For Updike Fans: Revealing Review

Here’s a Times Literary Supplement review of Begley’s biography of John Updike. It exposes elements of Updike’s life and character (most complex) that I suspected, but failed to fully understand. His muse was Eros. Elements of ecstasy and self-punishment abounded, all, of course, springing from a most privileged talent and, perhaps even, a full understanding of his source of power as a unique novelist. The writer as eager betrayer writ large. Alas, the complexity of self, art, creativity: it’s all spotlighted in this revealing review. The photograph: An empty page in the foreground, books in the background…an enigmatic, sly look.