Bech Is Back

In this follow-up to Bech: A Book, Henry Bech, the priapic, peripatetic, and unproductive Jewish American novelist, returns with seven more chapters from his mock-heroic life. He turns fifty in a confusing blend of civic and erotic circumstances while publicizing himself in Australia and Canada. He marries a shiksa and travels with her to Israel, where she falls in love with the land, and to Scotland, where he does. And-sweating buckets! thinking big! minting miracles!-he writes an ingeniously tawdry bestseller. Bech's aesthetic and moral embarrassments reveal acid truths about both his trade and our times.