Adam Begley Quote
Barth was possibly the less efficacious of the two remedies. A bracingly stringent Calvinist, he did supply Updike with one of the enduring tenets of his personal creed (the idea that God is Wholly Other: We cannot reach Him, only He can reach us), and he did become, in the sixties, Updike’s favorite theologian (Ipswich belonged to Barth)—but as Barth himself insisted, theology cannot protect faith from doubt. For Updike, it was one buttress in a system of reinforcements necessary to sustain belief.
Adam Begley
Barth was possibly the less efficacious of the two remedies. A bracingly stringent Calvinist, he did supply Updike with one of the enduring tenets of his personal creed (the idea that God is Wholly Other: We cannot reach Him, only He can reach us), and he did become, in the sixties, Updike’s favorite theologian (Ipswich belonged to Barth)—but as Barth himself insisted, theology cannot protect faith from doubt. For Updike, it was one buttress in a system of reinforcements necessary to sustain belief.
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About Adam Begley
Adam C. Begley (born 1959 in Boston, Massachusetts) is an American biographer. He was the books editor for The New York Observer from 1996 to 2009.
Begley is the son of Sally (Higginson) and novelist Louis Begley. He graduated from Harvard College in 1982, and from Stanford University with a Ph.D. in English and American literature in 1989.
His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Times Literary Supplement, The Spectator, and The Atlantic.
He lives with his wife, Anne Cotton, in Great Gidding, Cambridgeshire. His stepdaughter is the novelist and art critic, Chloë Ashby.
He is the author of biographies of John Updike and the 19th-century French photographer Nadar. His biography of Harry Houdini appeared in the Yale Jewish Lives series. He is a frequent contributor to the Paris Review's Art of Fiction series.
He is currently at work on a book about Harvard College.
Begley is the son of Sally (Higginson) and novelist Louis Begley. He graduated from Harvard College in 1982, and from Stanford University with a Ph.D. in English and American literature in 1989.
His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Times Literary Supplement, The Spectator, and The Atlantic.
He lives with his wife, Anne Cotton, in Great Gidding, Cambridgeshire. His stepdaughter is the novelist and art critic, Chloë Ashby.
He is the author of biographies of John Updike and the 19th-century French photographer Nadar. His biography of Harry Houdini appeared in the Yale Jewish Lives series. He is a frequent contributor to the Paris Review's Art of Fiction series.
He is currently at work on a book about Harvard College.