Michelle Kinsey Bruns wrote:

You won't be sorry. Don't forget "Licks of Love," a short story collection released in 2000 or 2001 that has the last of the Rabbit tales. I guarantee you that after you plow through to the very end, you're going to have to sit back and just boggle over the incredible sweep of forty years of American life captured in one amazing character. I re-read the Rabbit books every year or two and---well, I don't know how many hundreds of pages that is, but I'm always sad to finish them again.

John Updike is amazingly prolific so there's plenty more to keep you occupied in his back catalog. Once you've covered all of that, I bet you'd also like Philip Roth---a very similar sensibility to Updike's. Also a Pulitzer winner, if I recall correctly.

And, although this is a very different kind of thing, I can't namecheck two of my modern lit trinity without also plugging the third---Martin Amis. His work is much more edgy, I mean craft-of-writing-wise, not topically (Updike and Roth might be old guys but they went after some touchy themes pretty fearlessly). In fact, you get the sense in Amis that he's pushing the limits of prose in a pretty big way a lot of the time, which could be a big turn-off for some, but I generally find it pretty exhilarating. Start with "The Information," which is a riot, and go from there. Not sure Amis is a Pulitzer winner but there might have been a Booker prize in there somewhere.

Roth is about as prolific as Updike, so he's got an enormous "also by this author" page too, you'll find. Amis is younger, but no slouch. These three guys could keep you busy for years, and it'll sure as hell be more satisfying than never-ending crack-addiction-like dependence on the whims of the "New Releases" table at your local megabookstore. Er, not that I know anything about that. Anyway, enjoy :D

posted on May 2, 2007 at 11:23 PM