Assorted Prose

by John Updike

A collection of non-fictional prose by the American novelist and poet, including parodies, autobiographical essays, and book reviews

Genres: Essays, Nonfiction, Books About Books, American

326 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1965

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

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

John Updike’s first collection of essays. Most of these were published in The New Yorker in the 1960s. As with all of Updike’s essays, they are long on erudition and elegance. He’s always been a joy to read.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

John Updike’s Assorted Prose is just that: a 1965 collection of more than sixty writings, mostly first published in The New Yorker, ranging from parody and sports reportage to fiction and book reviews. The humor entries and the collection of “The Talk of the Town” pieces, all now around sixty years old, hold up well. “Central Park,” “Cancelled,” and “Confessions of a Wild Bore” are just three of many I like a lot. The autobiographical “The Dogwood Tree: A Boyhood” and the account of Ted Williams’s last game, “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu”, are essential Updike. The book criticism, though, can be a slog, with the reviews dealing with theology coming off, in Updike’s own words in his review of a Karl Barth book, “uncommonly tedious and difficult.”

[Cody · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can't really fault a hodge-podge for being uneven. Assorted Prose has a visible slope, though. The parodies haven't aged very well, as they are—like most parodies—specific to their time, and the originals parodied are no longer as immediately recognizable. Even so, "On the Sidewalk," Updike's spot-on apery of Jack Kerouac, still kicks. The New Yorker pieces are similarly spotty, and for similar reasons, but hit the mark far more often simply because Updikes musings in this form are so much more universal.

The real meat of the collection comes in the middle. "Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu" is deservedly hailed as perhaps the best baseball writing ever, and it's second only on my list to Malamud's The Natural. The memoir-esque pieces collected under "First Person Singular" approach the best of Updike's short fiction, particularly two reminiscences about a successful, but distant, uncle and "The Dogwood Tree." These three capture some of the elementals of childhood with a casual panache uncommon to a lot of Updike's work.

[Maureen · Rating 3 out of 5]

As you might expect with assorted prose, this was a bit hit and miss. It opened with some dull pieces that read like writing exercises ("How to Drink from a Cup",*yawn*), and there were a fair few bits I skipped through, but the autobiographical childhood bits were splendid, as were the real-time opinion pieces on stuff like the JFK assassination and the like.

I should add also that this was very much an "assorted" prose, and not "collected". Yer man Updike had at this point only written one third of the adult trilogy, and in his photo on the back cover he's clearly still but a young slip of a writer, with his dark hair, eager young nose, and hesitant young chin.

[Christopher McCaffery · Rating 5 out of 5]

I see why everyone is jealous of him. I am too.

[JimZ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Includes several of Updike's New Yorker pieces from his early years.

[Nick (11th Volume) · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s quite remarkable to discover that, at the age of twenty-two, Updike signed what is called a “first-reading agreement” with The New Yorker, renewing it annually for the next fifty-three years. Under its terms, Updike was required to send to the editors all of his written work, whether it be poetry, fiction or non-fiction prose, before he was able to offer it to another magazine. This becomes quite unremarkable when you actually read Updike’s prose. It's now wonder that a major literary magazine would strike such a deal. If Updike were a greengrocer and his produce were like his prose pieces, he wouldn’t be caught dead with bruised-bananas or moldy-melons. Updike possessed an intense freshness that one can imagine the editors at The New Yorker being astonished each time a basket of polished apples arrived at their headquarters. Nabokov, who infamously admonished many great authors, wrote to William Maxwell, who famously edited many great authors, and said that Updike’s review of The Defense - contained in this collection - was so “charming, intelligent, witty and splendidly phrased that I find it very hard not to respond directly.” Nabokov would later opine in Strong Opinions that Updike was “by far one of the finest artists in recent years.”

Enough dilly-dallying, this collection is a miscellany of “talk” pieces, parodies, touching autobiographical vignettes and of course, the bread and butter when it comes to Updike, criticism. Reading through these one gets the sense that, because of their pure strength, one may one day run out, only to joyfully realise that the “Books by John Updike” index looks like Davie Bowie’s discography. While this assortment - the first of eleven books of essays and criticism - is slim, the rest are cuboid volumes that await the hungry reader of a man who loved language and was born to write.

[Jake Schell · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of John Updike non-fiction articles written in the 1950-1960s. This collection provides a glimpse of what the US was like during this period. Updike can be over-the-top intellectually or the down-to-earth guy next door.

[Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's not so much the content, which seems stronger at first, but the form which becomes annoying. I don't think I've ever read a book of reviews before, but now I've got GR, so I'm all set in that department forevermore.

[Liz]

paperback

[Erika · Rating 3 out of 5]

it's okay. his novels are more impressive. his poems about his dying dogs.

interesting read though, if you're a fan.