Product Description
"This book is the first to take an in-depth look at the religious vision of Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Updike. In his very first piece of autobiography, first published in 1962 and later titled "The Dogwood Tree: A Boyhood," Updike characterized religion as one of "the three great secret things" in human experience, the others being sex and art. Since then his literary production of more than fifty books in four main genres - novels, short stories, poetry, and critical essays - has consistently and insightfully explored a wide range of religious issues. The essays collected here evaluate the religious dimension of Updike's prodigious literary vision, looking broadly at Updike's understanding of religion in ordinary human experience, in the context of historic Christianity, and in contemporary American culture."--BOOK JACKET. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Critic's Comments on Dust Jacket
"From an abundant but contradictiory world as it is, John Updike hasin fifty books recorded in prodigious detail 'an intense radiance we do notsee.' That underglow is explored in these fifteen thought-provoking essaysabout the religious dimension of his work.Some essayists protray histhemes as Lutheran, Barthian, or Kierkegaardian, but all see this work as alifelong Pilgrim's Progress, with Updike a pilgrim who is sometimes inmotion upwards, but at other times only watches while God moves inexorablytoward him."Doris Betts, author of "Souls Raised from theDead" and "The Sharp Teeth of Love."

Critic's Comments on Dust Jacket
"John Updike has said that 'religion created Greek literature anddied within its embrace.'Another religion may or may not have createdUpdike's works, but this volume of essays shows that the embrace islong-standing, seductive, many-sided, and by no means moribund.Withobvious affection and clarity of vision, these crtics have hugged theUpdikean shore very well indeed."Anthony C. Yu, University ofChicago Divinity School.

Updike's Confrontation
James Yerkes is the editor of a wonderful collection of essays dealing with the topic of faith in a delightfully down-to-earth manner. John Updike and Religion: The Sense of the Sacred and the Motions of Grace (Eerdmans, $24). That longwinded title may scare away Updike admirers who fear wadingin the dark waters of academic posturing. They need not worry, for the bookis a relatively breezy read, with only a semi-occasional wandering intoverbosity. For instance, Yerkes (who teaches religion at Moravian Collegein Bethlehem, Pa.) writes about Updike in the light of having watched andenjoyed the Jack Nicholson film, As Good As It Gets. Nothing stuffyhere.

James A. Schiff writes that for Updike, "God permeates everyaspect of human life so that his presence is felt in and around households.Updike doesn't state his beliefs in so many words, preferring--as mostartists--to "suggest that the possibility of there being somethinggreater beneath the physical surface." As Updike wrote in AssortedProse, "Blankness is not emptiness; we may skate upon an intenseradiance we do not see because we see nothing else."

Schiff sees Godpresence in Updike's writing, although "beneath the surface, pushingthrough, as well as above the world, providing light and hope."

Ifyou share an enthusiasm for Updike, be sure to check out editor Yerkes'excellent Web page called "The Centaurian" devoted to Updike.

Impressive resource on Updike's religious views
The editor and contributors do a fine job documenting and interpreting Updike's religious insights using his own words from a wide range of his writings and interviews.It's one of the best resources for literaryscholars as well as Christian-minded readers.All will have theirspiritual values reinforced and their faith deepened and challenged,enriched, and inspired by this instructive introduction to this giftedProtestant writer and observer of American culture.It also has acomprehesive bibliography. ... Read more

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This volume explores the confluences between two types of literature in contemporary America: the novel and the epic. It analyses the tradition of the epic as it has evolved from antiquity, through Joyce to its American manifestations and describes how this tradition has impacted upon contemporary American writing. ... Read more

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When junior college professor Alfred Clayton is asked to record his impressions of the Ford Administration, he recalls a turbulent piece of personal history as well. In a decade of sexual liberation, Clayton was facing a doomed marriage and the passionate beginnings of a futile affair with an unattainable Perfect Wife. But one memory begets another: Clayton's unfinished book on James Buchanan. In John Updike's fifteenth novel, he masterfully alternates between two men, two lives, two American centuries -- one Victorian, the other modern -- shining an irreverent, witty, and sometimes caustic light on the contrasting views of social fictions and sexual politics. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (14)

Brilliant, But Ineffectual
My title is not meant to refer to the merits (or lack thereof) of this book, but instead its rather odd tale of two men: The narrator, and his historical subject President James Buchanan. President Gerald Ford, whose administration is referenced in the book's title, comes in for only the very briefest (if glowing) mention. That little joke helps set one up for the series of cruel gags that history plays on President Buchanan--and on the narrator.

