Rating: 
Summary: short stories
Review: Good short stories from thr great Updike. Each one uniqely different.
Rating: 
Summary: Top of his craft
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Top of his craft
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Is there a better book of stories anywhere?
Review: 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 in several sentences more about family than I've discovered through an entire life. 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 the greatest living story writer and this is the book that made that clear.
Rating:
Summary: Is there a better book of stories anywhere?
Review: 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 in several sentences more about family than I've discovered through an entire life. 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 the greatest living story writer and this is the book that made that clear.
Rating:
Summary: Stories the clip the wings of time.......
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: To Discover it again...
Review: There is little, if anything, one is able to say that can possibly capture the beauty or majesty of a great Updike story. The gentle yet exact measure of his sentences, the bewilderingly complex yet infinitely fluid (and eventually near-epiphanic) weaving of narratives, his control of internal characterization--few are masters in the manner that John Updike is a master. And this volume contains his greatest story--possibly what I feel to be the greatest piece of literature in all of latter-half 20th century American literature (and we're including it all here, not just short stories). The last story of the volume: Packed Dirt, Churchgoing, A Dying Car, A Traded Car. Enough with the theoretics and generalities here. This story can change your life. Or, at the very least, it can alter the way in which you interact with literature--what you can expect out of literature. One piece of advice, though: read it in one sitting.
Seriously.
Don't get up, even just for a little while to fix something to eat. Don't read it bit by bit (it's long, so you may be tempted). And, whatever you do, don't look at the last page before it's time. It may seem disjointed. It may seem an odd accumulation of narratives. Don't stop reading. Two years, and a hundred readings later, I still haven't gotten over that first experience. What I wouldn't give to have it again...
Rating:
Summary: To Discover it again...
Review: There is little, if anything, one is able to say that can possibly capture the beauty or majesty of a great Updike story. The gentle yet exact measure of his sentences, the bewilderingly complex yet infinitely fluid (and eventually near-epiphanic) weaving of narratives, his control of internal characterization--few are masters in the manner that John Updike is a master. And this volume contains his greatest story--possibly what I feel to be the greatest piece of literature in all of latter-half 20th century American literature (and we're including it all here, not just short stories). The last story of the volume: Packed Dirt, Churchgoing, A Dying Car, A Traded Car. Enough with the theoretics and generalities here. This story can change your life. Or, at the very least, it can alter the way in which you interact with literature--what you can expect out of literature. One piece of advice, though: read it in one sitting.
Seriously.
Don't get up, even just for a little while to fix something to eat. Don't read it bit by bit (it's long, so you may be tempted). And, whatever you do, don't look at the last page before it's time. It may seem disjointed. It may seem an odd accumulation of narratives. Don't stop reading. Two years, and a hundred readings later, I still haven't gotten over that first experience. What I wouldn't give to have it again...
Rating:
Summary: Ecstatic prose; magic from the end of a pen.
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Ecstatic prose; magic from the end of a pen.
Review: 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.
|
