Bech at Bay and Before: Three Bech Novels

Amazon.com Audiobook Review

Narrator Ron Rifkin (JFK, L.A. Confidential) easily masters the astute, if often nasty, observations of Henry Bech, an occasionally honored, variably compensated New York writer of crusty disposition and unflagging sexual appetite. Drawing excerpts from his Bech books, Pulitzer Prize-winner John Updike skewers the literary life, leading Bech and listeners from post-Khrushchev Russia to a student's marijuana haze, through a brief suburban entrapment and back to Manhattan in the computer-addled 1990s. Throughout the journey, it's easy to see why Updike keeps returning to this sometimes repellent, but always fascinating character. (Running time: 6 hours, 4 cassettes) --Kimberly Heinrichs

Book Description

4 cassettes / 6 hours
Read by Ron Rifkin

Catch up with Bech.

This unique AudioBook collects John Updikes classic Bech novels, Bech: A Book (1970), Bech is Back (1982), and the latest installment, Bech at Bay .

"Mr. Updike finds full scope for his gifts here: for sly and cheerfully malicious pensees on contemporary life; for busy observations on human behavior."
- The New Yorker

Bech a Book (1970):  This is where we meet him for the first time - Henry Beck, a New York writer "with his thinning curly hair and melancholy Jewish nose," whose first novel had become a minor classic.  A rich and unforgettable portrait and a satire of the literary life.

Bech Is Back (1982): When Bech comes back, he roams a number of third-world countries as a cultural ambassador - astonished at his won literary celebrity.  From the era of Vietnam to the sagging end of the Seventies, his aesthetic embarrassments reveal truths about his trade and his times.

Bech at Bay (1998): Our hero returns - older, but scarcely wiser.  He is still at bay, pursued by the hounds of desire and anxiety, of unbridled criticism and publicity in a literary world ever more cheerfully crass.   it's not easy being Henry Beck in the post-Gutenbergian world, but somebody has to do it, and he brings to the take that indomitable mixture of grit and ennui that only Updike could make so deliciously funny.

Average customer rating:

Didn't Wear Well Over Time
Bech's Odyssey
Side-splitting humor! A great read!
bech if you have nothing else to read
Bech is a beautiful book

Bech: A Book
John Updike
Manufacturer: Ballantine Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Literary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 044900452X
Release Date: 1998-08-25

Book Description

In this classic novel by John Updike, we return to a character as compelling and timeless as Rabbit Angstrom: the inimitable Henry Bech. Famous for his writer's block, Bech is a Jew adrift in a world of Gentiles. As he roams from one adventure to the next, he views life with a blend of wonder and cynicism that will make you laugh with delight and wince in recognition.

Customer Reviews:

Didn't Wear Well Over Time.......2001-09-06

Having read the well-crafted and interestingly expressed story in Bech's own voice in the latest collection of short stories, "Licks of Love", it made me want to go all the back to the original collection of Bech stories. Unfortunately, they're all told in the third person and so aren't nearly as charming. And the experiences of Bech in Communist Europe have little resonance to our time and are not terribly profound. Perhaps the later Bech output is better. This one though is a disappointment. Three stars, of course, because Updike can only be so bad...

Bech's Odyssey.......2001-04-18

While reading Updike's novel (the "short stories" contained within are in reality semi-connected chapters in Henry Bech's literary life) I could not help thinking about the some of the best serio-comic films of Woody Allen. Like Mr. Allen's films, the book presents the angst, self-doubt, and insecurities of a Jewish writer in an often humorous manner. In Henry Bech's case, his continuing fame rests largely on the popularity of his first novel. His literary output since then contains an experimental second novel, a critically bashed third novel (whose title is often confused with the work of another more consistently successful American Jewish novelist), and miscellaneous essays and poems. What happens next when the creative juices fail to flow, you are starting to drink too much, and you are close to fifty and may be nearing a self-perceived death? Are you reduced to having a series of aborted interviews with an intrusive British reporter in which you say very little, but are neverless reduced to a figure of gossip and derision in thereporter's ensuing article. I felt myself laughing, while suffering along with Bech, in his tenuous affairs with women, and in his "less than heady" experiment with marijuana with a 1960's college-type, who Bech suspects has run off to tryst with his then-mistress. We follow Bech travelling at the behest of his publisher to several Soviet bloc countries where Bech experiences a series of comedies of errors, annoyances, and misunderstandings on his and his hosts' side. A highly recommended book.