In essence, both men are stymied from rising to the considerable central challenge that is thrust upon them (the lead-up to the Civil War in Buchanan's case, a romance with a married woman--"The Perfect Wife"--in the narrator's) by their fundamental ineffectiveness. This wishy-washy behavior drove the nation crazy under Buchanan's leadership, and it drives The Perfect Wife crazy as she is lackadaisically wooed by lackluster academic Alf Clayton over the entire course of the Ford administration. Her name is Genevieve, she is married to a fellow professor and they both have children to raise, but Clayton typically finds a way to blame the affair on the loose sexual morality (really more of a Sixties hangover) prevalent during the Ford years.

President Buchanan, in his admiration for the Southern gentleman and a muddled sense of the limits of states' rights under the Constitution, does not realize until it is too late that his conciliatory tone and overstudied sense of what is necessary for national union has brought the United States to the brink of its bloodiest conflict (Buchanan's successor, Abraham Lincoln, was made of sterner stuff and knew before he assumed office what had to be done). We first glimpse this fundamental inability to step up to the plate in Buchanan's young manhood,. when the (probable) suicide of his deeply disturbed fiancee plunges Buchanan into a dark fog from which he never really emerges--leaving the reader wondering why he was so enamored of the conniving, manipulative Ann Coleman in the first place. Buchanan would remain a bachelor for the rest of his life.

Asked to provide his memories of the Ford administration by an obscure association of New England historians, stunted would-be biographer Clayton inexplicably uses the occasion to finally complete his magnum opus on James Buchanan--the lack of publication of which has effectively shut down Clayton's academic career. And the reminiscences on the Ford years promised to the august historians would certainly have caused dropped jaws and discomfort, even at this late date; most of what Clayton recalls of Ford's term in office is excruciatingly detailed trysts with The Perfect Wife. As was mentioned previously, the actual presidency of Gerald R. Ford is reduced to one paragraph toward the end of the book. One assumes that this is not exactly what the publisher had in mind, rather like a child who enthusiastically describes pulling the wings off flies when asked what he did on his summer vacation.

One wonders if what has drawn Clayton to Buchanan is their shared disingenuousness. Buchanan, in throwing friendly sops to the Southern gentry he so admires (perhaps because he himself was a dirt-poor son of the Pennsylvania coal regions), effectively ignites the greatest conflagration in American history. And Clayton, with his shielded academic's sense of entitlement--there is a horrific chapter in which Clayton waxes euphoric about nubile young collegians as part of the spoils of war due a tenured professor like himself--doesn't see any harm in bedding the mother of one of his students. This is the event that marks the demise of his years-long affair with The Perfect Wife, after their respective families have been rent asunder and divorces filed. Professor Clayton seems genuinely puzzled that his paramour is angry with him when he fails to seduce the student but instead goes after her mature mother.

In the end, both men are reduced to a wheedling, needless pride over their signature achievements: Buchanan by managing to avoid firing the first shot in a Civil War that had been coming to a boil throughout his adminstration, Clayton in getting his long-suffering wife (the "Queen of Disorder") to take him back after his years-long dalliance with Genevieve.

I found the saddest paragraph in the book to be the brief summary of the achievements of Gerald Ford. The President who stepped in for the disgraced Richard Nixon (and then pardoned him to save a national nightmare of hair-pulling and recrimination) was everything that both James Buchanan and Alf Clayton never would be: Decent, confident, down-to-earth, self-deprecating, a faithful husband and father; a man adept at placing others' interests above his own.

Alf Clayton admires President Ford, and he doesn't quite know why. One has the feeling that President Buchanan would have felt the same way.

A dithering, ineffectual leader
I cannot be objective about Updike.I consider him a genius and swallow his text whole.

But something that is missing from the other reviews is the parallel between the narrator and the primary subject of the book (not President Ford, but the 15th President, James Buchanan).The narrator portrays Buchanan sympathetically, but as an dithering, ineffectual leader.He draws no parallel between Buchanan and Ford (who was unfairly portrayed as a bumbler in his day).Rather, the narrator seems to be confessing his own ineffectuality in forming intimate relationships with his wife, lover and children, and his tendency to dither rather than commit to a monogamous relationship.

