John Updike - Early Stories

John Updike

THE EARLY

STORIES

1 9 5 3 - 1975

Alfred A. Knopf New York

2003

T H I S IS A BORZOI BOOK

P U B L I S H E D B Y A L F R E D A . KNOPF, I N C .

Copyright 2003 by John Updike

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Distributed by Random House, Inc., New York.

www.aaknopf.com

The quotations from St. Augustine's Confessions in "Believers" and "Augustine's Concubine" are as translated by Edward B. Pusey; in "Believers," the quotation from the Venerable Bede is from The Old English Version ofBede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. T. Miller.

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Eighty of these stories were first published in The New Yorker. The other twenty-three appeared in the following magazines thus:

The Atlantic Monthly: "Augustine's Concubine," "Nakedness." Audience: "Minutes of the Last Meeting," "When Everyone Was Pregnant." Big Table: "Archangel." Esquire: "The Slump," "The Tarbox Police." Harper's Magazine: "Believers," "Eros Rampant," "Sublimating," "Your Lover Just Called." New World Writing: "The Sea's Green Sameness." Qui:

"Transaction." Playboy: "Gesturing," "I Am Dying, Egypt, Dying," "Killing," "Nevada."

The Saturday Evening Post: "Eclipse," "The Lucid Eye in Silver Town." The TransatlanticReview: "The Crow in the Woods," "During the Jurassic," "The Invention of the Horse Collar," "Under the Microscope."

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Updike, John.

[Short stories. Selections]

The early stories, 1953-1975 / John Updike. 1st ed.

p. cm.

ISBN 1-4000-4072-8

1. United StatesSocial life and customs20th centuryFiction. I. Title.

PS3571.P4A6 2003

813'.54dc21 2002044824

Manufactured in the United States of America

First Edition

Also by John Updike

P O E M S

The Carpentered Hen (1958) Telephone Poles (1963) Midpoint (1969) Tossing and Turning (1977) Facing Nature (1985) . CollectedPoems 1953-1993 (1993) Americana (2001) N O V E L S

The Poorhouse Fair (1959) Rabbit, Run ( i 9 6 0 ) The Centaur (1963) . Of the Farm (1965) Couples (1968) . Rabbit Redux (1971)

A Month of Sundays (1975) Marry Me (1976) . The Coup (1978) Rabbit Is Rich (1981) . The Witches ofEasrwick (1984) . Roger'sVersion ( 1986) . 5 . ( 1 9 8 8 ) Rabbit at Rest (1990) Memories of the FordAdministration (1992) Brazil (1994) . In the Beauty of the Lilies (1996) Toward the End of Time (1997) . Gertrude and Claudius (2000) Seek My Face (2002)

S H O R T S T O R I E S

The Same Door (1959) . Pigeon Feathers (1962) . Olinger Stories (a selection, 1964) . The Music School (1966) . Bech: A Book (1970) .

Museums and Women (1972) . Problems and Other Stories (1979) . TooFar to Go (a selection, 1979) . Bech Is Back (1982) . Trust Me (1987) .

The Afterlife (1994) . Bech at Bay ( i 9 9 8 ) . Licks of Love (2000) . TheComplete Henry Bech (2001)

E S S A Y S A N D C R I T I C I S M

Assorted Prose (1965) . Picked-Up Pieces (1975) Hugging the Shore (1983) Just Looking (1989) Odd Jobs (1991) Golf Dreams: Writingson Golf (1996) More Matter ( 1999) P L A Y

M E M O I R

Buchanan Dying (1974)

Self-Consciousness (1989)

C H I L D R E N S B O O K S

The Magic Flute (1962) The Ring (1964) . A Child's Calendar (1965) .

Bottom's Dream (1969) A Helpful Alphabet of Friendly Objects (1996) THE EARLY STORIES

1 9 5 3 - 1 9 7 5

Contents

Foreword

IX

OLINGER STORIES

You'll Never Know, Dear, How Much I Love You

The Alligators

Pigeon Feathers

Friends from Philadelphia

A Sense of Shelter

Flight

The Happiest I've Been 67

'The Persistence of Desire- 81

The Blessed Man of Boston, My Grandmother's Thimble, and Fanning Island 91

Packed Dirt, Churchgoing, a Dying Cat, a Traded Car - 102

In Football Season 122

O U T IN THE W O R L D

The Lucid Eye in Silver Town

The Kid's Whistling 138

Ace in the Hole

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and So Forth 152

The Christian Roommates

Dentistry and Doubt

vi

Contents

A Madman. 190

Still Life 201

Home 214

Who Made Yellow Roses Yellow? 225

His Finest Hour 237

A Trillion Feet of Gas 248

Dear Alexandras 257

The Doctor's Wife 261

At a Bar in Charlotte Amalie 269

MARRIED LIFE

Toward Evening

Snowing in Greenwich Village

Sunday Teasing

Incest

A Gift from the City

Walter Briggs

The Crow in the Woods

Should Wizard Hit Mommy?

Wife-Wooing

Unstuck

Giving Blood

Twin Beds in Rome

Marching through Boston

Nakedness

FAMILY LIFE

The Family Meadow 397

The Day of the Dying Rabbit 401

How to Love America and Leave It at the Same Time 411

The Music School 416

Man and Daughter in the Cold 421

The Rescue 428

Plumbing 436

Contents

vii

The Orphaned Swimming Pool 442

When Everyone Was Pregnant 446

Eros Rampant 451

Sublimating 462

Nevada 470

The Gun Shop 480

Son 491

Daughter, Last Glimpses of 496

THE TWO ISEULTS

Solitaire 505

Leaves 510

The Stare 514

Museums and Women 520

Avec la Bebe-Sitter 530

Four Sides of One Story 537

The Morning 546

My Lover Has Dirty Fingernails 552

Harv Is Plowing Now 559

I Will Not Let Thee Go, Except Thou Bless Me 564

TARBOX TALES

The Indian 573

The Hillies 579

The Tarbox Police 584

The Corner 589

A & P 596

Lifeguard 602

The Deacon 608

The Carol Sing 614

The Taste of Metal 618

Your Lover Just Called 62 3

Commercial 630

Minutes of the Last Meeting 636

viii

Contents

Believers 640

Eclipse 645

FAR OUT

Archangel 649

The Dark 651

The Astronomer 656

The Witnesses 661

A Constellation of Events 666

Ethiopia 675

Transaction 682

Augustine's Concubine 702

During the Jurassic 708

Under the Microscope 713

The Baluchitherium 716

The Invention of the Horse Collar 719

Jesus on Honshu 72 3

The Slump 727

The Sea's Green Sameness 730

THE SINGLE LIFE

The Bulgarian Poetess 737

The Hermit 751

I Am Dying, Egypt, Dying 765

Separating 788

Gesturing 799

Killing 810

Problems 820

The Man Who Loved Extinct Mammals 82 3

Love Song, for a Moog Synthesizer 829

Index of Titles

Foreword

T H I S IS a collection. A selection, surely, is best left to others, when the writer is no longer alive to obstruct the process. Any story that makes it from the initial hurried scribbles into the haven of print possesses, in this writer's eyes, a certain valor, and my instinct, even forty years later, is not to ditch it but to polish and mount it anew. However, I did omit two stories, "Intercession" and "The Pro," which were already safely reprinted in