's first book in 15 years (a huge success, owed much to his wife's installation of a new -- protestant? -- work ethic), I think the book's last chapter actually reveals that Bech, the character readers know from the prior book by Updike and the early part of this one, is back. I don't want to spoil the sequence of events, but his appearance at a party and his behavior there suggest that Bech has been restored to his normal state of existence.

[Raimo Wirkkala · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this mass-market paperback ($3.75) with the tacky cover-art back in '85 when it was published. It is the first Updike-work that I read and I did so in ignorance of the fact that it was the middle book of what would be a trilogy. I don't recall what I thought about it anymore than I recall the contents. Upon second reading, however, and having read its predecessor (Bech: A Book) first, I realize that I've had buried (dust) treasure on my bookshelf. Updike's alter-ego, Henry Bech, is in his '50's here and undergoing big changes in his circumstances, both personal and professional. The penultimate piece in the book, Bech Wed, might just be my favourite Updike-work to-date. He succeeds in bringing the reader into the mind of the novelist-at-work in spell-binding fashion. My only regret is this trashy-looking edition that I own.

[David Pyle · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was somewhat disappointed with this book. I almost put it aside after my first reading of it. The early part of chapter one was so inward and self-absorbed that it was, to me, a bit off-putting.

I stuck with it an found it finally moved into a bit more narrative storytelling. I find the main character a disappointment as a man and his surrounding characters to be only slightly better. The lack of moral certainty they display is celebrated and that disappointed me. Is much of society like this? Yes, but I like to read something more aspirational.

As a writer, it did challenge me to get to work writing - something, anything - every day. For that, I thank Mr. Updike.

[Sofie · Rating 2 out of 5]

There is something very interesting at certain points, "fiction" and fiction blending - I cannot find a clear and intelligent way of describing it. At many points, it is incredibly funny. At other times, depressingly skimmable/skippable (a metro read, as I like to call them - the good thing is it is so small that it fits in many a pocket). A third of the pages fell out as I read it, one page at a time from the midsection. What do you make of that? Should I throw them to the wind? What would you make of that?

[Rhodri Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

The second collected stories about Henry Bech. It's the incidental stuff I love: the descriptions of places and thoughts, the understanding of people and relationships and the masterful command of language.

[Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty good – the stories of Bech’s foreign travels for literary gatherings have some funny moments, my favorite is the longest story here in which he finally writes the novel he’s supposedly been working on for over a decade.

[John Ollerton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe it will grow on me

[Sara Aye Moung · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this quickly in less than a day. It’s the first non “rabbit” John Updike’s I’ve read. Sharp and observant of a waspish writerly lifestyle.

[Kate Fitzgerald · Rating 2 out of 5]

(This review dropped when I migrated to Shelfari, so this read date is a guess.)

[Lucas · Rating 5 out of 5]

For anyone enamored by the intricate craftsmanship and whimsical wit of John Updike's prose, "Bech is Back" will prove to be an exhilarating read. I rate this exceptional work of fiction 5 stars for its playful humor, intellectual heft, and delightful explorations of the human experience as seen through the eyes of its eponymous protagonist, Henry Bech.

Updike brings back Henry Bech, the comically unproductive Jewish-American writer, who now travels across continents, embarks on misadventures, interacts with an array of interesting characters, and battles the tyranny of the blank page. Bech's journey through literary circles, both at home and abroad, provides a poignant and humorous perspective on the triumphs and trials of literary life.

The charm of "Bech is Back" resides in its blend of wit, observation, and underlying warmth. Updike's writing is as elegant and precise as ever, his narrative driven by insightful commentary, masterful character portrayals, and an unerring eye for the absurd. What elevates this collection further is Updike's tongue-in-cheek satire of literary culture, making it a truly enjoyable experience for readers, especially those acquainted with the quirks of the literary world.

Each story within this collection holds a mirror to the human condition, deftly exploring themes of creativity, identity, and cultural critique. Bech is an endearing character, and it's a pleasure to accompany him on his journey, even when he's lost in a sea of writer's block or navigating the labyrinthine corridors of literary criticism.

In conclusion, "Bech is Back" is a sparkling gem in Updike's illustrious oeuvre. With its compelling blend of humor, wit, and humanity, it's a book that deserves to be savored, appreciated, and revisited. It's an easy 5-star recommendation for those who enjoy rich, layered storytelling interspersed with incisive social commentary and plenty of good humor.

[Useless Girl · Rating 3 out of 5]

john updyke

[Freddie the Know-it-all · Rating 1 out of 5]

More Shiksa Fantasizing

Seriously, when do these guys find time to make Sitcoms and run pawnshops and banks? It's all Shiksas, all the time with them.

[brewmaker]

aper

[Bob Peru · Rating 4 out of 5]

bech gets married.

[John Ratliffe · Rating 2 out of 5]

One of his lighter works in a series concerning the fictional alter ego, Bech. I can only assume Bech is Jewish for Beck.

Well I read it and here is the update. I wrapped up John Updike’s “Bech is Back.” This one is considered to be a minor effort by him, but since I have not read any of his set-pieces I really would not know that myself.

This is a small book that seems to have been written at the rate of five pages a day with a good cup of coffee close at hand. As always I find the act of reading good fiction to be inspiring and spirit renewing. And this one could fill that bill, but it’s still nothing to get excited about. I surely do not have the audacity to criticize John Updike’s works as he is regarded as one of the best American writers. I can see that, I just wonder if his themes suit my psyche.

I may never be good friends with John Updike’s works, but I may try another one due simply to his unique and cleverly laid descriptive powers. His style seems to be his alone, and it is attractive, it is widely said, and I admit it myself. But, this book offends several of my biases, as I suspect his other books would too. One, it is the meandering exploration of the angst of a modern, secularized New York Jew, a subject which I really don’t understand. Two, it is so American as seen through so American eyes, which I find boring. Three, ....uh,....three.....so lacking an intellectual bite despite some lyrical sections.

Having said this much my thoughts should not be taken entirely in the negative. I am still thinking about it. It has been many, many years since I read “Babbitt” by Sinclair Lewis, but for some reason I formed a very dim connection between him and Updike....probably totally unjustified. I will need to go back to “Babbitt” to check that thought.

More when I know more.