Picked-Up Pieces: Essays

In John Updike's second collection of assorted prose he comes into his own as a book reviewer; most of the pieces picked up here were first published in <i>The New Yorker </i>in the 1960s and early '70s. If one word could sum up the young critic's approach to books and their authors it would be &quot;generosity&quot;: &quot;Better to praise and share,&quot; he says in his Foreword, &quot;than to blame and ban.&quot; And so he follows his enthusiasms, which prove both deserving and infectious: Kierkegaard, Proust, Joyce, Dostoevsky, and Hamsun among the classics; Borges, Nabokov, Grass, Bellow, Cheever, and Jong among the contemporaries. Here too are meditations on Satan and cemeteries, travel essays on London and Anguilla, three very early &quot;golf dreams,&quot; and one big interview. <i>Picked-Up Pieces </i>is a glittering treasury for every reader who likes life, books, wit - and John Updike.