Four other stories are rendered in this abstract
-
personal mode, whose plotless
meditative form generally accentuates the protagonist ’ s self - enclosed condition, and
poignantly depicts the pain aroused when memory and desire mingle. Among these,
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Robert M. Luscher
“ Leaves ” is a tour de force of poetic language in which the narrator self - consciously
lays bare the pain of separation, delving in the process into the problematic relation-
ship between humans, art, and nature. “ The Music School ” (subsequently made into
a short fi lm) and “ Harv Is Plowing Now ” also showcase Updike ’ s talents with lan-
guage and metaphor, thematizing the power of verbal art to transcend discontinuity.
Essentially dramatic monologues, these stories depend upon startling juxtapositions
of metaphorically rich fragments whose coalescence embodies a fl eeting victory
over time.
“ Giving Blood ” marks the return of the Maples, whose troubles fl are up in a verbal
bloodletting as they drive to Boston to donate blood for a relative, diminish during
their shared experience of donating blood, and then reemerge at the conclusion. Other
marriage stories likewise depict husbands who harbor some inner wound that miti-
gates their attempts to revive their marriages. The epistolary “ Four Sides of One Story ”
explores a love triangle by juxtaposing the refl ections of four isolated characters who
act out a modern version of the Tristan and Iseult legend. The only Updike story set
at Harvard, “ The Christian Roommates, ” is not about marriage, but explores a rela-
tionship between a self - assured premedical student and a vegetarian pacifi st fi lled with
similar confl icts; this story was also turned into a short fi lm entitled “ The Roommate, ”
which omits reference to the only commonality which bonds this odd couple – their
Christianity. The volume concludes with “ The Family Meadow, ” a plotless sketch
presenting a still life of an epoch falling prey to progress, and “ The Hermit, ” which
balances the opening story ’ s hymn to the idyllic past with its examination of the
fragility of the pastoral in the modern world.
The novel Couples (1968) earned Updike his fi rst Time magazine cover feature, an
article entitled “ The Adulterous Society. ” Bottom ’ s Dream , a children ’ s book that adapts
A Midsummer Night ’ s Dream , and Midpoint and Other Poems were published the next
year, followed in 1970 by Bech: A Book , the fi rst of three linked collections featuring
Updike
’
s literary alter ego, the fi ctional Jewish writer Henry Bech. Many critics
persist in treating the Bech volumes as novels, even though Updike lists them under
the heading “ Short Stories ” in the publications list his books contain, clearly indicat-
ing their status in the broad territory between the novel and the miscellaneous short
story collection. Updike remarks in an interview that this fi rst Bech book was “ con-
ceived piecemeal ” and that “ the whole texture … was that of short stories, and I
couldn ’ t bring myself to call it a novel ” (Reilly 136). The incidents in Bech ’ s life thus
never seem to coalesce into a neat causal chain; such discontinuity may signal the
problem that prevents him from duplicating his earlier success as an artist. Bech serves
as Updike ’ s vehicle to chronicle incidents and impressions – most often gleaned from
his foreign travels – that comprise an extended refl ection on the American writer ’ s
condition.
Even some of Updike ’ s harsher critics praise these attempts in the satiric mode,
which generally shun the belletristic style of his earlier fi ction and possess a picaresque
quality, with their hero generally powerless to end his drift or shape his identity.
While Bech by no means shares his fabled writer ’ s block with his creator, he embodies
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Updike
353
those fears about the diminishment that would result without art to preserve memory,
as well as the tribulations of an author ’ s public life and the potential panic of continu-
ally producing quality work. Bech ’ s celebrity ultimately blocks his creativity, and his
travels in that role are experiences that he, unlike Updike, is unable to translate into
art. Unmarried, Jewish, nine years older, and a denizen of Manhattan, Bech serves as
a mask, behind which Updike can rebuke the literary industry for the writer ’ s current
condition while simultaneously satirizing the character who so readily accedes to its
lures and demands. These “ quasi - novels ” – as Updike subtitles the last, though a more
accurate term would be short story sequences – all follow similar patterns, using
foreign travels for framing purposes or juxtaposing them with a series of adventures
closer to or at home.
As the fi rst in the series, Bech: A Book (1970) sets up the ruse of verisimilitude
with a preface attributed to Bech and a fi ctional bibliography of Bech ’ s works that
settles a few scores with Updike ’ s critics. Many of the stories comically chronicle
missed connections, although “ The Bulgarian Poetess, ” the fi rst Bech story Updike
wrote, shares a concern with unfulfi lled longing with the stories in The Music School ,
where it was fi rst collected; in the context of Updike ’ s short story sequence, it em -
bodies a temporary revival of Bech ’ s dormant ardor and his reverence for art. “ Bech
Panics, ” the most serious of the volume ’ s comic escapades, involves an existential panic
that serves as the climax of the volume, which concludes not with Bech ’ s completion
of his bestseller but with his admission into a society resembling the American
Academy of Arts and Letters in “ Bech Enters Heaven. ” In the Bech books, Updike
seems liberated by the comic veneer, yet the themes he treats are serious and not
unrelated to those examined in previous and subsequent work: the panic of imminent
mortality; the sense of vocation as self - defi nition; the ambivalence of attained rewards;
the confl ict between self - realization and love; and the tension between art and ardor.
