John Updike - Couples For the fist half of this book I couldn’t work out who was married to whom, and the love trysts were confusing the hell out of me. Then halfway through all the peripheral characters just kinda drift off and it’s all about Piet and Foxy. It felt a bit like Updike just started writing one day and decided to let his pen decide who the main characters were going to be. Reading it, I felt a bit like I’d taken on too many extra-marital affairs myself, and was panicking about letting things slip by arranging to play tennis with the wrong woman. The couples in, erm, Couples have the kind of lifestyle that I imagine my grandparents had in the 60s; lots of gin and tonic at the golf club, tennis and wife swapping at the weekends. For that reason it fascinates me even more so than normal, but it also menas that every character gets super-imposed with the face of either my Grandpa or my Gran. Considering how Updike likes to write about sex, that’s just plain weird. Last chapter was just lovely though. Things didn’t really work out the way I would’ve wanted them to, but Updike writes sexual resignation better than anyone else in the world. Publication date: doesn’t actually say - I’m guessing the 90s sometime from the biog…Publisher: PenguinPrice then: £7.99Price now: FREEBought from: Swapped on Read It Swap ItFrom the synopsis: “They are sociable, articulate and unhappy; they enjoy sailing, basketball and skiing; they play word games in the evenings… and adultery all the year round.”

John Updike - Couples

For the fist half of this book I couldn’t work out who was married to whom, and the love trysts were confusing the hell out of me. Then halfway through all the peripheral characters just kinda drift off and it’s all about Piet and Foxy. It felt a bit like Updike just started writing one day and decided to let his pen decide who the main characters were going to be. Reading it, I felt a bit like I’d taken on too many extra-marital affairs myself, and was panicking about letting things slip by arranging to play tennis with the wrong woman.

The couples in, erm, Couples have the kind of lifestyle that I imagine my grandparents had in the 60s; lots of gin and tonic at the golf club, tennis and wife swapping at the weekends. For that reason it fascinates me even more so than normal, but it also menas that every character gets super-imposed with the face of either my Grandpa or my Gran. Considering how Updike likes to write about sex, that’s just plain weird. Last chapter was just lovely though. Things didn’t really work out the way I would’ve wanted them to, but Updike writes sexual resignation better than anyone else in the world.

Publication date: doesn’t actually say - I’m guessing the 90s sometime from the biog…
Publisher: Penguin
Price then: £7.99
Price now: FREE
Bought from: Swapped on Read It Swap It
From the synopsis: “They are sociable, articulate and unhappy; they enjoy sailing, basketball and skiing; they play word games in the evenings… and adultery all the year round.”

--Tagged under: john updike--

When ‘Amazon’ isn’t a dirty word.

I have spent recent days reflecting upon the myriad of ethical standpoints that one can take when faced with Amazon Marketplace. You can buy second-hand books through them, and it works a bit like an agency for all the book dealers around. You browse on Amazon, you pay Amazon, and then Amazon tell the little old guys in Hay-on-Wye and on Charing Cross Road and, increasingly, in warehouses outside Milton Keynes where to send your paperbacks. Some of these warehouse-type places are actually operated by Amazon themselves, and generally sell old editions or damaged copies. Technically, not second-hand. For these sellers, you are able to use the Amazon order tracking system to see where your books are lingering the UK postal system.

Obviously, it’s a difficult call to make. Even the independent sellers who are selling genuine second-hand will be giving Amazon a commission for listing on Marketplace. And is it going against one’s ethics to buy a ‘new’ copy, albeit not on general sale due to cover damage or watermarks or something? By buying these copies, are we saying to publishers “it’s okay if you don’t treat these FRESHLY MURDERED TREES with respect, since there will always be a few misguided souls ready to purchase them”, or is it a case of giving the runt of the litter a good home, when it would otherwise sit, unloved, in its cold and lonely Milton Keynes warehouse forever more? What if the only place we can find a copy of S by John Updike at a reasonable price is through these dubious channels?

I’ve been testing the system, and in doing so, testing myself. In one transaction I bought a second-hand copies of S by Updike and a Simon Schama American history book, damaged copy of The Last Mad Surge Of Youth by Mark Hodkinson (all through sellers operated by Amazon), and then two collections of second-hand Ali Smith short stories, The Whole Story and other stories and Free Love and other stories, through independent sellers. The Schama and the Hodkinson still haven’t arrived though. Hmmm.

