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Due Considerations: Essays and Criticism
A page-turning collection of essays and literary criticism on topics ranging from books, writers, poker, cars, faith, and the American libido—from one of the most gifted American writers of the twentieth century and the author of the acclaimed Rabbit series.
"[Updike is] one of the best essayists and critics this country has produced in the last century." —The Los Angeles Times
Here Updike considers many books, some in introductions—to such classics as Walden, The Portrait of a Lady, and The Mabinogion —and many more in reviews, usually for The New Yorker. Ralph Waldo Emerson and the five Biblical books of Moses come in for appraisal, along with Uncle Tom’s Cabin and The Wizard of Oz .
Contemporary American and English writers—Colson Whitehead, E. L. Doctorow, Don DeLillo, Norman Rush, William Trevor, A. S. Byatt, Muriel Spark, Ian McEwan—receive attentive and appreciative reviews, as do Rohinton Mistry, Salman Rushdie, Peter Carey, Margaret Atwood, Gabriel García Márquez, Haruki Murakami, Günter Grass, and Orhan Pamuk.
In factual waters, Mr. Updike ponders the sinking of the Lusitania and the “unsinkable career” of Coco Chanel, the adventures of Lord Byron and Iris Murdoch, the sexual revolution and the advent of female Biblical scholars, and biographies of Robert Frost, Sinclair Lewis, Marcel Proust, and Søren Kierkegaard.
Reading Due Considerations is like taking a cruise that calls at many ports with a witty, sensitive, and articulate guide aboard—a voyage not to be missed.
"[Updike is] one of the best essayists and critics this country has produced in the last century." —The Los Angeles Times
Here Updike considers many books, some in introductions—to such classics as Walden, The Portrait of a Lady, and The Mabinogion —and many more in reviews, usually for The New Yorker. Ralph Waldo Emerson and the five Biblical books of Moses come in for appraisal, along with Uncle Tom’s Cabin and The Wizard of Oz .
Contemporary American and English writers—Colson Whitehead, E. L. Doctorow, Don DeLillo, Norman Rush, William Trevor, A. S. Byatt, Muriel Spark, Ian McEwan—receive attentive and appreciative reviews, as do Rohinton Mistry, Salman Rushdie, Peter Carey, Margaret Atwood, Gabriel García Márquez, Haruki Murakami, Günter Grass, and Orhan Pamuk.
In factual waters, Mr. Updike ponders the sinking of the Lusitania and the “unsinkable career” of Coco Chanel, the adventures of Lord Byron and Iris Murdoch, the sexual revolution and the advent of female Biblical scholars, and biographies of Robert Frost, Sinclair Lewis, Marcel Proust, and Søren Kierkegaard.
Reading Due Considerations is like taking a cruise that calls at many ports with a witty, sensitive, and articulate guide aboard—a voyage not to be missed.
703 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2007
36 people are currently reading
449 people want to read
About the author
John Updike
862 books2,427 followersJohn 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.
He died of lung cancer at age 76.
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
September 21, 2008
John Updike is one of my very favorite writers and I am specially indebted to Hugging The Shore for introducing me to some of the best books I've read. With Updike's guidance on traversing a crowded (and to me, mostly unfamiliar) literary landscape, I no longer felt limited by the narrow confines of my small town existence. Each time, I read a book or an author recommended by Updike, the more I came to depend on his judgment.
So, it was with a great deal of anticipation that I picked up Due Considerations. To say the least, I was hoping to be introduced again to a fresh crop of literary talent from around the world, writers and works Updike had not been able to give consideration to before. But more than that I was hoping to hear his own thoughts about anything he thought worthy of consideration.
While his reviews are as detailed, informative and insightful as they have always been, often he comes across as a little too kind to be critical or perhaps he has deliberately chosen to comment on works that he finds easy to lavish praise upon. Whatever, the case, I found myself skimming through the entire section titled "Considering Books" and agreeing with NYT reviewer Christopher Hitchens when he says: Fair-mindedness here threatens to decline into something completely passive, neutral and inert.
I must be one of those readers who loved every line of what Updike had to say about the literary output of others but have really been waiting for him to share more of himself with his readers.
In his essay "On Literary Biographies" Updike writes about the readers of such works :
We read, those of us who do, literary biographies for a variety of reasons, of which the first and perhaps the most note-worthy is the desire to prolong and extend our intimacy with the author - to partake again, from another angle, of the joys we have experienced within the author's oeuvre, in the presence of a voice and mind we have come to love.
