SELF-CONCIOUSNESS <i> by John Updike (Fawcett Crest: $5.95, illustrated) </i>

John Updike evokes Proust’s “dizzying stilts of time” in this combination memoir and apologia. A walk in the rain through Shillington, Pa., the town where he lived as a child, develops into a Proustian meditation: The author seems to straddle past and present as he revisits his old neighborhood, pausing at a familiar address to note what exists there now and recalling what used to be.

The chapters discussing the failure of his first marriage and his rather vague opposition to the Vietnam War are considerably less satisfying: Updike seems uncomfortable with his actions and spins elaborate rationales in an effort to excuse, if not explain, his actions. Serving as his own literary biographer, he links quotations from various pieces of prose and poetry with the people and places that inspired them.