Great Regulars: I first encountered [John] Updike as

a poet. While some snidely dismiss his work as light verse, much of it is anything but--the poems in Higher Gossip show what he could do--and his reputation as a poet is growing.

But I found the real Updike when I read Hugging the Shore, his 1983 collection of essays and criticism. What a fine guide he was to the writers of his age--Nabokov, Barthes, Calvino. What a vivid, relentlessly honest personal essayist. What an unabashed yet rapier-sharp sports analyst, as on baseball or golf. I wore the book out; it repays rereading.

from John Timpane: The Philadelphia Inquirer: The literary journalist's exquisite commenting, describing, elucidating

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