Side-splitting humor! A great read!.......2000-11-18

I'm a little disappointed by the poor reviews below. This is classified as one of Updike's short stories (check out his list of publications in the front) and as such is not a serious novel. I have read plenty of his other works and no, this does not have the character depth or serious plot of the Rabbit series or his other books. It is what it is: a very funny collection of stories about Henry Bech, an overweight 50'ish Jewish writer (there's some very good Jewish humor sprinkled throughout) currently suffering from writer's block. He travels throughout the book; each chapter to a different place (The Soviet Union, the New England beach, a women's college in the Southern USA). Women find Bech fascinating and he seduces several during the story (leading to some very funny scenes). There's several Updike themes I found in his other books that make their way into "Bech", but they are written to be humorous rather than serious (wife/mistress swapping, recreational drug use, worries about death/old age). Updike's prose, as usual, is unbelieveably well written and makes the book worth reading by itself. My advice is, try this book, don't take it seriously, and have a good laugh. You may not want this to be your first Updike book; if you've never read him before I'd suggest starting with "Rabbit, Run" and working your way through that 4-book series.

bech if you have nothing else to read.......2000-03-25

It was a tiresome book. The chariter of Bech had no depth. His world was bland as he was. This was my first Updike book and it was a big dissapointment. It is a bath room book for when you have no where else to go.

Bech is a beautiful book.......1999-03-24

Bech: A Book was a great group of stories.Updike mixes humor with highly emotional moments and philosophical ones. I'm looking forward to reading all his other Bech stories. I can't imagine anything Updike writing being a bore.

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Bech a Book
John Updike
Manufacturer: FAWCETT BOOKS
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000WDQNZ6

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Bech a Book
John Updike
Manufacturer: ALFRED A KNOPF
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000SHX7JQ

Average customer rating:

bech a book

Manufacturer: fawcett crest book
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
ASIN: B000HZJLP8

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Bech a Book 1ST Edition
John Updike
Manufacturer: KNOPF, ALFRED A
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000VUPUUY

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Enjoyed First Experience With Updike
Bech Noir: a delicious writerly power-fantasy
Bech is Funny and Sad
Quizzical Quiddities
Extremely Mixed Bag

Bech at Bay
John Updike
Manufacturer: Random House Value Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0517402475
Release Date: 1999-05-11

Amazon.com

After recounting almost every detail of Rabbit Angstrom's mental, spiritual, and (especially) erotic life for almost four decades, John Updike laid his brilliant creation to rest in 1990. Another of his ongoing characters, however, has remained at large--Henry Bech. In Bech at Bay, Updike revives his philandering Jewish American novelist for one last trip through that wringer we call the writer's life. Like his creator, Bech is getting on in years. And although age cannot wither his considerable sexual appetites nor custom stale his cantankerous charms, he is uncomfortably aware of his mortality. In the first episode, during a visit to pre-perestroika Czechoslovakia, the "semi-obscure American author" is taken to view Kafka's grave, and the sight gives him the willies: "It all struck Bech as dumbfoundingly blunt and engimatic, banal and moving. Such blankness, such stony and peaceable reification, waits for us at the bottom of things." His own proximity to the bottom of things is what gives Bech at Bay an extra dose of sobriety. For the first time, Updike's ingratiating impersonation of a Jew--who shares the author's lapidary style, sizable nose, and not much else--is not only supremely amusing but moving.

