Updike

Updike, John: S. - A Novel, New York, NY Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. 1988 ; fester Einband / hard cover; Schutzumschlag / dust cover; sig.; 1. Ed. ISBN: 0-394-56835-4
0-394-56835-4 Fine in Fine Dust Jacket Dust Jacket Design By John Updike; Dust Jacket Calligraphy By John Stevens

First printing of the Knopf hardcover edition. viii, 280pp. Pink cloth, gilt and silver gilt spine and front cover lettering and decoration, green top-stain, cream endpapers. Dust jacket price 17.95. Signed by Updike to half-title page. Book and dust jacket appear in fine, unread condition. No remainder markings. "S. is Sarah Worth -- doctor's wife, North Shore matron, loving mother, and now (suddenly!) ardent follower of a Hindu religious leader known as the Arhat. As this brilliant and very funny novel opens, Sarah is fleeing the confinement of her suburban life to become a sannyasin (pilgrim) at her guru's Arizona ashram. In the letters and audiocassettes that Sarah sends to her husband, daughter, mother, brother, best friend -- to her psychiatrist and her hairdresser and her dentist -- master novelist John Updike gives us a witty comedy of manners, a biting satire of life on a religious commune, and the story -- deep and true -- of an American woman in search of herself." - dust jacket flap. "The eponymous S. is Sarah Worth, Boston bred, upper-class WASP, and when we meet her in this epistolary narrative, she is on an airplane, writing to tell her doctor husband she is leaving him to join her guru on an Arizona religious commune. In a whimsical twist, Updike makes Sarah a Hawthornian counterpart to Roger in Roger's Version: one of her ancestors was a Prynne; her daughter's name is Pearl. Through letters to members of her family, her hairdresser and dentist, and through tapes sent to her best friend Midge, Sarah relates the circumstances that prompted her to leave domineering, philandering Charles and to seek communion with the Arhat and his band of sannyasins (pilgrims) on the ashram. Willfully blind to the totalitarian methods of the Arhat's flunkies, Sarah reports her spiritual rebirth at the same time she records abysmal living conditions and brutal physical and financial exploitation. She mimes the Arhat's preachy nonsense that frees her ego for "nothingness" and her body for love affairs both heterosexual and lesbian. Eventually she is "chosen" by the Arhat himself; bitter disillusionment follows. Like all of Updike's work, the narrative is a commentary on our culture. Sometimes bordering on farce, it is often wickedly funny, especially when Sarah employs her sharp tongue to lecture her mother and daughter or write mendacious letters to the desperate people the Arhat has cheated. Updike is in his most playful mode here; and if Sarah is too much of a ninny to elicit the reader's sympathy, she is a wonderful embodiment of self-delusion and feminism run amok." - Publishers Weekly. Signed by Author First Edition Fine Hard Cover 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall; First Edition

[SW: AMERICAN FICTION FICTIONAL WORKS AUTHOR LITERARY]

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[UPDIKE, John]: HI-LIFE 1950 [John Updike's senior class high school yearbook] Shillington, PA 1950 ; 1. Ed.

First Edition Published by the Senior Class of Shillington High School, Shillington, PA. Contains a dozen mentions/photos of Updike including a full-page devoted to him as the Class President with a photograph and what might be deemed a prose poem that has one correction in ink, possibly by Updike. Updike was also senior editor of the yearbook and contributes the Class Song and possibly another poem that has no attribution. He was also voted the "Wittiest." Much ink writing within by other students but none by Updike, all addressed to fellow student and former owner Mary Jean. An exceptionally early and scarce Updike item. cloth Expected wear. Very Good

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(Merrymount Press). (Updike, Daniel Berkeley; Pottinger, David T.; Wroth, Lawrence C.; et al). DANIEL BERKELEY UPDIKE AND THE MERRYMOUNT PRESS. New York: The American Institute of Graphic Arts, 1940.

