Bech at Bay

In these latest exploits of the arguably Updikean, fiercely Jewish Bech (Bech: A Book, Bech Is Back), one finds a tweedy world torn asunder and a chastened narrator blinking at the scraps: the ''brainless book chains with their Vivaldi-riddled espresso bars''; the ''narrow precincts of the Manhattan intelligentsia,'' many of whom have ''sold out to a German conglomerate''; fiction workshops, ''the easiest way to get through college''; young writers, ''more and more backwash.'' (Hollywood gets off easy: ''a world in full and awful color.'') Bech deals by mingling with Czechs, seizing the helm at a doddering society of letters, winning the Nobel that's thus far eluded his creator, and killing off his critics — so hilariously that we're ultimately disinclined to concur with Bech on Bech at Bay: ''petty and self-indulgent.'' B+