WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD
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โWriting criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea,โ 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 hereโthose that โcome about and draw even closer to the land with another nine-point quotationโโare distinguished by a novelistโs 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 Updikeโs fiction: They are โthe sort of ambitious scholarly reappraisal not seen in this country since the death of Edmund Wilson.โ With Hugging the Shore, Michiko Kakutani wrote, Updike established himself โas a major and enduring critical voice; indeed, as the pre-eminent critic of his generation.โ