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

Book Description

Henry Bech, the moderately well known Jewish-American writer who served as the hero of John Updike's previous Bech: A Book (1970) and Bech Is Back (1982), has become older but scarcely wiser. In these five new chapters from his life, he is still at bay, pursued by the hounds of desire and anxiety, of unbridled criticism and publicity in a literary world ever more cheerfully crass. He fights intimations of annihilation in still-Communist Czechoslovakia, while promiscuously consorting with dissidents, apparatchiks, and Midwestern Republicans. Next, he succumbs to the temptations of power by accepting the presidency of a quaint and cosseted honorary body patterned on the Académie Française. Then, the reader finds him on trial in California and on a criminal rampage in a gothic Gotham, abetted by a nubile sidekick called Robin. Lastly, our septuagenarian veteran of the literary wars is rewarded with a coveted medal, stunning him into a well-deserved silence. It's not easy being Henry Bech in the post-Gutenbergian world, but somebody has to do it, and he brings to the task an indomitable mixture of grit and ennui.

From the Hardcover edition.

Customer Reviews:

Enjoyed First Experience With Updike.......2006-04-28

John Updike is one of those names I had always heard of but had never checked out. Finally, a few weeks ago, I decided that it was time for me to get acquainted with Mr. Updike. I must say that the first work I chose to read of his did not disappoint me.

Bech at Bay is the last in a series of books that feature Henry Beck, and aged writer who still manages to find himself in precarious adventures. Bech at Bay is a series of short stories that loosely make up a larger story. At times hilarious, at times insightful, and at times rather disturbing, I found myself quite pleased with Mr. Updike's work. I look forward to reading more of it.

Bech Noir: a delicious writerly power-fantasy.......2006-01-03

_____________________________________________

Novelist Henry Bech, 74, is in bed with his secretary and computer
consultant Rachel (Robin) Teagarten - "26, post-Jewish, frizzy big
hair, figure on the short, solid side." He is reading the obituary
of a hostile critic:

A creamy satisfaction - the finest quality, made extra easy to
spread by the toasty warmth - thickly covered his heart.

It occurs to Beche that he could hasten the passing of other
noxious critics. Thought leads to action, then to suspicion, then
to confession:

Perhaps he had made a fatal error, spilling his guts to this
chesty broad. "OK. Turn me in. Go to the bulls."

Robin is unexpectedly sympathetic: "I think you've shown a lot of
balls, frankly, translating your resentments into action instead
of sublimating them into art."

He didn't much like it when young women said "balls"... but
today he was thrilled by the cool baldness of it. They were, he
and his mistress, in a new realm, a computerized universe devoid
of blame or guilt, as morally null as an Intel chip.... "My
lover, the killer," she breathed...

"So, who are you going to do next?" ...Her pupils, those
inkwells as deep as the the night's zenith, were dilated by
excitement.

For their next victim, a critic turned Internet personality, they
devise a subliminal attack on his self-image, slipped thru a
trapdoor in Sendmail:

Invisibly these truths rippled onto the screen's pixels for a
fifteenth of a second - that is, five refreshments of the
screen, a single one being, Robin and a consulting
neurophysiologist agreed, too brief to register...

NON-BEING IS AN ASPECT OF BEING...
- this Bech had adapted from a Taoist poem by Seng Ts'an...

LET THE ONE WITH ITS MYSTERY BLOT OUT ALL MEMORY OF
COMPLICATIONS.

JUMP

JUMP

JUMP!

Literary villains of Gotham, beware!

-----------------------------------------
copyright 1998 John Updike/The New Yorker
First published June 8, 1998.
Excerpted by Pete Tillman, who sincerely hopes that by doing so he
has not aroused Mr Updike's ire.

Note that the version published in the New Yorker is *far* superior to that in Updike's book, "Bech at Bay" -- showing once again the danger of Famous Authors slipping extraneous padding past Ye Editor's blue pencil....

Bech is Funny and Sad.......2004-07-31

How does one best review a literary genius? This is not going to be easy. Updike is an author I discovered in college, but haven't been seriously reading him since a couple years ago. I devoured "Roger's Version" and his latest short stories, and I didn't know what to expect with the latest Bech book. This is the first of the Bech books I have read. What an amazing book. Updike has a way of describing reality that makes it feel more important..almost surreal.

Bech, Updike's alter-ego, runs loose in this one, even resorting to murder of his least liked critics. If you are looking for very DARK humor, here is where to find it. In this pathetic yet somewhat brilliant character, we find some autobiographic hints about Updike himself I'm sure. Some of his dislike of critics is probably projected into Bech's harsh words. And at one point Bech wonders if he is polluting the world with subtle pornography, maybe something the author wonders about from time to time too.