I think I’ll continue using Amazon Marketplace, simply because the range of titles available is unmatched, even by Ebay, but I’m going to try to stick with those independent sellers using it simple as another sales point. They might be little rural bookshops with limited winter trade, and would not be using Amazon were it not financially worthwhile. Perhaps when I phone Amazon to find out where the hell my Schama and Hodkinson books have got to, I’ll find their order tracking system useful, but I get the impression the Amazon-operated sellers are simply clearing their unwanted stock. The whole point in buying second-hand only it to try to prevent excess stock being printed in the first place.

--Tagged under: amazon marketplace--

--Tagged under: john updike--

--Tagged under: ali smith--

--Tagged under: simon schama--

--Tagged under: mark hodkinson--

Exploding Helicopters #9 John Updike - In The Beauty Of The Lilies Just to be perfectly clear, I would never ordinarily read a book with such a shit title if it wasn’t by John Updike. John Updike is awesome. He writes books that are unlike most of the other writers I’m into. They’re normally about shit marriages, and In The Beauty Of The Lilies is different only in that it’s about several generations of the same family having shit marriages, and actually one of the marriages works rather well in an endearing aaaw, aren’t they such wonderfully simple folk? kind of a way. It all kicks off with a pastor losing his faith wholly and suddenly in the opening chapter (brilliant brilliant brilliant). Then you meet the docile son Teddy, his daughter Essie, who becomes a movie star, and then her unloved son Clark, who is involved in possibly the most dramatic storyline in any of the Updike books I have read or even been aware of. It’s structured in four main parts, each for that generation’s protagonist, and when each story comes to an end it’s genuinely sad to say goodbye to that character, even if they do reoccur later. None of Updike’s characters are ever 100% likeable, and I find myself wanting to give some people a bloody good talking too, but that’s because he writes real people that you instantly believe in. This isn’s a normal Exploding Helicopters post because there aren’t millions of take-your-breath-away sentences in the book. But there are take-your-breath-away moments, where you’re genuinely frightened or moved or over the moon. They won’t have the same impact here, without the individual backstories, but these are some of the moments that had me emoting like a bastard. “My poor Dad wanted to believe and needed to believe and God stayed silent.”“He’s not silent with me.”“What does He tell you?”Her hand had gone to the sensitive bump behind his fly. “To love you with all my heart,” she said. “To serve you, in the faith that you’ll serve me.” “The M-16’s what they issued us in Vietnam. She’s a sweetie, when she don’t jam. There were a lot of complaints from deceased users about it jamming, so they renamed it from the M-16A1 to the M-16A2 and it worked much better. Here son. You hold her.” “Clark? G-g-g-” She couldn’t say it, couldn’t get past the ‘g’. This simple word. He hung up while she was still trying. His own mother, and all those FBI eavesdroppers listening to her humiliation. “Goodbye,” she said in her bedroom to herself, looking into one of her mirrors, tilting her head this way and that. “Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye, you idiot,” furious with herself. How fucking sad is that? It kills me. John Updike - In The Beauty Of The LiliesPublication date: 1996Publisher: PenguinPrice then: £6.99Price now: £2Bought from: Some place on Charing Cross Road, London. I didn’t write the name down because I am a bad blogger. From the synopsis: “transcendence, higher reality, immortality, resurrections… a novel of accumulated wisdoms.”

Exploding Helicopters #9

John Updike - In The Beauty Of The Lilies

Just to be perfectly clear, I would never ordinarily read a book with such a shit title if it wasn’t by John Updike. John Updike is awesome. He writes books that are unlike most of the other writers I’m into. They’re normally about shit marriages, and In The Beauty Of The Lilies is different only in that it’s about several generations of the same family having shit marriages, and actually one of the marriages works rather well in an endearing aaaw, aren’t they such wonderfully simple folk? kind of a way.

It all kicks off with a pastor losing his faith wholly and suddenly in the opening chapter (brilliant brilliant brilliant). Then you meet the docile son Teddy, his daughter Essie, who becomes a movie star, and then her unloved son Clark, who is involved in possibly the most dramatic storyline in any of the Updike books I have read or even been aware of. It’s structured in four main parts, each for that generation’s protagonist, and when each story comes to an end it’s genuinely sad to say goodbye to that character, even if they do reoccur later. None of Updike’s characters are ever 100% likeable, and I find myself wanting to give some people a bloody good talking too, but that’s because he writes real people that you instantly believe in.

This isn’s a normal Exploding Helicopters post because there aren’t millions of take-your-breath-away sentences in the book. But there are take-your-breath-away moments, where you’re genuinely frightened or moved or over the moon. They won’t have the same impact here, without the individual backstories, but these are some of the moments that had me emoting like a bastard.

“My poor Dad wanted to believe and needed to believe and God stayed silent.”
“He’s not silent with me.”
“What does He tell you?”
Her hand had gone to the sensitive bump behind his fly. “To love you with all my heart,” she said. “To serve you, in the faith that you’ll serve me.”

“The M-16’s what they issued us in Vietnam. She’s a sweetie, when she don’t jam. There were a lot of complaints from deceased users about it jamming, so they renamed it from the M-16A1 to the M-16A2 and it worked much better. Here son. You hold her.”

“Clark? G-g-g-” She couldn’t say it, couldn’t get past the ‘g’. This simple word. He hung up while she was still trying. His own mother, and all those FBI eavesdroppers listening to her humiliation. “Goodbye,” she said in her bedroom to herself, looking into one of her mirrors, tilting her head this way and that. “Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye, you idiot,” furious with herself.

How fucking sad is that? It kills me.

John Updike - In The Beauty Of The Lilies
Publication date: 1996
Publisher: Penguin
Price then: £6.99
Price now: £2
Bought from: Some place on Charing Cross Road, London. I didn’t write the name down because I am a bad blogger.

From the synopsis: “transcendence, higher reality, immortality, resurrections… a novel of accumulated wisdoms.”

--Tagged under: exploding helicopters--

--Tagged under: john updike--

I hath returned! You can all throw off your mourning clothes and dance once again. I have tales to tell of foreign climes, of desert skies and city nights and trying to take a photo of the Golden Gate Bridge in fog. And of Green Apples Bookshop, on Clement and 6th Street in the Richmond neighbourhood of San Francisco, where I thought I was going to have to buy another suitcase to accommodate my purchases. Going to bookshops when on holiday is often disappointing. Go one way and they’re all in foreign languages; go the other and the self-help section is the whole shop. My guidebook told me that Green Apples was going to be different though, and a brief web search confirmed that it had not been closed down my bibliophobe zealots in the years since my guide’s publication. I got the number 2 bus from Downtown over to Richmond on one my my last days in the States (thus protecting myself from book-assisted starvation) and it was super-easy to find on the intersection, what with bright green canopies and outdoor shelving. The fiction and music departments are even separated into an entirely different building, three doors away, so that us story-fans are spared the self-help basketcases. Since most of my favourite writers are Americans working in the 20th century, I spent about two hours there in total, browsing every shelf in the place and bringing a continuous stream of novels back to the counter. My budget restrictions meant that my choices were whittled down again before paying (So long Pulp by Bukowski! Farewell Kafka’s Amerika! Adios Life After God by Douglas Coupland!) but it was still worth bringing that extra canvas bag… John Updike - Bech Is Back (1982)John Updike - Bech At Bay (1999) I suspect it’s going to be some time before I come across any literature as well written as Updike’s Rabbit books, but until I do, I’ll stick with him. Truman Capote - Music For Cameleons (1980)Truman Capote - Other Voices, Other Rooms (original publication date was 1948 but no date on this edition) This is where I get a bit shallow, because although I adored In Cold Blood and read the whole thing in one day, I thought Breakfast At Tiffany’s wasn’t so hot, and I’ve honestly chosen these books simply because the edges of their pages are dyed yellow and orange. I do kinda want to come to some kind of firm opinion about Capote too of course. Hopefully these will be more like In Cold Blood than Breakfast At Tiffany’s. Mikhail Bulgakov - Heart Of A Dog (1982) This book has one of the most amazing synopses I’ve ever read. A stray dog has his testicles replaced with those of a petty criminal who died in a bar fight, and then he gets a job in a city department, employed to rid the place of cats. This is what reading is all about. Richard Farina - Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me (1969) It looks like someone’s tried to set fire to this book, and the final pages have only just escaped unscathed. It’s about “an amoral collegiate hipster” so I felt a connection between us instantly. James Dickey - Deliverance (1971) This has got a gorgeous cover with a big blue eye staring out from the undergrowth. I’ve never seen the film, but I do quite like banjo so I’m sure it’ll be a serene little exploration of the South… Cormac McCarthy - The Orchard Keeper (1993) McCarthy is fast becoming my favourite ever writer, so I couldn’t leave this on the shelf. Vladimir Nabokov - Invitation To A Beheading (1989) I’ve often thought this guy sounded pretty cool, and my ears prick up at anything likened to Kafka. This appears to be a absurdist in much the same way that The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien was, if a little darker. But maybe I’m just thinking that because the cover isn’t bright pink like The Third Policeman. Douglas Coupland - Miss Wyoming (2001) I think I might be approaching Coupland Saturation Point, whereby one more book about cynical and disaffected young ‘slackers’ would just tip me over the edge, but then every time I read his stuff it flows so easily and I can appreciate it on several levels. This is most likely due to the fact that I’m a cynical and disaffected young slacker. William S Burroughs - Naked Lunch (1992) I’m dubious about this to be honest, because I don’t generally enjoy books that are just the publication of drug experiences, but this has been recommended too many times to ignore. Charles Bukowski - Hollywood (1993) I’m excited about this one because whenever I open a random page I find myself sucked in to men shouting “HUNGER STRIKE!” or “I AM COMING TO KILL YOU TONIGHT!” or “I had to piss, asked directions to the crapper”, more of which I would like to see in literature, if any novelists are listening.
I hath returned! You can all throw off your mourning clothes and dance once again.

I have tales to tell of foreign climes, of desert skies and city nights and trying to take a photo of the Golden Gate Bridge in fog. And of Green Apples Bookshop, on Clement and 6th Street in the Richmond neighbourhood of San Francisco, where I thought I was going to have to buy another suitcase to accommodate my purchases.

Going to bookshops when on holiday is often disappointing. Go one way and they’re all in foreign languages; go the other and the self-help section is the whole shop. My guidebook told me that Green Apples was going to be different though, and a brief web search confirmed that it had not been closed down my bibliophobe zealots in the years since my guide’s publication. I got the number 2 bus from Downtown over to Richmond on one my my last days in the States (thus protecting myself from book-assisted starvation) and it was super-easy to find on the intersection, what with bright green canopies and outdoor shelving. The fiction and music departments are even separated into an entirely different building, three doors away, so that us story-fans are spared the self-help basketcases.

Since most of my favourite writers are Americans working in the 20th century, I spent about two hours there in total, browsing every shelf in the place and bringing a continuous stream of novels back to the counter. My budget restrictions meant that my choices were whittled down again before paying (So long Pulp by Bukowski! Farewell Kafka’s Amerika! Adios Life After God by Douglas Coupland!) but it was still worth bringing that extra canvas bag…



John Updike - Bech Is Back (1982)
John Updike - Bech At Bay (1999)

I suspect it’s going to be some time before I come across any literature as well written as Updike’s Rabbit books, but until I do, I’ll stick with him.

Truman Capote - Music For Cameleons (1980)
Truman Capote - Other Voices, Other Rooms (original publication date was 1948 but no date on this edition)

This is where I get a bit shallow, because although I adored In Cold Blood and read the whole thing in one day, I thought Breakfast At Tiffany’s wasn’t so hot, and I’ve honestly chosen these books simply because the edges of their pages are dyed yellow and orange. I do kinda want to come to some kind of firm opinion about Capote too of course. Hopefully these will be more like In Cold Blood than Breakfast At Tiffany’s.

Mikhail Bulgakov - Heart Of A Dog (1982)

This book has one of the most amazing synopses I’ve ever read. A stray dog has his testicles replaced with those of a petty criminal who died in a bar fight, and then he gets a job in a city department, employed to rid the place of cats. This is what reading is all about.

Richard Farina - Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me (1969)

It looks like someone’s tried to set fire to this book, and the final pages have only just escaped unscathed. It’s about “an amoral collegiate hipster” so I felt a connection between us instantly.

James Dickey - Deliverance (1971)

This has got a gorgeous cover with a big blue eye staring out from the undergrowth. I’ve never seen the film, but I do quite like banjo so I’m sure it’ll be a serene little exploration of the South…

Cormac McCarthy - The Orchard Keeper (1993)

McCarthy is fast becoming my favourite ever writer, so I couldn’t leave this on the shelf.

Vladimir Nabokov - Invitation To A Beheading (1989)

I’ve often thought this guy sounded pretty cool, and my ears prick up at anything likened to Kafka. This appears to be a absurdist in much the same way that The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien was, if a little darker. But maybe I’m just thinking that because the cover isn’t bright pink like The Third Policeman.

Douglas Coupland - Miss Wyoming (2001)

I think I might be approaching Coupland Saturation Point, whereby one more book about cynical and disaffected young ‘slackers’ would just tip me over the edge, but then every time I read his stuff it flows so easily and I can appreciate it on several levels. This is most likely due to the fact that I’m a cynical and disaffected young slacker.

William S Burroughs - Naked Lunch (1992)

I’m dubious about this to be honest, because I don’t generally enjoy books that are just the publication of drug experiences, but this has been recommended too many times to ignore.

Charles Bukowski - Hollywood (1993)
I’m excited about this one because whenever I open a random page I find myself sucked in to men shouting “HUNGER STRIKE!” or “I AM COMING TO KILL YOU TONIGHT!” or “I had to piss, asked directions to the crapper”, more of which I would like to see in literature, if any novelists are listening.

--Tagged under: green apples bookshop--

--Tagged under: john updike--

--Tagged under: truman capote--

--Tagged under: mikhail bulgakov--

--Tagged under: richard farina--

--Tagged under: james dickey--

--Tagged under: cormac mccarthy--

--Tagged under: vladimir nabokov--

--Tagged under: douglas coupland--

--Tagged under: william s burroughs--

--Tagged under: charles bukowski--

Sometimes things are just not quite pornographic enough.


Books that have never been officially published in Great Britain are an absolute fucker to get hold of at a decent price.

I know this, because I have spent several months scoping out second-hand copies of Licks Of Love by John Updike, the collection of short stories that also contains his mini-sequel to the Rabbit novels, Rabbit Remembered. I have pined away for Rabbit Angstrom late at night, sad and lonely in my bed, with only a list of unobtainable hardbacks priced between £30 and £120 for company. Ebay just wanted to fuck with me; wanted to show me its glorious merchandise and then piss all over everything by revealing that the only one for less than a fiver was just a fucking audiobook…

That was until I discovered the ‘Make An Offer’ button of course. Even then I got a little carried away with myself and bid $25, forgetting that the world’s economy has crumbled and sterling is no longer like Magic Millionaire Dust on the other side of the Atlantic.

But still, the last few (very busy) days have been spent catching up with a few old friends… Nelson Angstrom, Harry’s social worker son; Janice, his wife, now married to Ronnie Harrison, and the was-she-wasn’t-she illegitimate daughter, Annabelle.

I was getting stuck into it during a quiet spell during a volunteer shift this evening (my other personality is a theatre luvvie) and someone asked me what I was reading. I held it up and suddenly she was all like “Oooh, is it… erotic?” Straight away I was all like “What? Nooo!” but with hindsight I may have appeared to protest too much. It had never even occurred to me that the title could be misconstrued as lit-porn, what with me being such an innocent bundle of sweetness and light an’ all. I spent the rest of the night trying to crouch behind the front desk so no-one got the wrong idea.

On the bus home though, I was thinking about how unfulfilling the latest developments have been. I liked that Updike hadn’t told us for sure whether or not Annabelle was Rabbit’s daughter or not, right the way through four lengthy novels. And I liked the uncertainty of Nelson’s future as a recovering drug addict. Generally speaking, stories that tie up every last little loose end seem a bit contrived. We are all ignorant of so much in the lives of those around us that it seems real, if imperfect, to die without ever discovering certain family members. (Any woman left unsupervised at Stockport Golf Club between 1955 and 1995 could have had a child by my grandfather.) Plus, I abhor the whole visited-in-a-dream bullshit that gets relied upon time and time again.

I’m only half way through Rabbit Remembered though, so I won’t condemn it yet. It’s certainly as beautifully constructed and eloquently written as Updike’s others, and I suspect that as it pans out, I’ll become more engrossed and care less and less about a few unknown quantities.

