“Drinking a toast to the visible world, his impending disappearance from it be damned.” That’s how John Updike describes an elder...
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Jun 14, 2009
brian
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goddammit i’m getting old. i still behave like a hyperactive mentally-disabled twenty-three year old, but at thirty-five i already have ‘old fuck syndrome’ -- by which i mean that i loathe my generation all out of proportion. if i read another one of these cutesy assholes writing about the pains it takes to make the perfect mixed CD, i’m gonna cut my legs off with a steak knife. shitty thing is that in thirty years i’m gonna be crapping all over the younger generation and explaining how super
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Oct 18, 2009
Harold
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Lamenting the prospect of no more Updike, I was excited when I inadvertently discovered this collection of short stories. I thoroughly enjoyed, but cannot say that I loved the volume, which was filled with characteristic insights into the human condition, but without any real knockout tales, just literate, intelligent vintage-Updike musings. The last story, "The Full Glass," ends -- in light of Updike's demise -- with a "toast to the visible world," the toaster's "imp
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Aug 02, 2011
Most of these I must have read in The New Yorker originally, but the only one I recalled is "The Guardians," which still stands out as pretty much the best—absolutely mind-blowing. "The Apparition," which takes place among American tourists in India, is also superb, and the last line is like a punch in the stomach. Both, like most of these stories, deal with the connection between sex and death in the male brain/mind/Weltanschauung, which is also as I take it the underlying
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Feb 16, 2011
John Updike, entitled the “tireless chronicler of small-town America” by journalist Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, taps into the extraordinary and poignant beauty of ordinary life yet again in My Fathers Tears and Other Stories.
This compilation of reflective, slice-of-life stories assesses the transition from one phase of life to the next, often looking back from the viewpoint of someone who has now advanced in years. The book begins with “Morocco”, a story about a family of six a More...
This compilation of reflective, slice-of-life stories assesses the transition from one phase of life to the next, often looking back from the viewpoint of someone who has now advanced in years. The book begins with “Morocco”, a story about a family of six a More...
Jul 16, 2010
Angelique
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Obviously a collection of stories from a dying/old man. I loved the first story and it was all downhill from there. I don't think I can deny that they were well written, I just felt like there were lots of half baked ideas and too much reminiscing.
Parts I liked:
pg. 198 from Emerson's essays "every natural natural fact is a smbol of some spiritual fact"..."Everything is made of one hidden stuff,"..."every hero becomes a bore at last,"..." More...
Parts I liked:
pg. 198 from Emerson's essays "every natural natural fact is a smbol of some spiritual fact"..."Everything is made of one hidden stuff,"..."every hero becomes a bore at last,"..." More...
Jan 14, 2010
Regina
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As intimate and confessional an assortment of narrators as Updike ever conjured up. Some not likeable, others not trustworthy. AS can be expected, these tales are redolent of familiar sound, taste, see, smell and touch. Updike seizes hold of our nerve endings and tantalizes the brain to interpret this neurologic input: what to make of seeing a garment worn askew, what the feel of a barefoot gambol on grass tells of the past, how a whiff of fragrance can become freighted with long-forgotten asso
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Aug 21, 2009
Sarah
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The short stories in this volume capture Updike doing precisely what he did best: latching onto the very nuances of the American male in particular (while not all of the tales in this volume are told from the male perspective) and speaking from their point of view in a way that makes you empathetic with him when, when told from any other angle you would want to throttle him.
It is for this reason that Updike was a rare writer and a great loss, for he could pinpoint these nuances and then More...
It is for this reason that Updike was a rare writer and a great loss, for he could pinpoint these nuances and then More...
Mar 30, 2011
Meg - A Bookish Affair
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John Updike wrote many books in his lifetime (according to Goodreads, he published 22 novels during his lifetime). I had not read any of them before this collection of short stories. The stories cover many different subjects but the human story and experience is at the center of each. Some of the stories I was able to connect with and some I was not able to.
One of my favorite stories in the book was about 9/11. Updike looks at the event from someone watching the World Trade Center fall More...
One of my favorite stories in the book was about 9/11. Updike looks at the event from someone watching the World Trade Center fall More...
