“Those [New Yorker] reviews alone would have been enough to make a major career, each one not laying down the law for the writer but bringing news to the reader. (What editor would not cry out in delight at finding a piece that made the simple and sage distinction that purposes are not points, that, where the purpose of “King Lear” was to purge the soul with pity and terror, its point was that old men should not retire prematurely.)”

—Adam Gopnik in “Postscript: John Updike,” in The New Yorker. Read Roger Angell on same here. Updike's incomparable piece about Ted Williams' final at-bat, “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu,” can be, must be, read here.

All previous entries