Golf Dreams

Given the way I feel about golf, it was all too appropriate!


A Writer's Wry Look at Golf's Challenges and Pleasures   August 29, 2000
 9 out of 9 found this review helpful

I am always a little at a loss to review a work like this which has 30 essays, short stories, and poems in it, humorously illustrated by the talented Paul Szep. Obviously, in a thousand words I cannot review each work. However, there's also no relevant way to give you an overview except to say that this is much of the best writing about golf that anyone has ever done, looking beyond how to improve your score.

Let me share a few highlights with you, much like you might compliment a golf partner on the best shots in his or her round. Imagine that we are all having a tall cool beverage while I do this after finishing a long, hot round.

I thought the funniest work was "Drinking from a Cup Made Cinchey" written in 1959. Updike has obviously had a golf lesson or two, as the other works make clear. This essay is a satire on all of those instructional articles that you find in Golf Digest. Updike begins by pointing out that occasionally there's a slip between cup and lip (but he humorously avoids that phrase). So he takes the simple task of picking up a cup and drinking something from it, and writes it up in golf instructional style. I couldn't stop laughing. I think I got a better idea of the golf swing from this non-golf swing instruction than I ever did from taking a lesson!

"Swing Thoughts" from 1984 captures the problems that we all have with using the conscious mind too much, but with more self-consciousness than even the most self-conscious golfer ever had.

The part I least agreed with was "The Trouble with a Caddie." Updike doesn't like them, but I find having a caddie one of the pleasures of the game. He dislikes everything from the company to handling the tip. Perhaps it is hard for someone with a solitary occupation like writing to get over that preference for solitude. Book tours must be rough!

The best fiction was "Farrell's Caddie" from 1991 with all due respect to the Rabbit Angstrom material that is well known from the Rabbit books. It transcends golf in a valuable way.

The best poem was "Upon Winning One's Flight in the Senior Four-Ball" from 1994. Many of Updike's later works look ironically on the effects of our changing golf fortunes as the body starts to produce less and less satisfying golf. This one is very well done without having the negative tone that some of the others do, hinting at decay and death.

The book is divided ino three sections: (1) Learning the Game (2) Loving the Game and (3) Playing the Game. The works are about equally distributed among the sections.

If you're a golfer, you know that people love to give golf-related gifts but never know what to give. I suggest you solve their problem by putting this book on your Amazon.com wish list. Then on those cold winter's nights, you can curl up with this book to help you conjure up your own golf dreams!

The Almighty Updike   March 27, 2000
 8 out of 8 found this review helpful

When John Updike brings the depth and breadth of his intelligence to bear upon a subject, the light of his insight and wisdom radiates from his silky prose. One expects to be enlightened as he reviews contemporary novels or tackles current questions of theology. I didn't know what to expect from his essays on golf, but having read "Golf Dreams", I would say that Updike loves this enigmatic game every bit as much as he loves fiction, theology, and philosophy. If we find a writer's love in his attention to detail, then in these essays Updike shares his deep love not only in the details of the game itself, but in the details of playing of golf in New England and his love for his golfing companions. It is as if in a life of a writing discipline, book tours, speaking engagements, and other demands, Updike can rely upon the fidelity of his foursome and the bucolic mysticism of golf itself as a source of constant and dependable pleasure. Fortunately, because like most of us who play, Updike's pleasure does not depend upon his mastery of the game; but our reading pleasure does depend on Updike's mastery of lucid prose to express his golf dreams.


Very entertaining   September 28, 1998
 2 out of 2 found this review helpful

Updike's compilation is a pleasure to read. Terrific essays especially. There is a strong bond between all obsessed golfers. You will certainly laugh aloud. This book I feel is meant a little more for the golf player than simply an Updike fan.


Updike's collection of essays and short stories of golf   September 14, 1998
 3 out of 3 found this review helpful

A collection of pieces about golf, mostly bad golf. These essays and short stories have appeared in Golf Digest & The New Yorker, so some you may have already read, BUT you haven't heard them read by the author! There always seems to be a specialness given to any piece read by the author. Though any reader may be coached to the correct inflection, the author truly knows how his story is to be read; where the pauses are, how the intonation and pacing should be. The stories themselves are from the perspective of the player, the hacker who loves the game though his scorecards seldom show the game loving him. The piece on how the popularity of the game is endangering the sport, studies the subject from many angles and shows Updike a genuine lover of the game, no matter what the condition of the course or length of wait on the tee.