- Small octavo, tan wraps. The wraps are lightly soiled & spotted with staining along the spine & red stains to the rear wrap. 47 & [7] pp. plus colophon. Owner's ink name on front endpaper. Illustrated with B&W vignettes. Very good internally. <p>1/1000 copies.<p>Addresses delivered on the opening of an exhibition of the work of Daniel Berkeley Updike and the Merrymount Press, which was shown in the exhibition hall of The Grolier Club by a joint committee of the Club and The American Institute of Graphic Arts. The text includes a checklist, compiled by Karl Kup, of books, pamphlets and articles written and edited by Updike.

[SW: BOOKS-ON-BOOKS; DANIEL BERKELEY UPDIKE; MERRYMOUNT PRESS; FINE PRESS; EXHIBITION; SPEECHES; ADDRESSES; CHECKLIST; REFERENCE; KARL KUP; LAWRENCE C. WROTH; DAVID T. POTTINGER; LIMITED EDITION. (Books-on-Books). DANIEL BERKELEY UPDIKE AND THE MERRYMOUNT PRESS. (Merrymount Press). (Updike, Daniel Berkeley; Pottinger, David T.; Wroth, Lawrence C.; et al).]

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De Bellis, Jack & Michael Broomfield: JOHN UPDIKE: A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF PRIMARY AND SECONDARY MATERIALS, 1948-2007, New Castle, Delaware Oak Knoll Press 2007
With "Foreword to my own Bibliography" by John Updike and a CD Supplement. First Edition. John Updike is internationally renowned for his novels, short stories, poems, essays and criticism. He has won two Pulitzers, the National Book Award, the American Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and many other prizes. Updike has written a "Foreword to My Own Bibliography" especially for this book. This definitive guide to materials by and about this prolific American author consists of a printed first volume and a second volume on CD (a first for Oak Knoll Press). The A and B sections of Volume I, concerning separately printed works by Updike and books to which he has contributed, are superb examples of descriptive bibliography. The printed volume also features over 500 grayscale images of book covers, jackets, broadsides, and many seldom seen items. It includes comprehensive listings of Updike's short fiction, poems, articles, essays, and reviews, as well as extensive documentation of letters, speeches, dramatic works, manuscripts, interviews, and blurbs. Volume II contains entries for material about Updike and his work (reviews, commentary, and theses), several appendices (media appearances, work read by others, works in translation, exhibits and catalogs), and full-color versions of images appearing in the printed volume. John Updike: a Bibliography of Primary and Secondary Materials, 1948-2007 provides an indispensable guide to Updike's work and commentary about it. Jack De Bellis, professor emeritus of English (Lehigh University), has authored The John Updike Encyclopedia (2000) and John Updike: Critical Responses to the "Rabbit" Saga (2004), as well as several essays and reviews concerning Updike's novels. This bibliography greatly expands his 1994 compilation for Greenwood Press. De Bellis has also published two books on the poet Sidney Lanier, and articles on writers ranging from Shakespeare to Ken Kesey, and from F. Scott Fitzgerald to Truman Capote. His first published work, on Andrew Lytle, was a bibliography. De Bellis was a Fulbright scholar to the University of Toulouse in France. He lives with his wife in Allentown, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia where he was born. Michael Broomfield, a corporate lawyer by profession, has become, over the past 40 years, a preeminent collector of first editions and other materials by a number of American writers, including Raymond Carver, E.E. Cummings, William Faulkner, Joseph Heller, Robinson Jeffers and many living authors. Collecting work in many forms, Broomfield displays remarkable attention to detail and an acute understanding of the complexities of editions. He has what is probably the most extensive private collection of John Updike materials. This bibliography is Broomfield's first book. He lives in New York City with his wife and their daughter.

8.5 x 11 inches, hardcover. 624 pages (plus nearly 359 pages on CD-ROM).

[SW: 9781584561958 BIBLIOGRAPHY, TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLIOGRAPHY, TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY AUTHOURSHIP AND LITERARY CRITICISM, TWENTIETH CENTURY AUTHORSHIP & LITERARY CRITICISM, TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY BOOK COLLECTING UNITED STATES AMERICAN LITERATURE NOVEL SHORT STORIES POETRY ESSAYS REVIEWS LETTERS- SPEECH OAK KNOLL PRESS New]

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