Outstanding Biography of James Buchanan, 15th POTUS
I borrowed this from the library not knowing anything about the content, judging from the title that it was a retrospective of the accidental Ford Presidency.Much to my surprise, it had nothing to do with Ford, merely referring to the period in history when the book's narrator, Alfred "Alf" Clayton, wrote his Buchanan biography.

The book interweaves Alf's life from 1974 to 1976 with Alf's biography of James Buchanan, which he was writing during the same time.

The portions of the book dedicated to Alf's life are hilarious and typical Updike.These episodes in themselves were excellent reading.However, what makes the book great, is his treatment of Buchanan and the larger fabric of America during Buchanan's long life, and particularly during the decade preceding the Civil War.

Updike paints a sympathetic portroit of Buchanan, unlike most Presdential scholars, who consistently rate him among the worst of America's Presidents.I tend to agree with Updike, as "Old Buck" was running a country that was, at the time, completely ungovernable.Trying to keep the peace, Buchanan was scorned for his efforts by the North and the South.I don't think anyone adorning Mt. Rushmore could have avoided what ensued.

Updike recounts Buchanan's childhood in the wilderness of western Pennsylvania, through his romance with Anne Coleman in Lancaster and his rise as a lawyer and politician, through his election as POTUS, and it's culmination in the collapse of the Union.

This was a great book and I recommend it highly.

Good, not Great
Updike tries to incorporate his decades long research of James Buchanon into a storyline that has a professor recalling his life during the mid-70s. The graphic depiction of the sex overtakes the book in ways that are unsettling, but the emptiness of the protagonist's life at the end is undeniable. It would have been better if Updike has just written a history of Buchanon that echoed the "New Journalism," but then he would have been entering Tom Wolfe territory and that would have been a "no-no."

Still, Updike's middling efforts on a book like this is worth the time to sink in the classic prose and realize that this world is fallen and passing away.

Good News-Not Really About The Ford Administration At All!
The brilliant John Updike delivers yet again. Deceptively packaged as a sort of historical evaluation of the Presidency of Gerald Ford, this book's protagonist actually tricks us all by giving Ford virtually no ink and ultimately encapsulates his feelings for the man by calling him little more than "the perfect President." You see, though he has been assigned the task of authoring a scholarly paper on Ford, the main character here, a writer and educator from New England, combines an autobiographical tale about his own life during the hectic, sex-filled mid-1970's, with his obsessive mission to make public his views on and expertise of the Presidency of James Buchanan. The writer becomes obsessed in an almost Hitchcockian fashion with Ann, the doomed fiancée of the lawyerly young Buchanan, a woman who meets a tragic death that sends the future fifteenth President of the United States into lifelong bachelorhood and---it is speculated-either undispelled virginity, or just possibly a homosexual relationship in the White House with an Alabama Senator.The Buchanan material, while most interesting of all in its early stages, quickly takes second billing to the tale of the writer's personal life during the 1970's, as he separates from his spouse, falls in lust with a local woman he terms "The Perfect Wife" and skirt-chases after the available females on his college campus and in his neighborhood and social circle. Updike does get surprisingly graphic, even erotic, in his descriptions of sex here, and in a few cases he shifts gears masterfully, making the same scene a thing of both Eros and physical comedy. Memories Of The Ford Administration is a dyed-in-the-wool masterpiece that surely gets its time periods, the first half of the nineteenth-century and the 1970's, down pat. It's a joy to read, a book that makes a reader think, and a tale to settle back and take delight in as it unfolds without effort. Without question a five-star book! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Perfect Addition for the Updike Collector!
The last work of fiction by award winning John Updike is a great introduction for those who have not read his work and the perfect addition to for anyone who collects Updike books. ... Read more

Product Description
The writings of more than 60 authors including Isaac Asimov, Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, Pierre Curie, Primo Levi and James Gleick, are represented in this volume. Each expresses a perspective on the Sciences. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Very good, but some of the selections are a bit dated
This book contains 97 essays written by the giants of 20th century physics and mathematics.These include essays by Einstein, Planck, Bohr, Dirac, von Neumann, Feynman, Hawking, Penrose and Bertrand Russell.Almost all are non-mathematical, but a few (for instance, the essay by Dirac) do require some mathematical expertise.The essays are, on the whole, quite good.My only reservation is that many of the selections are quite dated.This is to be expected, since many of the authors are deceased, and some have been dead for a half-century or more.Furthermore, being compiled in 1989 (the publication date for the original hard cover edition) even the essays by living authors, such as Hawking and Penrose, are somewhat obsolete, hence I can only give this book four-stars.However, even if they do not reflect the most up-to-date understanding of the subject matter that they cover, they are still well worth reading.