That describes precisely why I would have loved to hear more about Updike in his own words about himself. I missed that in Due Considerations - he just has not considered himself nearly enough. I would love a book devoted entirely to Personal Considerations which forms only a small section of this one.
www.heartcrossings.blogspot.com
So, it was with a great deal of anticipation that I picked up Due Considerations. To say the least, I was hoping to be introduced again to a fresh crop of literary talent from around the world, writers and works Updike had not been able to give consideration to before. But more than that I was hoping to hear his own thoughts about anything he thought worthy of consideration.
While his reviews are as detailed, informative and insightful as they have always been, often he comes across as a little too kind to be critical or perhaps he has deliberately chosen to comment on works that he finds easy to lavish praise upon. Whatever, the case, I found myself skimming through the entire section titled "Considering Books" and agreeing with NYT reviewer Christopher Hitchens when he says: Fair-mindedness here threatens to decline into something completely passive, neutral and inert.
I must be one of those readers who loved every line of what Updike had to say about the literary output of others but have really been waiting for him to share more of himself with his readers.
In his essay "On Literary Biographies" Updike writes about the readers of such works :
We read, those of us who do, literary biographies for a variety of reasons, of which the first and perhaps the most note-worthy is the desire to prolong and extend our intimacy with the author - to partake again, from another angle, of the joys we have experienced within the author's oeuvre, in the presence of a voice and mind we have come to love.
That describes precisely why I would have loved to hear more about Updike in his own words about himself. I missed that in Due Considerations - he just has not considered himself nearly enough. I would love a book devoted entirely to Personal Considerations which forms only a small section of this one.
www.heartcrossings.blogspot.com
January 24, 2020
As someone whose reactions to John Updike's fiction have ranged from boredom to contempt, I was shocked by how much I ended up enjoying and *liking* his non fiction persona.
On a side note there's a blurb on the back from Christopher Hitchens in which he praises Updike's essay on Czelaw Milosz, and the idea of that tanksie reading Milosz filled me with a sense of existential vertigo induced nausea.
Also at one moment Updike makes an offhand reference to Yugi-Oh and I had to stop for a solid ten minutes and wonder about the chain of events that allowed that to come to pass.
On a side note there's a blurb on the back from Christopher Hitchens in which he praises Updike's essay on Czelaw Milosz, and the idea of that tanksie reading Milosz filled me with a sense of existential vertigo induced nausea.
Also at one moment Updike makes an offhand reference to Yugi-Oh and I had to stop for a solid ten minutes and wonder about the chain of events that allowed that to come to pass.
September 17, 2022
First half.
It is probably an indication of my crass soul, but I always enjoyed Updike the essayist and reviewer over Updike the novelist. His novels tended to be clever finely written stores about people who I didn't care about. Rabbit seemed more of a shit than a tortured soul to me. I usually didn't really care what happened to his characters.
On the other hand, his nonfiction is first rate. This late collection from 2007 includes sixty two book reviews from The New Yorker, five essays and a collection of miscellaneous articles, introductions, obituaries, and left overs.
He is curious about almost everything. He includes pieces on his trip to China, the late works of famous authors, a new biblical translation, The wizard of Oz, the hot new novels by Don DeLillo and Margaret Atwood and the art of James Thurber. And that is just the first half of the book.
Updike works hard at his pieces. To review a new edition of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" he reads several other editions, bones up on Harriet Beecher Stowe's life, and reads over Huckleberry Finn to compare it. When he reviews a new novel, he routinely reads every other novel by the author. His piece on E. B. White's children classic "Charlotte's Web" is a history of its inspiration and writing, a review of its reception and a very convincing explanation of why it works, in seven pages.
Updike prides himself on saying something interesting about whatever his subject is.
In an essay on the state of religious faith in America he says, "There is a way in which success disagrees with Christianity. It proper venue in embattlement- a furtive hanging on in the catacombs or ill attended services in dying rural and inner-city parishes." A brilliant point. The crimes in the name of the church are largely done by the powerful in the church and the saints and holy people are largely from the despised and poor in the church.
Muriel Spark, one of my favorite English novelist, specialized in sharp clever social novels of mid-20th century England. Updike, in reviewing one of her novels, asks, "has any fiction writer since Hemingway placed more faith in the simple declarative sentence, the plain Anglo-Saxon noun?" I doubt any one ever saw a connection between those two writers but, he is spot on.
In his consideration of Thoreau's "Walden" he says, "It is the thingness of Thoreau's prose that still excites us-the athleticism with which he springs from detail to detail, image to image, while still toting something of transcendentalism's metaphysical burden" One sentence in the middle of a long review gives us two great phrases, "the athleticism with which he springs from detail to detail" and "toting something of transcendentalism's metaphysical burden" . It is also a succinct explanation of why people still read Thoreau and hardly anyone reads Emerson.
