Problems

By John Updike

Book Overview

In this midcareer collection of twenty-three short stories, John Updike tackles such problems as separation, divorce, and remarriage, parents and children, guns and prostitution, leprosy, swooning,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0449243605
• Release Date: May 1981
• Publisher: Fawcett
• Length: 285 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.

Customer Reviews

"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 does exactly that. He gives a great commentary of America in "How to Love America and Leave it at the Same Time." Although the stories are at some points hard to follow, like all of his works, making sense of these stories makes one a better reader, and in turn a better writer. It is a good Updike starter book.