{"id":6641,"date":"2025-06-07T11:10:49","date_gmt":"2025-06-07T16:10:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/?p=6641"},"modified":"2025-06-07T11:10:49","modified_gmt":"2025-06-07T16:10:49","slug":"on-reading-updikes-stories-in-japan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/2025\/06\/07\/on-reading-updikes-stories-in-japan\/","title":{"rendered":"On reading Updike’s stories in Japan"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Writer Daniel Clausen posted a review of Updike’s 40 Stories<\/a> on Goodreads that was more a personal story of reading and engaging with a text than it was a standard review . . . and, like Updike’s stories, the introspective meandering made it more interesting. Clausen confesses to having a hard time concentrating back in 2021 when he read the stories. “I remembered the story ‘The A&P’ from long ago and thought I might try 39 more stories by John Updike. I would read them in various locales of Nagasaki. The book itself was in my university library. Its pages were brown and yellowing. I was busy that semester, which is why I had trouble concentrating.<\/p>\n

“I’m sorry. I’m lying. Let me start over. I had started a new job at the university, and I was gripped with anxiety. Would I be good at my new job? Would the coronavirus ever end? What would I do now that I was almost forty? Would I be able to finish my novel?”<\/p>\n

Clausen is the author of a collection of short stories and essays,\u00a0Something to Stem the Diminishing <\/em>(2015).<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Writer Daniel Clausen posted a review of Updike’s 40 Stories on Goodreads that was more a personal story of reading and engaging with a text than it was a standard review . . . and, like Updike’s stories, the introspective … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":818,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,11,67],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-person-singular","category-reviews","category-travel"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6641","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\/818"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6641"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6641\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6643,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6641\/revisions\/6643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}