Scientists at their best, explaining science to the public
Two of the worlds' most odious clichés relate to the scientific elite and are unfortunately often perpetrated by non-scientific academics. The first is that scientists crawl into an artificial environment and create monstrous things without regard to the consequences. The second is that the scientific upper-echelon finds it impossible to "lower" themselves to the level of everyone else. This collection of over 90 essays, written by the prime scientists of the 19th and 20th centuries, demolishes those beliefs.
The pioneers of modern understanding have often been the vanguard of those trying to educate the public about what the newest scientific discoveries really mean. And scientists have always written for the masses, such as they were. Even Kepler and Galileo wrote popular works to explain their positions.
The material in this book represents scientists at their best. You read of joy, anguish, fulfillment, shock, puzzlement, success and failure. In short, you read about humans experiencing the world. The level of difficulty is very low, suitable for high school on up.
Showing scientists at their human best, this book will convince all but the stone-minded that scientists really are at home in the world.

He could have had a V8
In a set of articles by great men that could have been worthwhile
we have a failure. I know because I have something real to compare this to
as contrastSource Book in Mathematics. What results is very like "The End of Science: Facing the Limits of Knowledge in the Twilight of the Scientific Age" in content.
What we have here is an anti-mathematics thesis with only vague points
to the real stuff.What results is a dumbed down collection that is really unworthy of the author.
Praising this book is like praising vanilla pudding!
Without the whipped cream of the mathematics the pudding is
limp and colorless. What we really need is a true source book
with the real material in it.
The closest I've seen is Roger Penrose's"The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe".
In dumbing it down there is no protection against science and the mathematics
that makes it work .

Excellent
An excellent book to read on science and mathematic related ideas. It's easy to understand and fun to read. It doesn't only stop at the scientists' and mathematicians' lives and their work. Read it and find out... More!

This book was well worth both my time and money.
I loved this book.It brings together the writings of some of the worlds greatest minds on the subject of science.This is a most read. ... Read more

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Product Description
Webster's bibliographic and event-based timelines are comprehensive in scope, covering virtually all topics, geographic locations and people. They do so from a linguistic point of view, and in the case of this book, the focus is on "John Updike," including when used in literature (e.g. all authors that might have John Updike in their name). As such, this book represents the largest compilation of timeline events associated with John Updike when it is used in proper noun form. Webster's timelines cover bibliographic citations, patented inventions, as well as non-conventional and alternative meanings which capture ambiguities in usage. These furthermore cover all parts of speech (possessive, institutional usage, geographic usage) and contexts, including pop culture, the arts, social sciences (linguistics, history, geography, economics, sociology, political science), business, computer science, literature, law, medicine, psychology, mathematics, chemistry, physics, biology and other physical sciences. This "data dump" results in a comprehensive set of entries for a bibliographic and/or event-based timeline on the proper name John Updike, since editorial decisions to include or exclude events is purely a linguistic process. The resulting entries are used under license or with permission, used under "fair use" conditions, used in agreement with the original authors, or are in the public domain. ... Read more

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4 cassettes / 6 hours
Read by Ron Rifkin

Catch up with Bech.

This unique AudioBook collects John Updikes classic Bech novels, Bech: A Book (1970), Bech is Back (1982), and the latest installment, Bech at Bay.

"Mr. Updike finds full scope for his gifts here: for sly and cheerfully malicious pensees on contemporary life; for busy observations on human behavior."
-The New Yorker

Bech a Book (1970):This is where we meet him for the first time - Henry Beck, a New York writer "with his thinning curly hair and melancholy Jewish nose," whose first novel had become a minor classic.A rich and unforgettable portrait and a satire of the literary life.

