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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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.