Bech at Bay, a Quasi-Novel - Hardcover

Which isn't to say that all is gloomy in Bechville. Updike keeps things breezy throughout, as his hero is seduced and subpoenaed, excoriated and honored, finally, with the Nobel Prize. Only once does the author lose his footing, with "Bech Noir": this world-class nebbish just doesn't cut it as serial killer, and even the prose goes untypically to pot. But otherwise the book is a delight, venting all the nastiness about literary life that Updike always purges from his own more genteel (not to mention Gentile) persona. It's also an elegant meditation on literary being and nothingness. "A character," we are told, "suffers from the fear that he will become boring to the author, who will simply let him drop, without so much as a terminal illness or a dramatic tumble down the Reichenbach Falls in the arms of Professor Moriarty. For some years now, Bech had felt his author wanting to set him aside, to get him off the desk forever." Here Updike proves himself Nabokov's equal in the metafictional sweepstakes--and makes us hope that his doppelgänger will get one last reprieve. --James Marcus

"A comic delight...the ultimate wasp has produced another wonderful piece of Jewish fiction. In this, his third go-round with soulful Manhattan literary lion Henry Bech, Updike gets under his character's skin as naturally as Sinatra inhabits the soul of a heartbroken guy at the bar at 3a.m."
--David Lehman, People

"I suspect you'll find it irresistible"
--Alex Beam, Boston Globe

"If you're anything literary--writer, publisher, even critic, you'll love it. And if you're not, you'll love it too...Everything Bech-Updike has to say about the writing life is awful, hilarious and true"
--Caroline Angier, Wall Street Journal

"Updike unbound--at his most frolicsome & funniest"
--Kirkus Reviews

"Bech at Bay is wise and funny, charming & pointed"
--Joan Mellen, Baltimore Sun

"A mordantly comic look at the literary life"
--Paul Gray, Time