A Companion to the American Short Story
Page 75
degree of narrative compression and abstraction. But it is the compelling voices
through which they attain their greatest achievement. Bellow
’
s voices are best
described by Walter Ong, who suggests: “ The human voice is a manifestation of the
person. … Speech is the calling of one person to another, of an interior to an interior.
342
Gloria L. Cronin
Sight presents always surfaces, presents even depth as a lamination of surfaces, whereas
sound always presents interiors ” (70). It is the hearts and minds of these anguished
intellectuals presented in intense monologues, letters, and even mental letters, that
Bellow has distilled with such intensity in his short stories and novellas. Marianne
Friedrich has aptly compared this effect of his condensation “ to the use of lenticular
screens in postmodern photography ” with its realistic surfaces and mysterious planar
depths (195). This effect of planar depth is the unique mark Bellow has put upon the
American short story and novella.
Furthermore, his resurrection and transformation of the novella has secured its place
more fi rmly on the literary map. The short stories and novellas are Bellow ’ s “ small
planets ” that echo all the great themes of the galactic novels. However, they carry
their own authority, intensity, and artistry. Neither classic modernist stories nor
experiments, they are not simply like anybody else ’ s. Written always in demotic voice,
they are recognizable by their rhetoric of social utterance, monologues, and their
explorations of problematic interpersonal speech inserted into that great gulf between
speaker and listener. Ultimately, the short stories present their own image of the
human condition – homo loquens affl icted with an intense desire for talking out his
existential loneliness as he attempts to push back the worst incursions of modernity
and addresses the great secular - religious questions of the latter half of the twentieth
century. As such, each of the stories is an exquisitely wrought metaphysical fable.
References and Further Reading
Atlas , James . Bellow: A Biography . New York :
— — — . “ A Father - to - Be . ” New Yorker (February
Random House , 2001 .
5, 1955 ): 26 – 30 .
Bellow , Saul . The Actual . New York : Viking , 1997 .
— — — . “ The Gonzaga Manuscripts . ” Discovery 4.
— — — . “ Address by Gooley MacDowell to the
New York : Pocket Books , 1954 .
Hasbeens Club of Chicago . ” Hudson Review 4.2
— — — . Herzog . New York : Viking , 1964 .
( 1951 ): 222 – 7 .
— — — . “ Him with His Foot in His Mouth . ”
— — — . The Bellarosa Connection . New York :
Atlantic (November 1982 ): 114 – 19 , 122, 125 –
Viking , 1989 .
6, 129 – 32, 134 – 5, 137 – 42, 144.
— — — . “ Burdens of a Lone Survivor . ” Esquire
— — — . Him with His Foot in His Mouth and Other
(December 1974 ): 176 – 85 , 224, 226, 228, 230,
Stories . New York : Harper , 1984 .
232.
— — — . Humboldt ’ s Gift . New York : Viking , 1975 .
— — — . “ By the Rock Wall . ” Harper ’ s Bazaar 85
— — — . “ Keynote Address Before the Inaugural
(April 1951 ): 135 – 205 .
Session of the 34th Session of the International
— — — . “ By the St. Lawrence . ” Esquire (July
Congress of Poets, Playwrights, Essayists, and
1995 ): 82 – 8 .
Editors, 13 June 1966 . ” Montreal Star (June 25,
— — — . Collected Stories . New York : Viking , 2001 .
1966 ): Special Insert, 2 – 3 .
— — — . “ Cousins . ” 1984. Collected Stories . New
— — — . “ Leaving the Yellow House . ” Esquire
York : Viking , 2001 . 191 – 239 .
(January 1958 ): 112 – 26 .
— — — . Dangling Man . New York : Vanguard ,
— — — . “ Looking for Mr. Green . ” Commentary
1944 .
(March 1951 ): 251 – 61 .
— — — . “ Dora . ” Harper ’ s Bazaar (November
— — — . “ The Mexican General . ” Partisan Review
1949 ): 118 , 188 – 90 , 198 – 9.
9.3 ( 1942 ): 178 – 94 .
Saul
Bellow
343
— — — . “ Mosby ’ s Memoirs . ” New Yorker (July 20,
— — — . “ What Kind of a Day Did You Have ? ”
1968 ): 36 – 42, 44 – 9 .
Vanity Fair (February 1984). Rpt. in Him with
— — — . “ Mr. Katz, Mr. Cohen, and Cosmology . ”
His Foot in His Mouth and Other Stories . New
Retort: A Quarterly of Social Philosophy and the Arts
York : Harper , 1984 . 63 – 163 .
1 ( 1942 ): 14 – 20 .
— — — . The Victim . 1947 . New York : Compass -
— — — . Mr. Sammler ’ s Planet . New York : Viking ,
Viking , 1956.
1964 .
— — — . “ Zetland: By a Character Witness . ”
— — — . “ The Old System . ” Playboy (January
Modern Occasions 2 . Ed. Philip Rahv . Port
1968 ): n.p.
Washington, NY : Kennikat , 1974 . 9 – 30 .
— — — . Ravelstein . New York : Viking , 2000 .
