Includes index

Real ConversationThe Writer in Winter -- A Desert Encounter -- Nessus at Noon -- The Football Factory -- The Beloved -- The Lens Factory -- Five Poems : Basium XVI ; Head of a Girl, at the Met ; Cafeteria, Mass. General Hospital ; An Hour Without Color ; Not Cancelled Yet -- Book Chat -- Humor in Fiction -- Lives and Laurels : Soren Kierkegaard ; F. Scott Fitzgerald ; Ernest Hemingway ; Kurt Vonnegut ; L. E. Sissman ; Raymond Carver -- Forewords and afterwords : The Haunted Major, by Robert Marshall ; The Complete Lyrics of Cole Porter, edited by Robert Kimball ; The Luzhin Defense, by Vladimir Nabokov ; The Best American Short Stories of the Century, edited by John Updike and Katrina Kenison -- Works and Days : The Changeling ; Back-Chat, Funny Cracks ; Imperishable Maxwell ; Basically Decent -- Fiction Now : Hugger-Mugger ; Classics Galore ; A Boston Fable ; Nan, American Man ; An Upstate Saga ; Relative Strangers ; Dreamy Wilderness -- Americana: Famous Aimee ; Laissez-faire is More ; Makeup and Make-Believe ; Sparky from St. Paul

Gallery ToursOld Masters : A Wistful Wurzburger ; Singular in Everything ; More Light on Delft ; Plain and Simplified -- Romantics and Realists : "Therefore I Print" ; Innerlichkeit and Eigentumlichkeit ; Splendid Lies ; A Lean and Optical Dane ; Lear Far and Near ; The Artist as Trailblazer -- Van Gogh and Seurat : Uncertain Skills, Determined Spirit ; The Purest of Styles ; Pointillism in Black and White -- Secessionists and Surrealists : Can Genitals Be Beautiful? ; New Kind on the Block ; Beyond Real ; The Enduring Magritte ; Jean Ipousteguy -- Photographers : Visual Trophies ; Aftermaths -- Pet Topics -- The Universe : The Valiant Swabian ; Visions of Mars ; Extreme Dinosaurs -- The Commonwealth : Harvard Square in the Fifties ; Ipswich in the Seventies ; Three Texts from Early Ipswich ; Lovell Thompson ; Open Spaces ; Memoirs of a Massachusetts Golfer -- The Game : In Love with a Wanton ; Playing with Better Players ; Walking Insomnia ; Lost Balls ; Being Senior

Table TalkThe End of Authorship -- In Defense of the Amateur Reader -- A Poetics of Book Reviewing -- An American View of English Fiction -- Comment on "Poetry's Failure in the Marketplace" -- Foreword to the 1982 Edition of The Carpentered Hen -- Introduction to the 1977 Edition of The Poorhouse Fair -- From the Afterword to Buchanan Dying -- Reply to Paul Boyer's Appraisal of Memories of the Ford Administration -- Letter to Rosemary Herbert, Book Review Editor of the Boston Herald, Anent Gertrude and Claudius -- Introduction to Rabbit Angstrom: The Four Novels -- Foreword to The Early Stories: 1953-1975 -- Foreword to Too Far to Go: The Maples Stories -- Note on "The Indian" -- Note on Bech: His Oeuvre -- Replies to Three Questions About Licks of Love -- The Original Ending of Self-Consciousness -- On One's Own Style -- Letter Included as an Afterword to the introduction of Updike in Cincinnati -- The Courage of Ballplayers -- Post-Hubble Astronomy -- On "The American Idea" -- Commencement Address, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1993 -- Accepting the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Conference on Christianity and Literature.

Real Conversation -- The Writer in Winter -- A Desert Encounter -- Nessus at Noon -- The Football Factory -- The Beloved -- The Lens Factory -- Five Poems : Basium XVI ; Head of a Girl, at the Met ; Cafeteria, Mass. General Hospital ; An Hour Without Color ; Not Cancelled Yet -- Book Chat -- Humor in Fiction -- Lives and Laurels : Soren Kierkegaard ; F. Scott Fitzgerald ; Ernest Hemingway ; Kurt Vonnegut ; L. E. Sissman ; Raymond Carver -- Forewords and afterwords : The Haunted Major, by Robert Marshall ; The Complete Lyrics of Cole Porter, edited by Robert Kimball ; The Luzhin Defense, by Vladimir Nabokov ; The Best American Short Stories of the Century, edited by John Updike and Katrina Kenison -- Works and Days : The Changeling ; Back-Chat, Funny Cracks ; Imperishable Maxwell ; Basically Decent -- Fiction Now : Hugger-Mugger ; Classics Galore ; A Boston Fable ; Nan, American Man ; An Upstate Saga ; Relative Strangers ; Dreamy Wilderness -- Americana: Famous Aimee ; Laissez-faire is More ; Makeup and Make-Believe ; Sparky from St. Paul

Gallery Tours -- Old Masters : A Wistful Wurzburger ; Singular in Everything ; More Light on Delft ; Plain and Simplified -- Romantics and Realists : "Therefore I Print" ; Innerlichkeit and Eigentumlichkeit ; Splendid Lies ; A Lean and Optical Dane ; Lear Far and Near ; The Artist as Trailblazer -- Van Gogh and Seurat : Uncertain Skills, Determined Spirit ; The Purest of Styles ; Pointillism in Black and White -- Secessionists and Surrealists : Can Genitals Be Beautiful? ; New Kind on the Block ; Beyond Real ; The Enduring Magritte ; Jean Ipousteguy -- Photographers : Visual Trophies ; Aftermaths -- Pet Topics -- The Universe : The Valiant Swabian ; Visions of Mars ; Extreme Dinosaurs -- The Commonwealth : Harvard Square in the Fifties ; Ipswich in the Seventies ; Three Texts from Early Ipswich ; Lovell Thompson ; Open Spaces ; Memoirs of a Massachusetts Golfer -- The Game : In Love with a Wanton ; Playing with Better Players ; Walking Insomnia ; Lost Balls ; Being Senior

Table Talk -- The End of Authorship -- In Defense of the Amateur Reader -- A Poetics of Book Reviewing -- An American View of English Fiction -- Comment on "Poetry's Failure in the Marketplace" -- Foreword to the 1982 Edition of The Carpentered Hen -- Introduction to the 1977 Edition of The Poorhouse Fair -- From the Afterword to Buchanan Dying -- Reply to Paul Boyer's Appraisal of Memories of the Ford Administration -- Letter to Rosemary Herbert, Book Review Editor of the Boston Herald, Anent Gertrude and Claudius -- Introduction to Rabbit Angstrom: The Four Novels -- Foreword to The Early Stories: 1953-1975 -- Foreword to Too Far to Go: The Maples Stories -- Note on "The Indian" -- Note on Bech: His Oeuvre -- Replies to Three Questions About Licks of Love -- The Original Ending of Self-Consciousness -- On One's Own Style -- Letter Included as an Afterword to the introduction of Updike in Cincinnati -- The Courage of Ballplayers -- Post-Hubble Astronomy -- On "The American Idea" -- Commencement Address, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1993 -- Accepting the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Conference on Christianity and Literature.

A collection of the eloquent, insightful, and beautifully written prose works that Updike was compiling when he died in January 2009, this book opens with a self-portrait of the writer in winter--a Prospero who, though he fears his most dazzling performances are behind him, reveals himself in every sentence to be in deep conversation with the sources of his magic