Updike followed with his second Rabbit novel, Rabbit Redux (1971), before pub-
lishing his sixth volume of short fi ction, Museums and Women (1972), which contains
pieces that span the dozen years previous and is organized into three separate galleries:
a group of fourteen tales; a section of ten sketches entitled “ Other Modes ” ; and a
group of fi ve stories featuring the Maples. Critical reception of this collection might
have been less mixed had Updike omitted the “ Other Modes, ” although a few of these
pieces echo the themes of the other stories. Perhaps in response to this criticism,
Updike subsequently included such prose experiments only in his collections of criti-
cism and other miscellaneous prose. Passing through a “ muddled transitional condi-
tion ” – a phrase used to describe the Dark Ages in “ The Invention of the Horse Collar ”
– his middle - aged suburbanites are more frequently fatigued, and seem to have lost
the energy to push through the door of memory or to devise workable harmonies amid
maturity ’ s discord. Yet despite
their premature autumn, most still strain for connec-
tion with a diminished reach, capturing faint glimmers of a dying light for preserva-
tion in a museum of the past. In essence, the characters have become, as the narrator
of “ When Everyone Was Pregnant ” refl ects, “ survival conscious ” and less intent on
gripping the past as “ the decades slide seaward ” ( Museums 97). Estrangement from
354
Robert M. Luscher
the past leaves them bounded in the present, suburban castaways searching for some
faded radiance.
The volume ’ s title story is clearly on par with Updike ’ s fi nest short fi ction: using
the montage form, he strings together a series of lyrical meditations that form a
museum gallery of the narrator ’ s past. The experiential and metaphoric alliance of
museums and women telescopes time ’ s passage, recapitulating William Young ’ s arc
from adolescence to maturity, marital discontent, and beyond. “ When Everyone Was
Pregnant, ” is another refl ective excursion, narrated by a securities broker with frag-
mentary recall of the 1950s, for him a fertile and guiltless era during which comfort
and paternity replaced poverty and chastity. Updike ’ s talent as a social historian is
evident in “ The Witnesses, ” which steps back to “ high noon of the Eisenhower era, ”
and “ The Hillies, ” a sketch set in the 1960s that depicts the Tarbox community ’ s
response to a “ less exotic ” breed of hippies. Both this story and “ The Carol Sing ” –
concerning a leading Tarbox citizen ’ s suicide – use a fi rst - person narrator who speaks
in a communal voice as he encounters a phenomenon that defi es easy explanation.
Updike returns to the abstract – personal mode in “ Solitaire, ” which treats the issue of
marital infi delity through the protagonist ’ s refl ections during a game of solitaire, in
which each card yields some metaphoric link with his predicament. The aftermath of
marital separation is the subject of “ The Orphaned Swimming Pool, ” which traces a
couple ’ s dissolution through the objective correlative of their former home ’ s pool.
“ Plumbing, ” a brilliant metaphoric meditation, likens the problems that accrue in a
long marital history with the deposits that build up in a house ’ s subterranean plumb-
ing; although not included with the fi ve Maples stories here, it becomes a central
story in Updike ’ s later compilation of the Maples stories.
The most signifi cant piece in the “ Other Modes ” section is “ The Sea ’ s Green Same-
ness, ” in which Updike adopts the trademark metafi ctional pose of authorial self -
consciousness to refl ect on artistic dilemmas. The other pieces range from cameo
portraits and whimsical sketches to satires and sketches that feature Donald
-
Barthelme - like illustrations that draw on Updike ’ s artistic training. Serious themes
are present, however: “ Under the Microscope, ” for instance, features the volvox that
fi gured in Peter Caldwell ’ s existential questions in The Centaur , while “ The Slump ”
portrays a baseball player seeking a cure for his spiritual torpor in Kierkegaard as well
as in the batting cage. The Maples stories that conclude the volume portray the
nuances of the ongoing emotional and spiritual crises that accompany marriage and
maturity; the short story sequence Too Far to Go (1979) more fully maps out the
inherent fault lines of modern marriage and the cycles of attachment and detachment
produced by its stresses.
