Synopses & Reviews
From his first collection,
The Same Door, released in 1959, to his last,
My Fathers Tears, published fifty years later, John Updike was Americas reigning master of the short story, our second Hawthorne,” as Philip Roth described him. His evocations of small-town Pennsylvania life, and of his own religious, artistic, and sexual awakening, transfixed readers of
The New Yorker and of the early collections
Pigeon Feathers (1962) and
The Music School (1966). In these and the works that followedthe formal experiments and wickedly tart tales of suburban adultery in
Museums and Women (1972) and
Problems (1979), the portraits of middle-aged couples in love and at war with aging parents and rebellious children in
Trust Me (1987) and
The Afterlife (1994), and the fugue-like stories of memory, desire, travel, and unquenched thirst for life in
Licks of Love (2000) and
My Fathers Tears (2009)Updike displayed the virtuosic command of character, dialogue, and sensual description that was his signature.
Here, in two career-spanning volumes, are 186 unforgettable stories, from Ace in the Hole” (1953), a sketch of a Rabbit-like ex-basketball player written when Updike was a Harvard senior, to The Full Glass” (2008), the authors toast to the visible world, his own impending disappearance from it be damned.” Based on new archival research, each story is presented in its final definitive form and in order of composition, established here for the first time. This unprecedented collection of American masterpieces is not just the publishing event of the season, it is a national literary treasure.
About the Author
Christopher Carduff is the editor of John Updikes posthumous collections
Higher Gossip: Essays and Criticism (2011) and
Always Looking: Essays on Art (2012), and has been a consulting editor for The Library of America since 2006. He lives in Melrose, Massachusetts.