Criticism > Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism > Brennan, Maeve - John Updike (review date October 1969)

1. Printable Version
2. Download PDF
3. Cite this Page
4. Tweet This

John Updike (review date October 1969)

SOURCE: Updike, John. “Talk of a Sad Town.” Atlantic 224 (October 1969): 124-25.

[In the following review of The Long-Winded Lady, Updike notes that, despite the limitations of Brennan's short essays from “Talk of the Town,” she captures the eccentricities of both the city and its inhabitants.]

The New Yorker's “Talk of the Town” department, a space set aside when Ross founded the magazine as a smart-aleck local, survives as a vacuum maintained in case someone has something to say. When, a dozen years ago, I served on the large team that labored to fill each week this frontal void (a task that White and Thurber had performed with the aid of a few legmen), the problem was to perpetuate a cozy tone about a city that had ceased to seem cozy. We were, we “Talk of the Town” reporters, a sallow crew-cut brigade fresh from Cornell or Harvard, sent forth into the mirthless gray...

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:

eNotes Pass

1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. John Updike (review date October 1969)
   2. Helen Rogan (review date 1 July 1974)
   3. Robert Kiely (essay date 4 August 1974)
   4. Jay Parini (review date 14 December 1997)
   5. Ambrose Clancy (review date 23 March 1998)
   6. Linda Barrett Osborne (review date 20 February 2000)
   7. Michael Porter (review date 26 November 2000)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright

1. John Updike