This is a very smart, well read ,sharp writer talking about the wide variety of things that interest him. What's not to like?
It is probably an indication of my crass soul, but I always enjoyed Updike the essayist and reviewer over Updike the novelist. His novels tended to be clever finely written stores about people who I didn't care about. Rabbit seemed more of a shit than a tortured soul to me. I usually didn't really care what happened to his characters.
On the other hand, his nonfiction is first rate. This late collection from 2007 includes sixty two book reviews from The New Yorker, five essays and a collection of miscellaneous articles, introductions, obituaries, and left overs.
He is curious about almost everything. He includes pieces on his trip to China, the late works of famous authors, a new biblical translation, The wizard of Oz, the hot new novels by Don DeLillo and Margaret Atwood and the art of James Thurber. And that is just the first half of the book.
Updike works hard at his pieces. To review a new edition of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" he reads several other editions, bones up on Harriet Beecher Stowe's life, and reads over Huckleberry Finn to compare it. When he reviews a new novel, he routinely reads every other novel by the author. His piece on E. B. White's children classic "Charlotte's Web" is a history of its inspiration and writing, a review of its reception and a very convincing explanation of why it works, in seven pages.
Updike prides himself on saying something interesting about whatever his subject is.
In an essay on the state of religious faith in America he says, "There is a way in which success disagrees with Christianity. It proper venue in embattlement- a furtive hanging on in the catacombs or ill attended services in dying rural and inner-city parishes." A brilliant point. The crimes in the name of the church are largely done by the powerful in the church and the saints and holy people are largely from the despised and poor in the church.
Muriel Spark, one of my favorite English novelist, specialized in sharp clever social novels of mid-20th century England. Updike, in reviewing one of her novels, asks, "has any fiction writer since Hemingway placed more faith in the simple declarative sentence, the plain Anglo-Saxon noun?" I doubt any one ever saw a connection between those two writers but, he is spot on.
In his consideration of Thoreau's "Walden" he says, "It is the thingness of Thoreau's prose that still excites us-the athleticism with which he springs from detail to detail, image to image, while still toting something of transcendentalism's metaphysical burden" One sentence in the middle of a long review gives us two great phrases, "the athleticism with which he springs from detail to detail" and "toting something of transcendentalism's metaphysical burden" . It is also a succinct explanation of why people still read Thoreau and hardly anyone reads Emerson.
This is a very smart, well read ,sharp writer talking about the wide variety of things that interest him. What's not to like?
February 15, 2013
It is Updike. It is wonderful. The early sections of reviews and essays wring the mind and heart. And his account of his time at The New Yorker was exceptional. Those crabby old guys, also gracious, like the city they inhabited, come to life through Updike's eyes, which is a gift. Eventually, particularly when reading it straight through like an epic, the smaller, slighter bits seem like futzing around in the back of a drawer and pulling out all the scraps of cocktail napkins and old envelopes. Yes, he would write a remembrance of Philadelphia, of the best books he read as a teenager... While they are mildly interesting, those scraps, they are consistent with the long, amazing pieces because they are the generous responses of a brilliant man who was gracious and funny and a loss to us all.
August 13, 2017
Wonderful collection of essays. Updike writes beautiful prose side by side with excellent analysis and insight on a wide-range of topics. This is a book to skip around with and come back to periodically.
April 17, 2025
I'm not sure if this weighs as much in print as did my copy of his earlier anthology of his criticism, Hugging the Shore, but it likely rivals it in heft. Even the Kindle version packs in hundreds of pages. There's plenty of New Yorker in both senses of the literary term as to focus. It's full of reminiscences and tributes to its staff, and Updike devoted the expected space to coverage of the city and magazine with whom his name and stories became associated for decades, a leader in postwar American prose.
But there's room for personal recollections, ephemeral pieces that were as short as paragraphs or as columns answering particular queries for a variety of reprinted editions (his fiction, and many other writers, artists, and thinkers preceding him). It's a testimony to his breadth of knowledge that he was able to combine his "commissioned" journalism and criticism with his poems, novels, stories, in a very productive career which, rare among his rank, continued in quality up to 2009, over a long life.
I'd gently aver that some of the smaller pieces in this mosaic would not have been much missed if left out, but as a compendium which the reader can skim or stop for a deeper dive depending, it serves a valuable purpose. Compared with, say, the erudite Adam Gopnik, in terms of erudition in the New Yorker today, contrast Updike's prolific output yearly, with the comparatively modest side projects of the latter, rough equivalent, in terms of critical thought applied across many intellectual endeavors...
