The extraordinarily evocative stories depict the generation born in a small-town America during the Depression and growing up in a world where the old sexual morality was turned around and material comforts were easily had. Yet, as these stories reflect so accurately, life was still unsettling, and Updike chronicles telling moments both joyful and painful. The texts are taken from his recent omnibus, The Early Stories, 1953-1975.
In describing how he wrote these stories in a small, rented, smoke-filled office in Ipswitch, Massachusetts, he says, "I felt that I was packaging something as delicately pervasive as smoke, one box after another, in that room, where my only duty was to describe reality as it had come to me -- to give the mundane its beautiful due."
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"A master demonstrating the breadth of his prowess!" — Lynn (5 out of 5 stars)
"A master demonstrating the breadth of his prowess!"
“Herrmann’s voice is strikingly patrician, yet warm; Alexander’s is plummy and observant. The unexpected pleasure is that John Updike, in an unactorly way, manages to keep up with them. Even in his early 70s, he is able to modulate his voice to reveal the spaces amid the dialogue of his characters, the quantum chasms that exist between people. He reads with care for his words and characters, but without showing off. The audio collection contains fourteen of Updike’s most well-known stories, most of which demonstrate the author’s abiding faith in the redemption of human affiliation.”
" I enjoyed the stories as I listened to them, but at the end I could remember very few of them. "
John Updike (1932–2009) was the author of more than sixty books, including collections of short stories, poems, and criticism. His novels have been honored with two Pulitzer Prize Awards, the National Book Award, and the Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Hugging the Shore, a collection of essays and reviews, received the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism.
Jane Alexander‘s acting career has encompassed a Tony® Award, and six other nominations; she is a four time Oscar® nominee; the author of Command Performance, documenting her tenure as chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts from 1993-1997; and she is Commissioner of Parks, the Taconic Region, for New York State.
Edward Herrmann (1943–2014) was one of America’s top audiobook narrators. He won multiple Audie Awards and twenty-two Earphones Awards, and his narration of the King James version of the Bible remains a benchmark in the industry.
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