Between Museums and Women and Too Far to Go , Updike published a closet drama,
Buchanan Dying (1974) – the abortive product of research on Pennsylvania - born Presi-
dent James Buchanan – followed by his novel A Month of Sundays and second volume
of prose, Picked - Up Pieces , in 1975. Marry Me: A Romance (1976) was published the
same year Updike was elected to the Academy of the National Institute of Arts and
Letters. Updike separated from his wife in 1974; in 1976 they were granted one of
John
Updike
355
the fi rst no - fault divorces in Massachusetts. The next year, Updike married Martha
Bernhard; he also published Tossing and Turning (1977), a volume of poems, followed
by the novel The Coup (1978). Updike ’ s experiences in his fi rst marriage, transmuted
into fi ction through Joan and Richard Maple in much the same fashion that his travels
became the Bech stories, formed the basis of Too Far to Go. This defi nitive gathering
of Maples stories might not have been part of Updike ’ s canon had producer Robert
Geller not decided to adapt the stories for a television drama, which led to a tie - in
edition and spurred Updike to create a short story sequence that diverged signifi cantly
from the fi lm.
More than inspired editing, Too Far to Go (1979) balances its fi rst four stories,
which conclude with the Maples ’ reluctant decision to separate in “ Twin Beds in
Rome, ” with the fi nal quartet, in which the resolve is fi nally acted on. Juxtapositions
and repeated motifs – such as references to Richard ’ s illnesses, the focus on homes,
allusions to Hansel and Gretel – provide contrast and coherence. Essentially, Updike
uses the contours of his own life to create a study of an evolving, prototypical mar-
riage as it is subtly affected by the sociopolitical changes sweeping the era. As marriage
tends to subsume them into a single entity, Joan and Richard struggle to maintain
their identities: the narrator of “ Sublimating ” observes how their eyes “ had married
and merged to three ” (168). Mostly, however, the stories are related through Richard ’ s
consciousness, revealing how marriage binds him, though his viewpoint is clearly
open to scrutiny. Although the couple seems on the verge of splitting in the early
stories, Richard ’ s pronouncement in “ Twin Beds in Rome ” that they ’ ve “ come too
far ” in their marriage and “ have only a little way more to go ” turns out to be mistaken
by about ten years and thirteen stories. Neither of the Maples seems able to go physi-
cally or emotionally far enough away from the other to separate, despite their adulter-
ies; neither can they make the concessions that would move them toward reconciliation.
In his foreword, Updike characterizes the couple as possessing “ an arboreal innocence, ”
like the trees evocative of suburban life for which they are named. As the volume
progresses, he remarks, their behavior is like “ a duet … repeated over and over, ever
more harshly transposed ” (10). Early doubts, temptations, and overtures toward sepa-
ration ultimately give way to frustration, demystifi cation, adultery, and divorce,
which paradoxically renovates the Maples ’ vision of their marriage ’ s enduring value.
Merely focusing on the marriage ’ s decline and fall, as Updike observes in the foreword,
ignores the way in which the stories “ illumine a history in many ways happy. That a
marriage ends is less than ideal; but all things end under heaven, and if temporality
is held to be invalidating, then nothing real succeeds ” (10).
Problems , Updike ’ s other 1979 collection, concentrates on the adversities of middle
age. During this “ idling time ” his chara
cters are disengaged from security as relation-
ships collapse and troubles increasingly obscure youth ’ s more acute perception of
mystery. Like Ferguson in “ The Egg Race, ” they are more oriented toward present
sorrows than past bliss; while former ties no longer bind, they complicate any fresh
start. Divorce carries a profound burden of guilt for these troubled protagonists, and
the emotional wreckage strewn in the wake of separations fi lls the landscape with
356
Robert M. Luscher
what the title of one story calls “ Guilt - Gems. ” Updike ’ s dedication to his four children
highlights the number of stories featuring children, whose suppressed anguish often
erupts as the gulf between them and their separating parents widens. Further experi-
ments with the sketch, the “ abstract - personal ” mode, an epistolary - type journal form,
and the montage story all appear, along with stories featuring excursions into memory
and two of the stronger Maples stories – “ Separating ” and “ Gesturing. ” Updike ’ s fi gu-
rative language still unexpectedly transforms the texture of everyday objects and
events, but sustained lyric fl ights of prose become less frequent and his style becomes
less heavily adjectival, in line perhaps with the characters ’ inability to enact the tran-
scendence from the traumas of separation and mortality that accompany their progress
into middle age. With a number of stories in this volume selected for inclusion in
Best American Short Stories and the O. Henry Prize Stories , Problems is one of Updike ’ s
strongest collections.
“ Commercial, ” a rare metafi ctional experiment, opens the volume with a camera -
eye fi rst - person plural narrative that juxtaposes two parallel scenes: one from a televi-
sion commercial for natural gas and another from the life of the male viewer. Both
the warm ambience of the contrived commercial nostalgia and the less idealized sub-
urban scene are explicated in the same fashion, with the commercial yielding a neater
message than the more problematic domestic scene, where the character ’ s sleeping
wife, unfulfi lled lust, and longings for ideal beauty are less neatly resolved. Vignettes
spliced together using a cinematic quick - cut method are employed in “ Believers, ”
A Companion to the American Short Story Page 77