Bech Is Back (1982): When Bech comes back, he roams a number of third-world countries as a cultural ambassador - astonished at his won literary celebrity.From the era of Vietnam to the sagging end of the Seventies, his aesthetic embarrassments reveal truths about his trade and his times.

Bech at Bay (1998): Our hero returns - older, but scarcely wiser.He is still at bay, pursued by the hounds of desire and anxiety, of unbridled criticism and publicity in a literary world ever more cheerfully crass. it's not easy being Henry Beck in the post-Gutenbergian world, but somebody has to do it, and he brings to the take that indomitable mixture of grit and ennui that only Updike could make so deliciously funny.

Amazon.com Review
Narrator Ron Rifkin (JFK, L.A. Confidential)easily masters the astute, if often nasty, observations of Henry Bech,an occasionally honored, variably compensated New York writer ofcrusty disposition and unflagging sexual appetite. Drawing excerptsfrom his Bech books, Pulitzer Prize-winner John Updike skewers theliterary life, leading Bech and listeners from post-Khrushchev Russiato a student's marijuana haze, through a brief suburban entrapment andback to Manhattan in the computer-addled 1990s. Throughout thejourney, it's easy to see why Updike keeps returning to this sometimesrepellent, but always fascinating character. (Running time: 6 hours, 4cassettes) --Kimberly Heinrichs ... Read more

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5 x 8 New foreword by the authorPraise for the original edition of Buchanan Dying"Buchanan Dying is an abundant, even opulent, creative act . . . very often Mr. Updike's fantastic talent for mimicry produces quite marvelous results." -Arthur Schlesinger Jr., The Atlantic Monthly"Using the excuse of 19th Century speech, Updike has indulged his love of beautiful, ornate prose; we can sink deep into sentences balanced like mobiles and turned like pots on the wheel." -Joyce B. Markle, The Chicago TribuneTo the list of John Updike's well-intentioned protagonists-Rabbit Angstrom, George Caldwell, Piet Hanema, Henry Bech-add James Buchanan, of Pennsylvania, the harried fifteenth President of the United States (1857-1861). In a play meant to be read, Buchanan, on his death bed, relives his political and private lives. A wide-ranging afterword rounds out the dramatic portrait of one of America's lesser known and least appreciated leaders. For this edition Updike has written a new foreword, discussing the two productions of the play and the historical context in which it was written.John Updike was born in 1932, in Shillington, Pennsylvania, and has lived in Massachusetts since 1957. He is the author of more than fifty books, and his novels have won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the National Book Critics' Circle Award, and the Howells Medal. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Requiem for the Old Public Fuctionary
For a major American writer to focus on a major American political figure is not unique. Gore Vidal offered us some interesting looks at Burr, Lincoln, Wilson, Harding and FDR in his various works of historical fiction. Caleb Carr presents a fun Teddy Roosevelt in "The Alienist". In "Buchanan Dying" and "Memoirs of the Ford Administration," John Updike offers an excellent portrait of the enigmatic James Buchanan whose administration presided over the shattering of the Union. While part of Updike's focus on an obscure president remains an homage to their native state of Pennsylvania, "Buchanan Dying" also retains an interesting, and important, political message.

Updike's historical research is solid. His excellent afterword goes through the Buchanan Papers that were edited by James R. Moore as well as the standard biographies and histories of the coming of the Civil War. From Kenneth Stampp to Avery Craven to Allan Nevins to Roy Franklin Nichols, Updike is familiar with the leading works of the impending crisis. This reflects well as he incorporates real figures and conversations along with fictional conversations.

The familiar pattern of events unfolds in Buchanan's mind. The death of Anne Coleman; the tense relationships with Jackson and Polk; Buchanan's ambitions and his tortured path to the presidency; the Dred Scott decision; the feud with Stephen Douglas over Lecompton; the secession of the South, all this plays out in the dying Buchanan's mind. Updike refers to this work as a "play meant to be read" and it probably would not be well adapted on the stage yet it is worth reading. While Buchanan remains a passive character (much like Rabbit?), Updike is fair to his historical memory. The secondary characters, from stern Jeremiah Black to the impish Harriet Lane to the slick John Slidell, remain impressive, realistic and stick to the historical record. The reader or the viewer does need some background with the era or some scenes make no sense, as when Buchanan and Douglas exchange words and bring up how conservative Democrats William Rives and Nathaniel Tallmadge were run out of the pary in the late 1830s.