When I think about it more, I’ll probably decide that what I was really missing was Harry Angstrom himself, the perennial frustrated loser. I hated the guy at first, and came to love him as he aged in Rabbit Is Rich and Rabbit At Rest. He kinda suited the impotence of old age, whereas as a younger man he just seemed stupid and ineffectual, thinking with his penis. And to be fair, he did get a fair bit of sex back in the day.

Maybe Licks Of Love is masquerading as erotica in more ways than one. While it’s no pornography, it is selling itself on a character that isn’t even there.

John Updike - Licks Of Love, featuring Rabbit Remembered
Publication date: 2000
Publisher: Knopf
Price then: $25
Price now: $25 (included overseas shipping)
Bought from: Ebay

From the synopsis: “Several old strands come at last together, and the dead man’s survivors fitfully entertain his memory while pursuing their own happiness over the edge of the millennium.”

--Tagged under: john updike--

The only way is Updike, baby, for you and me now…
(I’m entering a competition to think of the best literary pun based on a one hit wonder from the 1980s.)


When I was in London last week, one of the bookshops on Charing Cross Road had excerpts from this article taped up in the window. What was once a thriving district of expert booksellers (such as Marks & Co from Helene Hanff’s 84 Charing Cross Road), is slowly being eaten away by the West End’s vastly more profitable theatre culture - restaurants and wine bars and, obviously, herbal remedy practitioners. A visitor to London, I am not intimately acquainted with every bookshop in the area, but I know a vacant business unit when I see one, and I know that Charing Cross has a history that is being desecrated. Turns out that the housing association that owns much of the retail space in the area is forced to prioritise profit over culture, and the remaining second-hand bookshops are also facing closure - even those in the gorgeous Cecil Court, rumoured to be the inspiration for Diagon Alley in the Harry Potter books.

When I read the Guardian piece in that shop window last Friday, I naturally abandoned all previous resolve to stick to my budget of £1.74, and bravely withdrew £10 in order to keep the second-hand book industry afloat in the South East. It’s a tough job, etc etc.

Several of the remaining shops have cheap outdoor shelves, which serve as an indication of how they price their stock indoors. Some of the Cecil Court bookshops are quite specialist, and have outdoor stock for four whole pounds - can you believe it?! - so I dared not venture inside those for fear of spending all my dinner money.



Henry Pordes Books Ltd, at 58-60 Charing Cross Road was an immediate hit though. It’s a maze of little interconnected rooms, with encyclopedias from the dawn of time only a few staircases away from the dirt cheap paperback fiction that dings my dong. I filled my arms with goodies by Ali Smith, Douglas Coupland and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but then got the fear about not being able to eat and put everything back save a copy of In The Beauty Of The Lilies by John Updike. I adored Updike’s Rabbit books recently, and this is described as “an epic, elegiac masterpiece” about four generations of a New Jersey family, so I instantly forgave the fact that the title doesn’t make sense. Also, I just looked up ‘elegiac’, and apparently it either means it’s really really sad, or it’s written in something called “dactylic hexameter”, so there is already an enticing aura of suspense around the entire novel.

Then I went a few doors down to Quinto, at 48A Charing Cross Road. This bookshop is operated by the same people who run the Cinema Bookshop in Hay-On-Wye, but it seemed sadly under-stocked last week. Even so, I picked up Updike’s Bech: A Book, which is apparently the first in a trilogy about this dude Henry Bech, and unprolific writer with a whole address book full of mistresses. For some reason it’s got an artist’s impression of Updike on the cover, next to a disproportionately tiny picture of the Winter Palace in St Petersburg. Maybe it was his way of communicating with the world that when he died he actually wanted to be embalmed on put on public display like Lenin.

Two mentions of Lenin in as many posts. You’ll all think I’m a closet Commie. I had a McDonald’s last week though, fret not.

John Updike - In The Beauty Of The Lilies
Publication date: 1996
Publisher: Penguin
Price then: £6.99
Price now: £2
Bought from: Henry Pordes Books Ltd, London

From the synopsis: “…transcendence, higher reality, immortality, resurrections…”

John Updike - Bech: A Book
Publication date: 1973
Publisher: Penguin
Price then: 25p
Price now: £2
Bought from: Quinto, London

From the synopsis: “Henry Bech, American Jewish writer of international repute, has not written for five years and knows it only too well.”

Don’t forget: You can write to Mark Field MP to encourage him in his quest to save the booksellers of Charing Cross.

--Tagged under: charing cross road--

--Tagged under: john updike--

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