Pigeon Feathers: And Other Stories

If there is, you have my attention. Maybe Isaac Babel's Collected Stories or Fitzgerald's Selected Stories. I've been writing for 27 years; I may have written three sentences that compare with the average in an Updike story. In "Flight" he captures more in several sentences about family than I've disentangled through an entire career. Sorry for being self-referential; it's a measure of my awe. Updike's magic is that he can tell a story in a single sentence. If you only know Updike through his novels, you're in for a treat. By my lights, this is one of the greatest living story writers and this is the book that made that clear.

I'm a budding short story writer, myself; and no course, no workshop, no amount of instruction can subsitute for the lessons one learns leafing through and ingesting these exquisite paragraphs of John Updike. I find myself, in this volume, more than other Updike works, reading and re-reading the prose, even emailing sections to friends. Like a fine restaurant I want to tell people about, like a band that plays exceptionally well live which you get to catch on a great night, Updike, here, is "on"; he is at the absolute peak of his craft. I only wish there were more collections of short stories written as well as these.

These stories are sublime. Read "Flight" and try not to grunt with pleasure! And let Archangel take you on a trip through the magic of words. Updike is at his best here. "Pigeon Feathers," the story for which the book is named, will astound you. Each story is a gem. If you want to read fiction that is beyond the assembly-line garbage...far, far beyond...read this book. See for yourself that America is still producing world-class literature. If you are a writer of short stories, make this your Bible.

This book is my introduction to John Updike, and I confess I haven't finished reading it. So I will try not to make comments that are likely to seem false to me later.He writes with such compassion that it makes you want to reach out to the characters. Since you can't do that, it makes you reach out to your friends, and people in general. It helps you see past the antagonizing surface of mankind, and into their lovable weaknesses. He also abandons many conventions of the typical narrative, and to me, it just helps to point out the stories aren't as important as life.

The images in these stories are so lyrical, so sadly ethereal, I'd not be surprised to find the pages of Pigeon Feathers flap invisibly from my hands and into those of a Pennsylvania native, whose land, childhood and eventual disillusionment are so heart-wrenchingly documented in this collection. "A & P," a staple of contemporary American fiction anthologies, is a companion piece to longer, stronger stories, like "Flight" and the final two episodic stories, showcasing the defining moments of adolescence and young adulthood; moments when the voice inside assuring us of our own greatness and immortality grows fainter and fainter. Philosophically, this collection is held together by the idea that beauty, love and fame are tenuous phenomena, no more substantial than shapes of light skating across a room, or the images of a film projector (see "Flight"). This motif is always at the forefront of Updike's poetry and diction. ("The Persistance of Desire," which plays upon the indispensible role of eyesight, literal and figurative, ingenuously spins a pun out of the optical effect of the persistance of vision for its title.) This philosophy rarely overshadows Updike's gift for an unorthodox, reflective style of narration. Conflicts figure prominently in every story, but almost always the battle is staged in the heart and mind of its protagonist. Updike is a Cicero and Keats blessed with a unique penchant for American storytelling.