{"id":1560,"date":"2013-07-12T14:22:08","date_gmt":"2013-07-12T19:22:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/?p=1560"},"modified":"2013-07-12T14:27:57","modified_gmt":"2013-07-12T19:27:57","slug":"updike-scholarship-gets-a-boost-with-the-release-of-the-collected-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/2013\/07\/12\/updike-scholarship-gets-a-boost-with-the-release-of-the-collected-stories\/","title":{"rendered":"Updike scholarship gets a boost with the release of “The Collected Stories”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Updikestoriescover\"<\/a>As much as Adam Begley\u2019s forthcoming biography, Updike enthusiasts have been anticipating the September 12 publication of John Updike: The Collected Stories<\/em> by the Library of America. The two volumes can be bought singly (John Updike: Collected Early Stories<\/em>, John Updike: Collected Later Stories<\/em>) or in a set that includes a sturdy and colorful slipcase designed by Chip Kidd, featuring the 1982 oil-on-canvas portrait by Alex Katz that\u2019s housed at the National Portrait Gallery.<\/p>\n

I received an advance copy of the set and am happy to report that it\u2019s extremely well done. Christopher Carduff, who put together the special book publication of Hub Fan Bids Kid Adieu<\/em> and edited Higher Gossip: Essays and Criticism<\/em> (2011) and Always Looking: Essays on Art<\/em> (2012), has arranged the stories in the order of their composition\u2014a task made easier, Carduff writes, because \u201cUpdike signed a first-reading agreement\u201d with The New Yorker when he was 22 years old and \u201chabitually marked the date of submission on the first page of the typescript copy he kept for his files.\u201d Almost all these typescripts from Updike\u2019s personal files are now in the collection of Harvard\u2019s Houghton Library.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The stories are presented here in their final definitive form, based on Carduff\u2019s archival research and Updike\u2019s own notes. In a \u201cNote on the Texts\u201d section at the back of each volume, Carduff lists the date of completion and first periodical publication for each story, as well as the books in which the story was collected. Here, for example, is the entry for the lead story in John Updike: Collected Early Stories<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\u201cAce in the Hole\u201d was written in the fall of 1953 for English J, an advanced creative-writing class for Harvard upperclassmen taught by Albert J. Guerard. In the original version, the name of the protagonist was not Ace, but Flick, and \u201cFlick\u201d was the title of the story. On December 9, 1953, Updike, then a senior, submitted \u201cFlick\u201d to The New Yorker, which rejected it on March 18, 1954. After Katharine S. White, the head of the magazine\u2019s fiction department, bought \u201cFriends from Philadelphia\u201d and some poems in the summer of 1954, Updike, while spending a postgraduate year in Oxford, England, revised the story and submitted it under the title \u201cAce in the Hole.\u201d The story was accepted in January 1955 and was published in the issue of April 9, 1955. It was collected in The Same Door<\/em> (1959) and The Early Stories<\/em> (2003). The text from The Early Stories<\/em> is used here.<\/p>\n

Collected Early Stories<\/em> begins with \u201cAce in the Hole\u201d (1953) and ends with \u201cLove Song, for a Moog Synthesizer\u201d (1975), while Collected Later Stories<\/em> is bookended by \u201cDomestic Life in America\u201d (1976) and \u201cThe Full Glass\u201d (2008). There\u2019s no introduction or foreword for either volume, but end matter includes a detailed \u201cChronology\u201d (identical in each), a \u201cNote on the Texts\u201d section that offers details on the stories and lists omissions\u2014\u201cThe Bech and Maples stories were written as episodes in an ongoing series, each installment a sequel to the last, and have been reserved for collection in a future Library of America volume\u201d\u2014and a \u201cNotes\u201d section that provides the equivalent of endnotes for specific stories.<\/p>\n

In an email, Carduff said that the \u201cInterviews with Insufficiently Famous Americans\u201d series was omitted but will appear in a future LOA volume. With the further exception of the Bech and Maples stories, \u201call the stories that Updike gathered in his Knopf short-story collections are included, as are all the stories from his six nonfiction collections, three stories collected posthumously in Higher Gossip<\/em>, and two stories that never made it into a trade book:\u00a0 \u2018A Game of Botticelli\u2019 (from The Liberal Context<\/em> magazine) and \u2018Part of the Process\u2019 (from Special Reports: Fiction<\/em> and the privately printed trio of stories called Love Factories<\/em>). Juvenilia, undergraduate stories, and humor pieces and playlets had no place in this set: the LOA\u2019s intention was to collect the official short-story canon as Updike himself defined it, plus a very few thrice-considered \u2018extras.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

As I said, it\u2019s an attractive set that features 186 stories, all totaled, and seems certain to be accepted by scholars as the definitive critical text(s). The boxed set (volumes #242 and #243 in the Library of America series) runs 1,872 pages and comes with an SRP of $75. Amazon<\/a> is currently accepting pre-orders for the discounted price of $49.83.<\/p>\n

\"Updike1sm\"\u00a0\u00a0\"Updike2sm\"<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As much as Adam Begley\u2019s forthcoming biography, Updike enthusiasts have been anticipating the September 12 publication of John Updike: The Collected Stories by the Library of America. The two volumes can be bought singly (John Updike: Collected Early Stories, John … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-publications"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1560"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1560\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1566,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1560\/revisions\/1566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}