Return

I took down my copy of The Library of America’s collection of later Updike stories from the shelf.  Nine hundred pages.  Eighty-five stores from the mid 70’s to 2008.  Most were first published in The New Yorker, where Updike’s editor for many years was Roger Angell.  Reading the first twenty or so of the stories was like going home for me.  Some of them I remembered from their original publication; a few others I had encountered in other collections.  Some were new to me.  The collection is presented in the order in which they were written, so the ones I read were from 1974 to 1982, a time when I was a young adult.  Most take place in the eastern USA, or at least the characters are from there.  So it seems familiar.

But familiar isn’t necessarily just positive. I’ve learned a lot since then. My geographic, cultural, and personal horizons are broader now.  We’ve all grown up a bit.  But Updike is so good at depicting particular times and places.  The attitudes, norms, and trends from those times might seem antiquated now, constrained by tradition, perhaps missing the point, perhaps making too much of ordinary difficulty, maybe all to complacently accepting the paternalistic and elitist heritage from the post-war generation. 

For the most part Updike doesn’t preach, he simply reports what he sees. And the reporting is often brilliant.  These stories avoid the showy overly complex and learned language of many of the novels.  (Updike has been described by a certain feminist as ‘a penis with a thesaurus’.)  They’re simpler and more straightforward, and in each one he has clear and for the most part narrow purpose.  Often the story points to a particular moment, a subtle tipping point that the characters will only understand in retrospect. My favorites include ‘The Fairy Godfathers’ (a telling commentary on psychiatry and relationships), ‘From the Journal of a Leper’ (maybe a bit obvious but a nicely executed O. Henry-like story), ‘Morocco’ (wistful thoughts about family). 

Updike as a wonderfully graceful and telling way of shifting the tone near the end of a story.  It’s the place where we sense he’s going to stop describing and meandering.  Here he’s getting to the point of it all.  It’s not pedantic or moralistic, but it is telling.  It’s where someone reading the story aloud would change tone, slow the pace a bit, and look us in the eye.

Even if his vision was somewhat constrained by circumstance (he was very much a creature of his time and social status), he was a supremely skilled writer that genuinely loved the craft. There is much to be learned and experienced from reading him. And a visit home can warm the heart, even if I know and am in part grateful that I no longer live there.