[A] masterful appraisal of Updike's literary reception. . . . [E]ssential reading for those who want to gain a full understanding of [Updike's] oeuvre.
JOHN UPDIKE REVIEW
Updike scholarship owes a debt to Laurence W. Mazzeno [who has] produce[d] a clear, well-organized, and useful reference work. . . . [A]n engaging narrative of Updike's career . . . ... Read more. In the years to come, I have little doubt that those of us interested in Updike will be reaching for [this book]. . . . [It] is clearly an important contribution to Updike studies.
RESOURCES FOR AMERICAN LITERARY STUDY
[H]ighly competent. . . . Becoming John Updike is the most substantial review of Updike criticism to date, and it is likely that it will continue to prove interesting and useful reading for anyone working on Updike far into the future. . . . Although it is an impossible task to fully summarize the great accumulated mass of fifty years of Updike studies, Mazzeno succeeds in providing a sense of the arc of Updike's fate in the American intellectual culture.
THE AMERICAN STUDIES JOURNAL
[A]n invaluable volume . . . for scholars and even for inquisitive [general] readers, as well as a tribute to John Updike's work.
EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF AMERICAN STUDIES
Mazzeno is adept at presenting the positive and the negative
and the opposing
views that Updike's work evoked during the more than 50 years he was a productive writer. . . . This volume well reflects Updike's identity as both a polemical figure and an indispensable cultural touchstone. . . . Recommended.
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