Volume 30, Number 18 · November 24, 1983
Top of the Class
By Sanford Schwartz
Hugging the Shore: Essays and Criticism
by John Updike
Knopf, 919 pp., $19.95
John Updike hardly seems able to write a sentence, for any occasion, that doesn't have a shapely, rhythmical balance to it, yet there is something shapeless and directionless about Hugging the Shore. Many collections of reviews seem scattered until the author's aims become apparent, and in reading these literary reviews we do learn what Updike's tastes and prejudices are. But I put the book down with a frustrated and almost angry feeling that I had been in the company of a brilliant person who is running on automatic.
Review, 6549 words
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