Perhaps the best part of the book is the end when Bech gives a rambling but very interesting Nobel Prize acceptance speech in Sweden. This is something only Updike could write. He rambles on about mortality, religion, relationships and birth and death. Vintage Updike. He is a world class writer of the highest order.

Jeffrey McAndrew
author of "Our Brown-Eyed Boy"

Quizzical Quiddities.......2001-06-17

"Bech at Bay" presents five comic stories about the novelist Henry Bech, starting out with a visit to Communist Czechoslovakia when he is 63 and ending in his acceptance of the Nobel Prize for Literature when he is 76 years old (with his infant daughter held struggling in his arms). Through these Bech stories, Updike takes a satirical look at the the Manhattan literary scene, pokes fun at the absurdities of the big city life and even takes a moment or two to ponder the Eternal Verities (but not too seriously). As his life enters its last phase, Bech finds himself in some interesting new situations: president of the The Forty, an intellectual society hopefully modelled on the French Academy but without its sense of self importance; as a caped avenger "ridding literary Gotham of villains" (read critics); as a septuagenarian father. Through all this absurdist comedy, the old Updike magic is constantly with us. Bravo!

Extremely Mixed Bag.......2000-12-30

As a big fan of the first two Bech collections, I carefully rationed my reading of this one, limiting myself to one story per day. All was well until I reached "Bech Noir" in which our hero takes murderous (yet flippant) revenge on his literary enemies. This was so ludicrously out of character that I kept waiting for the authorial signal that it was just the protagonist's fantasy. Unfortunately, it never came. I don't know whether Updike was being contemptuous or just plain stupid. But not only did his trashing of my suspension-of-disbelief ruin this book for me, it cast a retrospective pall over the previous ones.

Ironically, a new first-rate Bech story appeared in The New Yorker some time later. Presumably, it will be included in the omnibus Bech edition being published in 2001. I only pray that Updike, who is known for his post-publication tinkering, will come to his senses and leave "Bech Noir" out.

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How To Write a Modern Novel

Tired

An entertaining, and somewhat revealing, novella

Bech is Back
John Updike
Manufacturer: Random House Value Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
Similar Items:

Bech: A Book

Bech at Bay: A Quasi-Novel (Random House Large Print (Hardcover))

ASIN: 0517144786
Release Date: 1995-05-06

Book Description

The renowned Henry Bech is now fifty years old. In this wonderful classic novel, Bech reflects on his fame, travels the world, marries an Episcopalian divorcée from Westchester, and--surprise to all--writes a book that becomes a runaway bestseller. If you've never read Updike before, there's no better place to start. If you've read him for years, you'll be delightfully reminded of John Updike's rightful place in the pantheon of quintessential American writers.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

Customer Reviews:

How To Write a Modern Novel.......2000-08-06

First write a short story (all the time making sure it will be published in The New Yorker or Playboy); if it works, write another one, using the same character or characters; when you have written three or four of these, start thinking about grouping them together in book-form (remember: publish and republish your work as much as possible); then write a couple of cementing 'chapters' and offer it to the public as a novel. This is how John Updike has written (among other things) Bech is Back - his second book about a Jewish-American literary novelist prone to writer's block. The advantages of using the compositional method described above are clear: instead of that heavily programmatic, overdetermined, obsolete thing we call 'plot', one gets instead a sequence of snapshots, or a gallery of pictures. We get a book that has obviously evolved organically over time, pushing out roots into only the most fertile soil. We loose old-fashioned unity of design, but we do not miss it. This is writing like a cubist: the by turns judicious and whimsical assembling of fragments of truth, rather than the facile pursuit of an impossible illusion of coherent 'wholeness'. Not a word is wasted in this short, smart, clever, muscular punch of a book.

Tired.......1999-07-03

Oh God, more of this snotty New Yorker kind of humor. Grab some Perrier and chuckle at these Babbitlike witty amusements.

