Self-Consciousness (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: John Updike
- First Published: 1989
- Type of Work: Memoirs
- Time of Work: The 1930’s to the 1980’s, with a genealogical excursion
- Setting: Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and the Caribbean
- Principal Characters: John Updike, Linda Grace Updike (nee Hoyer), Wesley Russell Updike
- Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir
- Subjects: Maturation or coming of age, Caribbean, Authors or writers, Social issues, Depression, economic, Poetry or poets, American Dream, Vietnam War
- Locales: Caribbean, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts
In 1969, John Updike published his third collection of poetry, naming the volume after the centerpiece, a long poem entitled “Midpoint.” The opening lines reveal the central interest of the poem:
Of nothing but me, me, All wrong, all wrong
as I cringe in the face of glory I sing, lacking another song.
For more than forty pages, in a collage of photographs and verse, patterned after such diverse masters as Walt Whitman and Dante, Updike pours forth his autobiographical observations about his progress as a writer. Twenty years later, this time in a series of...
[The entire page is 1846 words long]
