Due Considerations Essays and Criticism

John Updike's sixth collection of essays and literary criticism opens with a skeptical overview of literary biographies, proceeds to five essays on topics ranging from China and small change to faith and late works, and takes up, under the heading "General Considerations," books, poker, cars, and the American libido. The last, informal section ofDue Considerationsassembles more or less autobiographical piecesreminiscences, friendly forewords, comments on the author's own recent works, responses to probing questions. In between, many books are considered, some in introductionsto such classics asWalden, The Portrait of a Lady,andThe Mabinogionand many more in reviews, usually forThe New Yorker. Ralph Waldo Emerson and the five Biblical books of Moses come in for appraisal, along withUncle Tom's CabinandThe Wizard of Oz. Contemporary American and English writersColson Whitehead, E. L. Doctorow, Don DeLillo, Norman Rush, William Trevor, A. S. Byatt, Muriel Spark, Ian McEwanreceive attentive and appreciative reviews, as do Rohinton Mistry, Salman Rushdie, Peter Carey, Margaret Atwood, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Haruki Murakami, Gunter Grass, and Orhan Pamuk. In factual waters, Mr. Updike ponders the sinking of theLusitaniaand the "unsinkable career" of Coco Chanel, the adventures of Lord Byron and Iris Murdoch, the sexual revolution and the advent of female Biblical scholars, and biographies of Robert Frost, Sinclair Lewis, Marcel Proust, and Soren Kierkegaard. ReadingDue Considerationsis like taking a cruise that calls at many ports with a witty, sensitive, and articulate guide aboarda voyage not to be missed.