One theme which lingers in the play is that men in power often do the best they can despite themselves. In an age when protesters demanded how many kids LBJ killed that day, when Bill Clinton was hounded for his personal life as well as for taking part in numerous conspiracy theories, when George W. Bush is constantly accused of abominations, this play serves as a reminder that failed political leadership is more often the product of incompetence as opposed to evil intentions (the character of John Floyd seems to be the best reminder of that).

Updike shows a Buchanan who was more devoted to the Union than the South and the North would have thought possible. Updike's Buchanan recognizes that the way he handled the secession crisis gave Lincoln a gift. Clearly Updike does not see Buchanan's administration as a failed presidency and, with the exception of Philip Klein's biography, presents the best modern day case for Buchanan. While the produced play would be too obscure and pendantic for viewers, the play in book form remains an excellent look into the mind and thought of a capable if often legalistic man confronted with forces far behind his power to control or grasp.

It's great sin; it's boring.
John Updike's one attempt at playwriting, BUCHANAN DYING is one of those mistakes that only a great writer can make. Looking at the rather poor legacy of Buchanan, Lincoln's ineffectual predecessor, Updike gives us a dying man, gazing back at his life and trying to find some comfort in his accomplishments, but instead he is haunted by his failures. Filled with historical figures that history itself has condemned to anonymity; Updike's play fails for the worst of all reasons; it's boring. Well-researched with an earnest attempt at finding an emotional center to one of history's ciphers, but still boring.Occasionally a scene grabs your interest, but they are few and far between. I can't even imagine sitting through a staging of this work without wanting to escape.

Ever Candid, Ever Wizened
This Stackpole Books edition is virtually a photocopy facsimile of the first Knopf edition in 1974, dust jacket and all.Updike's new Forewordrecounts the two productions of the play, in abbreviated form, by Franklinand Marshall College (April 28-May 8, 1976) and San Diego State University(March 1977) and reminds us of the fact that "Leadership of anycountry but one in a comic operetta involves some decisions whoseconsequences are bloody" and that this book is his attempt was"to extend sympathy to politicians, as they make their way amongimperfect alternatives toward a hidden future" (p. ix).Once againthere, as inhis memoir Self-Consciousness, he observes how for him thissympathy applied to Lyndon Johnson during the Vietnam War.

He alsoobserves from this writing experience how "history" isconstructed in the fragility of the writer's judgment in weighing andinterrogating the disparate data forms from which descriptive writingemerges.A wise scholar named Van Harvey in his book, The Historian andthe Believer, once observed that what we call "history" is afield-encompassing field and requires from the historian the skillfulinterpretation and weaving together of information from manydisciplines--psychology, sociology, anthropology, economics, geography,religion, and politics, including some awareness of their importantsub-disciplines.Such difficulties notwithstanding, Updike warns that"the effort to delve into history left me convinced of theunconscionable amount of bluff, fraud, and elision that any allegedlyhistorical account, labeled fiction or not, entails." This isprecisely the sort of wizened sensitivity which we have come to expect andappreciate in Updike's work. ... Read more

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Stories that trace the decline and fall of a marriage, a history made up of the happiness of growing children and shared life, and the sadness of growing estrangement and the misunderstandings of love.

... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Updike's always amazing
Updike's older novel, TOO FAR TO GO, deals with the end of a marriage. In each concise and beautifully-written chapter, the Maples family faces another situation leading to the split-up of their relationships. The needs, the frustrations and the failures of parents and children are revealed often in ordinary situations, but those feelings complicate even simple transactions. With so many American marriages going through this process, readers from teenagers to adults of all ages are often profoundly touched by moments shared with Updike's family.

Greater than the sum of its parts
This book is comprised of several short stories, which, like the title characters themselves, often seem like little more than sketches.Although I initially found that frustrating, I eventually came to realize that that works in this book's favor.As the title would suggest, the focus is on the Maples- their marriage, their infidelities- and the brevity and compactness of the stories helps to highlight that.Current events, politics, and the existence and plight of children are of secondary importance, and are mentioned, when they are mentioned at all, primarily to mark the passing of time and to fit the stories into a larger context.

Like a relationship that has ended, in which we remember the beginning and the ending more than the middle, the two stories that stand out the most are the first and the last, "Snowing in Greenwich Village" and the ironically-titled "Here Come the Maples".