An entertaining, and somewhat revealing, novella.......1999-01-02

"Bech is Back," is the middle entry in a series of novellas in which John Updike exposes a bit of the personal- and professional-doings of the contemporary writer's life. It's light, and he's only willing to take us so far with what we guess must be re-worked anecdotes and foibles from his own experience. The writing is classic Updike, having the rich word choice, wonderful descriptive detail and unique observation we've come to expect -- along with the usual amount of sexual reference to keep the reader engaged, even when it all gets tedious. Like so many of Updike's other works, it concludes with a mixed bag of outcomes for his characters, and for the reader with thin skin, it comes off simply as a jaded unravelling of fortunes. Updike mixes the hilarious with his usual dose of cynical self-absorption, and the currency, sex and humor make for a good afternoon's entertainment.

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Bech: A Book
John Updike
Manufacturer: Greenwich, CT: A Fawcett Crest Book, 1971
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000NXAXZG

Average customer rating:

Bech: A Book (Editions in Large Type)
John Updike
Manufacturer: A C R Reprinter's Corporation
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000J1ZPQ4

Customer Reviews:

It's a crisis alright........2000-08-31

Looking and reading like a romance novel, I found Crisis at Doona a dissapointment. Being a long time fan of Ms. McCaffrey's I was dismayed at what I read. Instead of the usual well developed characters and stories, cardboard cutouts moved around on a wooden stage. Ms. McCraffrey wrote several romance novels and now apparently has become enamored of the style, sadly enough. Like late period Heinlein, go back and read the earlier works, leave the rest to the rabid fans.

irritatingly inconsistent book.......2000-07-07

It's just that this sci-fi/mystery book has very poor elements of mystery in it. Many facts in the book are contradictory (not on face). I shouldn't tell any element of the book so I won't reveal the errors.

However, I did manage to get through this sacharrine and very typical book of the style of Anne and Mercades and Andre. It's O.K. despite my disappointment with it. To the point, this book is the lightest of light reading for people who want to pass time. There is no way it deserves five stars in my opinion.

Even better than the original.......1999-07-20

Here we find that Todd and Hrriss, two characters who became best friends as children in "Decision at Doona", are still best friends 25 years later and have become role model citizens. But suddenly they are accused of some serious crimes just as the agreement between the Humans and the Hrrubans is up for renewal, and as a result the continued existence of their shared colony world is in jeopardy. No one who knows the two very well believes for a minute that they've committed the acts they're accused of, but the body of evidence against them that will be used to hold them in judgement seems to be mounting up. A riveting tale of mystery and suspense.

A wonderful sequel to "Decision at Doona"!.......1998-03-12

Ms. McCaffrey has chosen a good companion in J.L. Nye. They work well in this sequel to the original Doona book. This series is one of my favorites from the mind of one of the best. As with Pern, she brings the land and the people alive. Here's hoping there will be many more on this series!

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CRISIS ON DOONA
Anne and NYE, Jody Lynn McCAFFREY
Manufacturer: Ace Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000BMYUBW

Average customer rating:

Crisis on Doona
Anne and Nye, Jody Lynn McCaffrey
Manufacturer: Ace Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
ASIN: B000GRGNPS

Average customer rating:

Crisis On Doona 27fl
A. McCaffrey , and J. Nye
Manufacturer: Ace
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 0441978290

Average customer rating:

CRISIS ON DOONA
Jody Lynn McCAFFREY Anne and NYE
Manufacturer: Ace Books 1992
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000MCEMQY

Average customer rating:

Crisis on Doona
Anne McCaffrey
Manufacturer: Orbit
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Average customer rating:

Long & boring book, wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

Crisis on Doona and Treaty Planet
Anne McCaffrey
Manufacturer: Dove Entertainment Inc
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio Cassette

General | Books on Cassette | Audiobooks | Formats | Books
ASIN: 0787100463

Customer Reviews:

Long & boring book, wouldn't recommend it to anyone........2002-12-28

The plot is trivial. The teaser gets repeated many times, and the conclusion is a great let-down. The problems described are artificial, and the characters are flat.

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Crisis on Doona, hc, 1992
McCaffrey / Nye
Manufacturer: Ace/Berkeley
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000V9QQIA

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