Friedrich , Marianne . Character and Narration in the
— — — . Seize the Day . New York : Viking , 1956 .
Short Fiction of Saul Bellow . New York : Peter
— — — . “ Sermon by Dr. Pep . ” Partisan Review
Lang , 1996 .
16.5 ( 1949 ): 455 – 62 .
Harper , Gordon L. “ Saul Bellow, The Art of
— — — . “ The Silent Assumptions of the Novel-
Fiction: An Interview . ” Writers at Work . Ed.
ist.
”
Revised version published as
“
Summa-
Alfred Kazin . New York : Viking Press , 1967 .
tions ” in Saul Bellow: A Mosaic
, vol. 3 of
88 – 123 .
Twentieth Century American Jewish Writers Hyland , Peter . “ Something to Remember Me By . ”
series, ed. Liela H. Goldman , Gloria L. Cronin ,
The Critical Response to Saul Bellow . Ed. Gerhard
and Ada Aharoni . New York : Peter Lang , 1992 .
Bach . Westport, CT : Greenwood Press , 1995 .
185 – 99 .
345 – 7 .
— — — . “ A Silver Dish . ” New Yorker (September
Illig , Joyce . “ An Interview with Saul Bellow . ”
25, 1978 ): 40 – 50 .
Publishers Weekly (22 October 1973 ): 74 – 7 .
— — — . “ Something to Remember Me By . ”
Ong , Walter . Barbarian Within . New York :
Esquire (July 1990 ): 64 – 75 , 78 – 9.
Macmillan , 1968 .
— — — . “ Sono and Moso . ” 12 from the Sixties . Ed.
Ozick , Cynthia. “ Farcical Combat in a Busy
Richard Kostelanetz . New York : Dell , 1967 . n.p.
World . ” Review of Him with His Foot in His
— — — . A Theft . New York : Penguin , 1989 .
Mouth and Other Stories
, by Saul Bellow.
New
>
— — — . “ The Trip to Galena . ” Partisan Review
York Times Book Review (May 20, 1984 ): 11 .
17.8 ( 1950 ): 779 – 94 .
Simmons , Maggie . “ Free to Feel . ” Quest (February –
— — — . “ Two Morning Monologues . ” Partisan
March 1979 ): 33 .
Review 8.3 ( 1941 ): 230 – 6 .
Short Fiction Chronology
1936
“ The Hell It Can ’ t ”
1941
“ Two Morning Monologues ”
1942
“ The Mexican General ”
1942
“ Mr. Katz, Mr. Cohen, and Cosmology ”
1944
Dangling Man
1947
The Victim
1949
“ Dora ”
1949
“ Sermon by Dr. Pep ”
1950
“ The Trip to Galena ”
1951
“ Looking for Mr. Green ”
1951
“ By the Rock Wall ”
1951
“ Address by Gooley MacDowell to the Hasbeens Club of Chicago ”
1955
“ A Father - to - Be ”
344
Gloria L. Cronin
1956
Seize the Day
1956
“ The Gonzaga Manuscripts ”
1958
“ Leaving the Yellow House ”
1967
“ Sono and Moso ”
1968
“ Mosby ’ s Memoirs ”
1968
“ The Old System ”
1974
“ Zetland: By a Character Witness ”
1974
“ Burdens of a Lone Survivor ”
1978
“ A Silver Dish ”
1984
“ Him with His Foot in His Mouth ”
1984
“ Cousins ”
1984
“ What Kind of a Day Did You Have? ”
1989
A Theft
1989
The Bellarosa Connection
1990
“ Something to Remember Me By ”
1995
“ By the St. Lawrence ”
1997
The Actual
2000
Ravelstein
22
John Updike
Robert M. Luscher
One of North America ’ s foremost men of letters, John Updike was prolifi c in a variety
of genres. With over sixty published volumes to his credit, he won nearly every major
literary award except for the Nobel Prize, an honor he bestowed upon his literary alter
ego Henry Bech in Bech at Bay . Updike averaged over a book per year, regularly
alternating novels, poetry, short fi ction, and volumes of assorted prose with other
works such as children ’ s books, a play, and other non - fi ction. An insightful literary
critic, he reviewed a wide variety of works, ranging from fi ction to theology, and
wrote essays exploring the achievements of major authors. Updike ’ s fi ction is highly
regarded for its luminous prose style and commitment to realism, yet it also provides
readers with a detailed social history of the late twentieth century. His major themes
involve the ongoing struggle against time ’ s diminishment, which often manifests
itself through sexual and spiritual yearnings but fi nds its most successful realization
in art and memory. His canon of short fi ction provides a comprehensive chronicle of
the metamorphosis of middle - class domesticity in an era of greater sexual freedom,
rising marital discord, heightened spiritual uncertainty, and increased social unrest.
