Bridgman reviewed Villages by John Updike
Review of 'Villages' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
Of all the editions they have here on Goodreads they don't have the one I read, which is a paperback but with the cover shown on a hardback, of the Jean Auguste painting, The Turkish Bath. Maybe I'm rich, with a super rare edition.
That cover, of a large number of nude women, lets you know that in the 2004 Villages, Updike will write about sex, as he often did. He and others of his generation have been MeTooed for the way they write about it, but I find it appropriate for a man of his era writing about his time. It'd be a shame not to read books like this because Updike's observations about many other things are so deep and astute that you wonder how he got so much of it down into words. Anyone interested in the history of computers will appreciate the era covered here, as …
Of all the editions they have here on Goodreads they don't have the one I read, which is a paperback but with the cover shown on a hardback, of the Jean Auguste painting, The Turkish Bath. Maybe I'm rich, with a super rare edition.
That cover, of a large number of nude women, lets you know that in the 2004 Villages, Updike will write about sex, as he often did. He and others of his generation have been MeTooed for the way they write about it, but I find it appropriate for a man of his era writing about his time. It'd be a shame not to read books like this because Updike's observations about many other things are so deep and astute that you wonder how he got so much of it down into words. Anyone interested in the history of computers will appreciate the era covered here, as the main character is an MIT graduate who goes from being in the forefront of the industry to relegated to obscurity in the field.
As usual, maybe as always, his prose is so good and his observations so insightful that even if you don't like what he's saying, you get a lot out of how he's saying it.
In Haskells crossing, people die. They show you how to do it. They do it out of sight, among professional nurses and faithful retainers, usually, though in rare instances they drop dead without warning while, say, pushing up the hill on the thirteenth hole, or in the middle of a nap after a boozy Sunday lunch. Death never loses its quality of unexpectedness. Life does not expect it; the living mind cannot conceive of it. Some citizens die soon after elaborate cosmetic surgery, or a difficult multiple-bypass operation, or an expensive house renovation, preparing for the years ahead; they die regardless.