But there's room for personal recollections, ephemeral pieces that were as short as paragraphs or as columns answering particular queries for a variety of reprinted editions (his fiction, and many other writers, artists, and thinkers preceding him). It's a testimony to his breadth of knowledge that he was able to combine his "commissioned" journalism and criticism with his poems, novels, stories, in a very productive career which, rare among his rank, continued in quality up to 2009, over a long life.
I'd gently aver that some of the smaller pieces in this mosaic would not have been much missed if left out, but as a compendium which the reader can skim or stop for a deeper dive depending, it serves a valuable purpose. Compared with, say, the erudite Adam Gopnik, in terms of erudition in the New Yorker today, contrast Updike's prolific output yearly, with the comparatively modest side projects of the latter, rough equivalent, in terms of critical thought applied across many intellectual endeavors...
October 27, 2018
It's been years since I read John Updike's Rabbit series. A professor I knew was obsessed with Updike's work and I never understood why until now. This 2007 compilation of Updike essays, articles, and reviews from the late 1990's and early 2000's is a treasure chest that led one reviewer to say that " Updike knows more about literature than almost anyone breathing today." My 671-page copy of Due Considerations is greatly marked with reminders of books and authors that I want to read or revisit. He does tributes to many authors and dissects books categorized by genre. The reader may not be able to focus attention on every entry and some are too lengthy, such as a review of two collections of Philip Larkins' Collected Poems, but we're provided enough works of interest to create a "want to read" book list to last several years.
May 21, 2018
Picked up from library to read "Introduction to The Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James", which I saw referenced in the library catalog while looking for "The Portrait of a Lady". Also read the essays (first 67 pages) and then several shorter pieces that looked interesting. Of those, really liked "Against Angelolatry" and "September 11, 2001". Elegant prose and thought-provoking content. Not meant to be read as a whole but savored.
March 25, 2018
This collection is made up mostly of book reviews. The book’s intended audience is fans of Updike’s work. I like his writing style but skipped most of the pieces. With that said, I enjoyed the essays “On Literary Biography”, “A Case for Books”, and “Against Angelolatry”.
April 9, 2013
It strains credulity that so many people claim to have read this and other volumes of Updike's criticism and post with a straight face reviews of each edition. You're all poseurs who are doing this. If anyone was as well-versed as Updike was in writing these pieces that they would be able to follow him along on his discourses, he would be writing his own.
The Updike non-fiction collections are like textbooks or cookbooks, not cover-to-cover projects. That said, A couple of these recipes stick out, particularly on "Walden" and Ted Williams, and there is also plenty of sustenance in here for people who like to read the behind-the-scenes-at-the-New Yorker genre.
The Updike non-fiction collections are like textbooks or cookbooks, not cover-to-cover projects. That said, A couple of these recipes stick out, particularly on "Walden" and Ted Williams, and there is also plenty of sustenance in here for people who like to read the behind-the-scenes-at-the-New Yorker genre.
January 5, 2008
Like a banquet, too rich to consume everything, but the essays on literary biography alone are worth it: Byron, Kierkegaard, Proust, Frost, Sinclair Lewis, John O'Hara, Iris Murdock. Also dipped into pieces on Edward Gorey and Nathaiel Hawthornee, Czeslaw Milosz and Orhan Pamuk. Whew! Think I overate.
January 21, 2015
Whatever he writes, this legend was such an affable, accessible person in prose...I feel like I'm chatting with him when I read the various essays...and it makes me want to read more, brush up on my grammar and vocabulary, and try to love liturature just as much as he did. It's really a joy...and I'm only 4 pages in.
November 3, 2007
it's 700 pages of recycled pulp press book reviews by my favorite old white guy with a basketball-jones.
i can't wait to start reading it the next time i wake up in the middle of the night and need a good snooz
i can't wait to start reading it the next time i wake up in the middle of the night and need a good snooz
January 12, 2011
Updike is a joy to read always, but what comes through in this collection of his thoughts and particularly his criticism of other writers, some of them at early stages of their craft, is his essential decency and fairness of mind.
October 15, 2015
I like Updike, but there are very, very few writers of whom I'd want to read every single word they'd ever written. Better to skim this book than to commit to it deeply as I did. Although it did help me sleep some nights.
December 12, 2007
Pretty, pretty good... I found the book reviews and the writings on the history of The New Yorker particularly useful.
November 6, 2012
How many times have I looked at JU and thought 'I won't like him!'. How wrong can you be
January 24, 2011
I don't have much use for Updike's fiction (or fiction in general), but his non-fiction is nonpareil. These essays are diverse, gemlike, irreplaceable. And cheaper than graduate school.
December 16, 2016
The breadth of material that Updike can consume and then eloquently critique is astounding. Baseball, painting, international novelists...the list goes in and on.
December 17, 2008
Updike manages to look both silly and avuncular on this jacket.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews