11. Updike never purely a novelist, but always had hand in many genres (poetry, short stories, literary criticism, art criticism).
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12. Roth's ferocious devotion to the novel -- perhaps the only loyalty he developed outside immediate family -- paid off in mastery.
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13. If single-mindedness is a Roth trait, it shows up in his willingness to bravely focus on narrow range of characters & obsessions.
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14. Updike, compared to Roth, suffered from the defuseness of having a wide range of interest & restless need to experiment narratively.
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15. Udpike's insatiable intellectual curiosity, his need to figure things out & try to inhabit other people's minds, is something Roth lacks
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16. Philip Roth had an older brother, Updike was an only child. Roth's sense of fraternal rivalry evident in fiction, Updike's in criticism
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17. Having no real brother, Updike saw the male novelists roughly his own age as siblings to emulate & be jealous of.
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18. Updike reviewed almost every book between Ghost Writer and Operation Shylock (Roth's strongest period).
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19. Updike's reviews of Roth have the intensity of a talent judging his closest competitor: shrewd and alert for signs of weakness.
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20. In her memoir Claire Bloom has a story about Updike & Roth which is probably not true but revealing as a kind of folklore
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21. According to Bloom, Roth was so upset over Updike's ungenerous review of Operation Shylock he had nervous breakdown & was hospitalized.
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22. People who know Roth say Bloom's story is baloney. Hospitalization due to being wrongly prescribed Halcion.
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23. Still Bloom's story is interesting as gossip/folklore: something Bloom wrote because she knew it hit a sore spot with Roth.
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