If Updike ’ s novels, as he characterizes them, serve as “ moral debates ” with the
reader, his short fi ction challenges assumptions about the ordinariness of daily experi-
ence and fosters greater awareness of quotidian particulars. Throughout his career,
Updike was dogged by critics ’ suspicions that his fi nely crafted prose disguises a
failure to tackle larger subjects with a more political, urban, or tragic slant. Yet such
criticisms are based on the very assumptions he sought to combat in choosing to
foreground domestic life, and fail to recognize the ways in which Updike did on occa-
sion move outside the range of suburban experience. By recognizing the depths of
beauty and sadness in the mundane world, Updike celebrated the intensity of the
ordinary, while simultaneously bemoaning its transitoriness. His aesthetic interests,
as he observed in the essay “ A Dogwood Tree: A Boyhood, ” involve “ a cultivated
fondness for exploring corners ” and a desire “ to transcribe middleness with all its
grits, bumps, and anonymities, in its fullness of satisfaction and mystery ” ( Assorted
346
Robert M. Luscher
Prose 186). For some, Updike ’ s novelistic achievements, especially the Rabbit tetral-
ogy, will overshadow his stature as a short story writer, but Updike clearly exhibited
a sustained mastery of the short story form throughout his career. With a canon of
well over 200 short stories – as well as a number of prose sketches that he includes
in his volumes of assorted prose – Updike devoted a signifi cant portion of his career
to the genre that perhaps best suited his style and narrative talents. As Rachel Bur-
chard observes, “ Updike reaches his highest range of achievement in this medium, ”
presenting “ all of his major themes with intensity and artistic discipline more refi ned
than that of his novels ” (133). Updike cited his “ cartoonist ’ s ability to compose within
a prescribed space ” as one of his assets as a novelist, but that ability may be of greater
value in the confi nes of the short story, where his linguistic precision, his gift for
metaphor, and his talent for capturing the signifi cance of everyday incidents came
together on a canvas limited in scope but rich in depth.
Born in 1932, John Hoyer Updike was the only child of Wesley R. Updike, a high
school math teacher, and Linda Grace Hoyer Updike, an aspiring writer who fi nally
realized her literary ambitions with the novel Enchantment (1971) ; a short story col-
lection, The Predator (1990), appeared posthumously. Updike ’ s fi rst thirteen years were
spent in Shillington, Pennsylvania, which he transmuted into the idyllic fi ctional
town of Olinger. In 1945, he moved with his parents and maternal grandparents to
the Hoyers ’ farm near Plowville, Pennsylvania; this rural dislocation to the sandstone
farmhouse in which his mother grew up became the subject of some early – and later
– short fi ction. As a youth, Updike hoped to become a graphic artist for Disney,
although he harbored ambitions to write for the New Yorker as well. Updike attended
Harvard University on scholarship, drawing cartoons for, contributing fi ction to, and
eventually editing the Harvard Lampoon . He married Mary Pennington, a Radcliffe
fi ne arts major, in the summer of 1953, and graduated summa cum laude with an
English major in 1954, when he sold his fi rst short story, “ Friends from Philadelphia, ”
to the New Yorker .
Updike was awarded a Knox Fellowship to attend the Ruskin School of Drawing
and Fine Art at Oxford, where he and his wife spent a year; only one story, “ Still - Life ”
(in Pigeon Feathers ), derives from this experience. While in England – where his fi rst
>
child, Elizabeth, was born – Updike was offered a job with the New Yorker by E. B.
White, and returned to the US to work for two years as a roving reporter for the “ Talk
of the Town ” section. Updike severed formal ties with the magazine in 1957 after his
son David was born in order to establish his career as an independent writer, although
he remained a frequent contributor of fi ction, poetry, essays, and reviews, with over
600 pieces having been published in its pages. Moving from New York to Ipswich,
Massachusetts, that year, Updike began selling short fi ction and published his fi rst
book, The Carpentered Hen and Other Tame Creatures , a volume of poetry, in 1958.
Although Updike worked on the manuscript for an unpublished novel entitled
“ Home ” while living in New York, his fi rst published novel was The Poorhouse Fair
(1959), a mildly futuristic novel set in a retirement home modeled after the Berks
County Almshouse, which received the Rosenthal Foundation Award and was a fi nalist
John
Updike
347
for the National Book Award. Updike received two other awards that year: a
Guggenheim Fellowship and the inclusion of his story “ A Gift from the City ” in Best
American Short Stories 1959 – the fi rst of many such appearances in that series. That
same year marked the appearance of his third child, Michael, and the publication of
his fi rst collection of short fi ction, The Same Door . Throughout his prolifi c career,
Updike continued the pattern of alternating publication of novels with collections of
short fi ction and work in other genres.
The Same Door (1959) exhibits remarkable self - assurance and promise for a fi rst
collection. From the New Yorker school of fi ction, Updike derived a commitment to
realism and to exploring the corners of quotidian life, though his stories rise above
urbane social satire to sympathetic insights into contemporary life ’ s compromises,
yearnings, and regrets. Like the collection ’ s characters, Updike as a writer is poised
on the threshold, simultaneously looking back at the recent but receding past and
moving into an uncertain present that holds surprising but often ambiguous rewards
– sometimes tinged heavily with irony. The theme of unexpected rewards that Updike
later highlights in his foreword to Olinger Stories (1964) pervades the volume ’ s stories,
although the epigraphs draw attention to the diffi culty of recapturing and articulating
past pleasures, preparing the reader to encounter characters who struggle to see clearly