The Early Stories: 1953-1975

It would have been all but impossible for most of us to have gathered even the majority of these stories together to read, spread out as they were through anthologies that spanned multiple decades, and that makes it all the more satisfying to linger over these gems from the mind of a man I really think is in the top five American writers of the twentieth-century. There are no bad stories collected here and more than a dozen I'd dub as deserving literary immortality for their capacity to represent the pulsebeat of an era for generations yet to come. A richly-composed, well-chosen anthology that is a great gift for John Updike to give his readers, and a true monument to his dedication to the short story art form. This book will help define the legacy of a man of letters, imagination, and spirit. Early Stories is simply a great read.

Many of these stories were originally published in short story collections (The Same Door, Museums and Women, Problems) that are long out of print and difficult to find. That alone makes this worth owning. Then there is the fact that this represents the collected work of an indisputedly talented and influential writer coming strong out of the gate and finding his voice, at a remarkably young age, before settling into a career and a life. It is fascinating to observe this evolution and growth, as it happens over two decades, as he moves from, say, "Friends from Philadelphia", which is literal and straightforward, to the Barthelmesque (I don't if that's a word, but it should be) "Problems", which is self-reverential and self-mocking, yet also darkly funny, hinting as it does at the way life has affected the artist and his work. There is the longer "Pigeon Feathers", the (very) short "Eclipse", and the effortlessly brilliant "How to Love America and Leave It at the Same Time". Not to mention the Maple stories (which I'd already read in their collected form in Too Far To Go), the classic "A & P", and about, oh, 80 or 90 others, not all of them gems, or even successes, but fascinating and worth reading nonetheless. Add to this the fact that you can observe, through Updike's writing, the country moving from Mid-Century domesticity to Sixties' upheaval and Seventies' rudderlessness and confusion, and you have a truly indispensable collection. There is also the added bonus of Updike's introduction, in which he reveals his life at the time (married and a father early in his twenties), who escaped to an office to write during the day so he could support his family by selling these stories to the New Yorker. An unexpected, and unexpectedly normal, glimpse of the author and his workings, it's an insight which gives me a new appreciation for these stories and how and why they came to be. Lastly, don't be daunted by the heft and bulk of this tome, and don't be afraid to pick and choose which stories you read, and in what order...they have a way of staying with you long after you're done reading them.

I never much liked Updike's short stories until I started writing short stories myself. Many of the complaints people have with Updike are legitimate. He is usually light on plot. There is virtually no physical action--no fistfights, no murders, no sobbing confessions. But that, to me, is part of Updike's genius. He always takes the difficult road. He doesn't simply have a husband cheat on his wife; instead, he has the husband worry that he will cheat on his wife, and then he considers the implications. I disagree with critics who accuse Updike of being unemotional. His stories are tangles of pure emotion. My favorite story in the collection is "Packed Dirt, Churchgoing, A Dying Cat, A Traded Car." It's set up as a series of essays that eventually carry the reader into a story about the author's dying father. It feels like a compilation of random events until you get ot the last line, and then you realize that everything is connected, everything has a purpose. It may be the most beautiful ending I've ever read. (The second most beautiful ending is in "The Happiest I've Been.")Updike is not for everyone. If you like simple, straightforward stories, read Tobias Wolff (he is amazing in a totally different way). But if you're interested in a world vivid with details--a world with no easy questions, let alone answers--try Updike. One caveat: read slowly--the magic is more in the words than the paragraphs.

Why is there not more hoopla about this extraordinary volume? Although every story has been published before, the effect of reading them all through at once (at about a story a day since its publication, I am about a fifth of the way through) is stunning. In 1972, Vladimir Nabokov said that the greatest short stories of the past fifty years were written in America and he cited Updike as among its most inspired practitioners. He said, "I like so many of Updike's stories that it was difficult to choose one for demonstration and even more difficult to settle on its most inspired bit". Nabokov and Updike share the distinction of being the greatest American writers of the last half-century not to win a Nobel prize and the list of winners is made poor by their absence. American fiction writing does not get any better than this.