"Snowing in Greenwich Village" shows a young couple just beginning their lives together, naive and inexperienced, who know very little about each other."Here Come the Maples", by contrast, shows a couple who deeply understand one another, the result of familiarity and the passage of time as much as love.By this point, however, it's too late, and there's nothing they can do but go their separate ways.The final sentence is a perfect summation, touching and sad, that, despite its transparent literary-ness, still gets me choked up just recalling it.

Thou still unravish�d bride of quietness...
Of all the scientific works that have dealt with the subject of love, marriage, divorce, children, parents, and care, none can truly explain the complex emotional waves that crash into lives of people when love is born. John Updike's Too Far Too Go is an astonishing work of literary fiction dealing with the early love and eventual separation of a young man and woman. Using simple language that is refined and beautiful, Updike masterfully explores the complex emotions that arise out of marital conflict and the stress it can cause on others, especially children. Updike's characters are so real that it becomes hard not to feel true sympathy for them. They are flawed as any human being, which makes them so wonderful.

His best work in Too Far To Go is "Separating", the end of the road for the Maples who have been dealing with marital troubles and are contemplating a short separation. Being the child of a divorced family, I found his account so accurate that it felt as though the words and actions of the characters were lifted word for word from a real conversation. It brought tears to my eyes as Richard, who seems always to be the collected father, break down and cry at dinner and confess his own shortcomings to his family. Every couple considering marriage and every child whose life has been so hurt by a divorce should read Updike's work in Too Far To Go. He is truly an American treasure and a master of the English language.

Updike's wistful scenes from a marriage
Here come the Maples, John Updike's fictional representation of a typical married couple in mid-to-latter twentieth century America.The Maples fight, drink, and sex their way through life, somehow still managing to find a little happiness.This book, comprised of a number of related short stories, is highly evocative of the mood of the early sixties.The gender roles and sexual repression of earlier decades was giving way to a new kind of freedom, but there was still an awful price to be paid in anger, in jealousy, in heartbreak.Yet somehow, this book explains, life goes on; stands are taken, moves are made, and children are raised, despite all the unpleasantness.The stories are told from the husband's point of view, so it seems odd that we don't get a very clear picture of the 'other woman' who causes so much trouble.But the really big question that hangs over this melancholy little volume is: Why are these people so hung up on sex?Updike takes pains to show how much these people care for each other, but somehow they still can't seem to be satisfied with each other.No answers are offered here, but no judgments are passed, either.Essentially, we're presented with a novel of manners that documents (for future generations) a particular time and lifestyle.

As always, Updike's prose is as flawless as his characters are flawed. Confused, weak, vacillating, frequently suffering from some self-inflicted or psychosomatic ailment, Richard is the everyman we don't want to glorify even though we see much of ourselves in him.His more conservative wife Joan feels herself trapped in a pit of self-righteous indignation.Together they feed off each other's neuroses until the inevitable occurs.This is not a happy book, but it doesn't have a powerfully tragic feel either.It's almost as though Updike had written these stories about his own failed relationships, from which he'd since moved on, but which still bore a kind of nostalgic, wistful glow.A lovely book, although not a spectacular one, aimed at those who enjoy analyzing relationships, rather than those who expect big things to actually happen.

Another great series from Rabbit's author.
And so there I was, having just finished the latest of the Rabbit series, sad to be leaving a group of people with whom I had spent many entertaining hours, when I came upon this book in the store.Terrific, I thought, another series in which to immerse myself, even if for much less time.I was not disappointed.This is excellent.

In addition to the storytelling, it is interesting in that it gives one a picture of an artist in development.As with the Rabbit series, the writing improves with each story, as the writer matures over a period of years.I highly recommend this collection.

Also of interest: this contains "Gesturing," selected by Updike himself for inclusion in "The Best American Short Stories of the Century." ... Read more

Product Description
These John Updike short stories include "Friends from Philadelphia", "Sunday Teasing", "The Persistence of Desire", "The Other Woman" and "Brother Grasshopper". ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

"To witness this miracle"
The 23 short stories forming this collection were written between 1971 and 1978. Seven of them have not been included in 'The Early Stories' published in 2003, and at least two ('The Faint' and 'Atlantises', both of them masterpieces) have never, to the best of my knowledge, been reprinted anywhere.

