My Father's Tears
And Other Stories
By John Updike
(Random House Trade Paperbacks, Paperback, 9780345513809, 304pp.)
Publication Date: May 25, 2010
Other Editions of This Title: Hardcover, Compact Disc, Compact Disc, MP3 CD, MP3 CD
Categories: Literary
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“Drinking a toast to the visible world, his impending disappearance from it be damned.” That’s how John Updike describes an elderly character in his remarkable final collection. He might have been talking about himself. In My Father’s Tears, Updike revisits his people, places, and themes—Americans in suburbs, cities, and small towns grappling with faith and infidelity—in vivid portraits of the aged, people for whom the past has become paramount. My Father’s Tears is a superb set of tales that is a vital and unforgettable farewell.
John Updike was born in 1932, in Shillington, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Harvard College in 1954 and spent a year in Oxford, England, at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. From 1955 to 1957 he was a member of the staff of The New Yorker. He wrote more than fifty books, including collections of short stories, poems, essays, and criticism. His novels have won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the American Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Rosenthal Award, and the Howells Medal. He died in January 2009.
“Classically Updike . . . written with fluidity and humor, intelligence and wit about the elusiveness of happiness, contentment, grace.”—Newsday
“A haunting collection of heart-wrenching narratives . . . The evocative nature of the stories in My Father’s Tears echoes the melancholy of Chekhov, the romanticism of Wordsworth and the mournful spirit of Yeats.”—Seattle Times
“Here, then, on display one last time, are the cardinal virtues of a writer who bestrode the American literary landscape for more than a half century: a virtuosic talent for sensual description, the seemingly effortless weaving of image and theme, and an almost Proustian capacity to absorb the reader in the quiddities of childhood and adolescence.”—San Francisco Chronicle
“A self-conscious salute to a grand career of imagining and gorgeously describing our America, along with a wink of gratitude to those readers who have shared the journey.”—Washington Post
“My Father’s Tears is vintage Updike, its honesty and courage vaulting it to the top tier of its author’s many short-story collections.”—St. Louis Post-Dispatch
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