Novelist Henry Bech returns for another round of literary and life adventure in Bech is Back, John Updike’s 1982 sequel to Bech: A Book (1970). The fame Bech accrued for his early creations, Travel Light (1955), Brother Pig (1958) and The Chosen (1963), shows no sign of waning. Even though his work-in-progress (saddled with the expectation-raising title Think Big) has been stalled for years and he’s published little of note for more than a decade, Bech—to his continuing amazement—is still in demand, passing the time (and staying solvent) by accepting invitations to make commencement speeches, attend conferences and award ceremonies at home and abroad. Updike’s stance throughout is staunchly ironic. Henry Bech—a Jew who doesn’t practice, a writer who doesn’t write—a paunchy, frizzy-haired man approaching fifty, with an irrational fear of emotional commitment and riddled with self-doubt, is agonizingly aware that he’s a fraud of sorts, feeding off past triumphs with nothing new to offer. Bech is Back—less a novel than a collection of linked stories—follows Bech to far-flung destinations where he is lionized by fusty tweed-clad academics, tempted by star-struck young fans, and often bemused by readers’ (mis)interpretations of his fiction. By the novel’s midpoint Bech, a confirmed bachelor, has surprisingly married. In the novella-length “Bech Wed,” Bech has reluctantly surrendered his New York apartment and moved to suburban Ossining, Westchester County, where he’s living with Bea, sister of former girlfriend Norma, and Bea’s offspring from a previous marriage. Here, surrounded by neighbours who have walked straight out of a short story by John Cheever, Bech is badgered and inspired by his new wife into resurrecting the Think Big manuscript and plowing through to the end of the story. With consummate wit, Updike describes Bech’s ambivalence regarding the new novel’s merit and his experiences fumbling through the bewildering publication/promotion process at Vellem Press. Bech is Back may be minor Updike, but it is unfailingly entertaining, and readers will find evidence of the author’s astonishing verbal fluency on every page. ( )

Sequel to "Bech: A book", this continues the account of rather washed-up Jewish author, Henry Bech. This is more of a story than its prequel; he is in an established relationsahip now, with the sister of his former mistress. They continue the literary tours to remote parts of the globe- together, this time. Meanwhile life becomes more prosaic, with stepchildren, barbed comments...and a burgeoning urge in Bech to just get free...
As for the prequel, didn't grab me in quite the same way as Updike's novels....but superb writing. ( )

The late author John Updike's birthday is March 18th, and sometime after I began reading him regularly (I think 2007 or 2008 -- he passed in 2009), recognizing his birthday has put me in the mood to read one of his works during his birthday month. I have a separate TBR pile of his works away from all of the rest of my TBRs (TBR = to be read). This year, for March, I read "Bech is Back", the second of the Henry Bech trilogy. The first "Bech: A Book" I read in 2012 and gave 3 stars. This one gets 3 1/2 stars, as I feel the characters were more developed.

As with the first book in the trilogy, "Bech is Back" is a series of stories (in the case of this second book, some stories were originally published in Playboy magazine and The New Yorker before being compiled here). Bech marries Bea. He struggles in the role of being a married man. And, as with the first book, travel to different destinations take a role here.

I'm not sure when I'll pick up the final book in this trilogy, "Bech at Bay" -- I'd like to read at least one other of Updike's works before I do so -- but I actually am curious about how the sharing of the life of Henry Bech concludes. So it may be sooner rather than later.

Some quotes:

About a fan of Bech that Bech meets in person after having had conversed with him by mail and by phone:

"This was the voice, but the man looked nothing like it -- sallow and sour, yet younger than he should have been, with not an ounce of friendly fat on him, in dark trousers, white shirt, and suspenders. He was red-eyed from his nap, and his hair, barely flecked by gray, stood straight up. The lower half of his face had been tugged into deep creases by the drawstrings of some concluded sorrow." (p. 9)

After Bech moves from the city into a house with Bea (and her three kids) -- which is the house she had occupied with her ex-husband:

"Now Bech was installed in the mansion like a hermit crab tossed into a birdhouse. The place was much too big; he couldn't get used to the staircases and the volumes of air they arrogantly commandeered, or the way the heat didn't pour knocking out of steam radiators from an infernal source concealed many stories below but instead seeped from thin pipes sneaking low around the baseboards, pipes kept warm by personalized monthly bills and portentous wheezing visits from the local oil trucks. In the cellar, you could see the oil tanks--two huge rust-brown things greasy to the touch. And here was the furnace, an old converted coal-burner in a crumbling overcoat of plastered asbestos, rumbling and muttering all through the night like a madman's brain." (p. 105) ( )

Copying in comments from a reading in 2004:

I began this book thinking that it would be another dull "literature" book. I had John Updike vaguely confused with Upton Sinclair and thought Sinclar wrote like Steinbeck. I skimmed the first 50 pages or so on the plane before I realized that this book did have something to offer. I should read the beginning again.

"this woman...liked even the whiff of hairy savagery about..."
"Less and less the author understood how people lived." (pg 58)
"You've always been weak, Henry, but weak in your own way before, not somebody else's." (pg 162)
"It's hard to read anything," Bech admitted, "if you're gainfully employed." (pg 172)
"This modern age, it puts a lot of stress on women. Too many decisions." (pg 177)

The book rambled at times like the book I'd read previously, and, as with many books, I "inhaled" it rather than read it. It was rich with irony and subtle insights. However, I remembered the foreword to the Left Hand of Darkness and the talk about how writers spin their own truths... and that seemed especially true here. Updike threw out a lot of "truths" hoping that some would stick. He used characters to communicate them and leave himself blameless. The things they say or think might be right, but they sound like realistic things to say or think. The characterization in this book was good. I think exaggeration must be necessary.

Great book. By comparison, the book I read after this on the plane, was horrible. Saturn by Ben Bova (popular sci-fi novel) felt empty. It was a chore to read. ( )

Portrait d'un célèbre romancier juif américain menacé par l'âge, la morosité et la stérilité. Une chronique qu'on peut supposer nourrie d'autobiographie et qui, au second degré (comme le souligne Victor-Lévy Beaulieu, dans ##Le Devoir## du 10 novembre 1984, p. 26) constitue 'une critique cinglante de l'institution littéraire américaine, dans tous les rouages de sa chaîne'.