This is quintessential Updike with all his signature themes: marital infidelity, divorce, solitude, ill health, growing old - the latter being less prominent in this book than in his subsequent collections. I believe that it was Updike's choice of themes that prevented him from getting a Nobel Prize: the establishment never came to terms with his ability to turn these human conditions into life-affirming works of art. Take, for example, 'Domestic Life in America', which opens with the words "The wives get the houses. It is easier for the lawyers this way" and ends with "Above Beacon Hill, in the general direction of his lawyer's, an electric sign announced in alternation, remarkably, 10:01 and 10 [degrees]. Fraser regretted there was no one with him to witness this miracle." It almost feels like Updike is out to annoy the prudes, e.g. in 'Transaction', which is explicit even by his standards, or in 'Here Come the Maples', which starts thus: "They had always been a lucky couple, and it was just their luck that, as they at last decided to part, the Puritan Commonwealth in which they lived passed a no-fault amendment to its creaking, overworked body of divorce law".

As usual, he throws in a few stories that lighten the mood, such as the hilarious 'Minutes of the Last Meeting' or 'The Faint' with its most un-Updikean of endings which is as unexpected as it is logical.

Problems
John Updike has a wonderful way of putting the things people do and feel into words.In many of the stories, especially the title story, he doesexactly that.He gives a great commentary of America in "How to LoveAmerica and Leave it at the Same Time."Although the stories are atsome points hard to follow, like all of his works, making sense of thesestories makes one a better reader, and in turn a better writer.It is agood Updike starter book. ... Read more

Product Description
Described by F. R. Leavis as one of the two most brilliant novels in the language, The Portrait of a Lady tells the story of Isabel Archer, young, American, and eager to embrace life, as she makes her choice from the suitors who court her. She is true to her principles, but at what cost? ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

"The real offense was her having a mind of her own at all."
When Isabel Archer, a bright and independent young American, makes her first trip to Europe in the company of her aunt, Mrs. Touchett, who lives outside of London in a 400-year-old estate, she discovers a totally different world, one which does not encourage her independent thinking or behavior and which is governed by rigid social codes. This contrast between American and European values, vividly dramatized here, is a consistent theme in James's novels, one based on his own experiences living in the US and England. In prose that is filled with rich observations about places, customs, and attitudes, James portrays Isabel's European coming-of-age, as she discovers that she must curb her intellect and independence if she is to fit into the social scheme in which she now finds herself.

Isabel Archer, one of James's most fully drawn characters, has postponed a marriage in America for a year of travel abroad, only to discover upon her precipitate and ill-considered marriage to an American living in Florence, that it is her need to be independent that makes her marriage a disaster. Gilbert Osmond, an American art collector living in Florence, marries Isabel for the fortune she has inherited from her uncle, treating her like an object d'art which he expects to remain "on the shelf." Madame Serena Merle, his long-time lover, is, like Osmond, an American whose venality and lack of scruples have been encouraged, if not developed, by the European milieu in which they live.

James packs more information into one paragraph than many writers do in an entire chapter. Distanced and formal, he presents psychologically realistic characters whose behavior is a direct outgrowth of their upbringing, with their conflicts resulting from the differences between their expectations and the reality of their changed settings. The subordinate characters, Ralph Touchett, Pansy Osmond, her suitor Edward Rosier, American journalist Henrietta Stackpole, Isabel's former suitor Caspar Stackpole, and Lord Warburton, whose love of Isabel leads him to court Pansy, are as fascinating psychologically and as much a product of their own upbringing as is Isabel.

As the setting moves from America to England, Paris, Florence, and Rome, James develops his themes, and as Isabel's life becomes more complex, her increasingly difficult and emotionally affecting choices about her life make her increasingly fascinating to the reader. James's trenchant observations about the relationship between individuals and society and about the effects of one's setting on one's behavior are enhanced by the elegance and density of his prose, making this a novel one must read slowly--and savor. Mary Whipple

A great classic novel!
I really enjoyed this book,.I read it a few years ago, and it really stuck with me.I would give it more stars if I could.

It is so very well written and interesting to read.

good book... bad movie
Well i read this book in college, and then saw the movie as my first date with the girl I'm gonna marry.This hardcoevr addition was perfect for hidding a ring. ... Read more