Seek My Face

by John Updike

In his 20th novel, John Updike creates the character of Hope Chafetz, a successful painter, who was married to a Jackson Pollock-like figure and then to another artist, reminiscent of Andy Warhol. Now aging and settled down with a stockbroker, Hope is being interviewed by a journalist named Kathryn, and this provides the occasion for her to comment extensively not only on the events of her life but also on American art and artists in the second half of the 20th century. A New York Times Notable Book for 2002.

Editions of Seek My Face

ISBN 9780375414909	Binding/Format Hardcover	Publisher Random House Inc	Date 2002	Price $1.00	Good
ISBN 9780736688451	Binding/Format Audio Cassette	Publisher Books on Tape	Date 2002	Price None Available
ISBN 9780345460868	Binding/Format Paperback	Publisher Ballantine Books	Date 2003	Price $1.00	Like New

Publisher Notes

John Updike’s twentieth novel, like his first, The Poorhouse Fair (1959), takes place in one day, a day that contains much conversation and some rain. The seventy-eight-year-old painter Hope Chafetz, who in the course of her eventful life has been Hope Ouderkirk, Hope McCoy, and Hope Holloway, answers questions put to her by a New York interviewer named Kathryn, and recapitulates, through the story of her own career, the triumphant, poignant saga of postwar American art. In the evolving relation between the two women, the interviewer and interviewee move in and out of the roles of daughter and mother, therapist and patient, predator and prey, supplicant and idol. The scene is central Vermont; the time is the early spring of 2001.

From the Hardcover edition.

Media Reviews

"[Y]et another illustration of this adventurous writer's enduring curiosity, versatility, and stylistic energy....Another new fictional world entered, as Updike himself enters old age, with skills and ambitions very much intact."

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