The Early Stories 1953-1975 by John Updike

John Updike was a writer. While that seems obvious what that sentence means is that John Updike was a constant writer. When one looks at the output he amassed in his years of writing it is easy to understand the difference between a writer and a WRITER. John Updike was a WRITER. He write poetry, essays and reviews. Along with that he wrote a great quantity of short stories, many of which were in this book. And of course he wrote many novels with his four novel set of Rabbit books being perhaps the quintiessential novels of the second half of the twentieth century.

As I read several books at once this set of stories has been something on my bedstand for about a year. With a collection this large I would read one or two a night and then miss a week or be faithful for a month and then miss a month. With stories so strong one does not want to hurry through but to savor and enjoy.

Of course an issue with reading a book over so much time, especially a book of short stories is your recall may be limited. I can say that this book is wonderful, that the stories are among the best collections you will ever find but to isolate more than a specific few stories may be a bit impossible.

Still the series makes it easier by putting the stories in subsets. Those that especially moved me were the Olinger stories, Married Life, Family Life and the Tarbox Tales. A couple of the sets were a little out there for me, but in a book of short stories over 800 pages long this will happen. Updike was nothing if not adaptable. He would tackle any subject.

The Tarbox tales along with the Olinger series appear to come from as close to Updike's foundation as one might find. Reading The Indian one sees what a good short story can do. I remember reading a paragraph from one of the stories about a month ago and telling her that to have a talent like that is something few mortal men will ever know.

Updike died in 2009. It was a great loss as he wrote right up to the end. When Pierre Salinger died recently there was a great outcrying. Of course he wrote the great Catcher in the Rye and then did the hermit thing for forty years. That will attract it's own set of attention. What Updike did was write. He did not hide. He knew it was not about him, it was about the stories. When one thinks of what a writer is and can be think not of the Salinger's and others who are more about them, think of someone like Updike who always knew that writer's write and it is always about the story.

A wonderful collection. Superior. Must Have.