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 Fran?aise. 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.