Dec 21, 2010
Richard
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I am always impressed with Updike’s talent: whether he can be criticized for not writing on ‘great themes’ or faulted as something of a misogynist means nothing in the end to me: he was a great writer and intellect. The title story is one of the best of this last collection of stories, and reminds me of ‘Pigeon Feathers’ another title story from his (first? early?) collection. Typical of Updike, and indicative of his brilliance is a theme, in ‘My Father’s Tears’, of a dancing rainbow of refracti
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Jul 30, 2009
Bookmarks Magazine
rated it:
"Updike enthusiasts will have no trouble recognizing the author's stamp in this last, melancholy collection. Updike revisits characters and settings from earlier works as his male protagonists, now in their twilight years, glance wistfully over their shoulders at past lives and former loves. The New York Times Book Review cited this ""obsessive recollection of detail for its own sake"" as both a triumph and a limitation, but critics unanimously regarded Updike as one of
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Jul 27, 2010
Elise
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I tried to read Updike's "Rabbit" books when I was in high school, but never got into them. However, I usually liked the shorter pieces of his, both fiction and non-fiction, that I found in The New Yorker, so I got my dad "My Father's Tears" last Christmas, though I hadn't read this collection of stories myself. Earlier this month, while visiting my parents in rainy Manila, I zipped through "My Father's Tears." Updike is now at the top of my list, along with Jhum
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Apr 08, 2010
Cecilia
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This book was not written for me. (I am of the wrong generation, even my parents are of the wrong generation, and I am not a middle class male from rural Pennsylvania.) However, the writing is hypnotic. As I read the stories, I felt as if I were in a gentle whirlpool, on language. The stories have so many overlaps that it feels like continuations from one to the other. It is is if you gently snag one story into the other and draw a new plot line.
At the beginning I did not like this b More...
At the beginning I did not like this b More...
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Mar 16, 2011
Stephanie
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This is his last short story collection, published near or right after his death. This collection deals with melancholy reminiscing and not an easy book to read in winter (or at any time). I did not read all of the stories. There is a story about 9/11 that I could not finish because of the emotional impact it had on me. I liked the stories "Personal Archeology" and "The Guardian" the best. "The Guardian" has a child narrator and he wonderfully illustrated a chi
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Sep 03, 2010
Bookreaderljh
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A very interesting collection of stories but very few stood out in my mind for the story told. What was more interesting was Updike's descriptions of place and people - sort of like painting a picture with words that you look at and admire and see so clearly - but then you move on. A lot of the people and stories seemed to move between stories - different names but similar circumstances. As a lot seemed to be autobiographical, that would make perfect sense. Names have been changed to protect the
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Jan 27, 2011
Denis
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Here's an excerpt of a review from a fellow Goodreader...
"...y’know what i mean -- the ‘born alone, die alone’ thing; the seeking out people to share experience with but always having the nagging feeling that as much as you try, as deep as you go, you can never truly convey the ineffable uniqueness of what it feels like to be ‘you’. or ever truly know another human.
it’s almost unbearable to feel existence so powerfully, to feel the wonderful and mad crush of confusi More...
"...y’know what i mean -- the ‘born alone, die alone’ thing; the seeking out people to share experience with but always having the nagging feeling that as much as you try, as deep as you go, you can never truly convey the ineffable uniqueness of what it feels like to be ‘you’. or ever truly know another human.
it’s almost unbearable to feel existence so powerfully, to feel the wonderful and mad crush of confusi More...
Jan 05, 2010
Red Fields
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I read this for a book group. It's not a book I would've chosen on my own. I thought it got off to a good start with the first story but subsequent stories seemed to be too much of the same settings and themes over and over. Only-boy children, raised during/after the Depression, by parents and grandparents, infidelity in the 1960s, sometimes divorce, distance from their children. It was kind of boring although the guy is great at descriptive writing. You can picture everything but after a w
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Jan 03, 2012
Edward
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Updike, John, MY FATHER’S TEARS, and other stories (2009), read 12-2011
A wonderful and moving collection of short stories which appeared the same year that John Updike died at age 77. They are told from the point of view of old men who both look back on their lives while simultaneously living in the present and in the last story, “The Full Glass”, appropriately enough, look forward to their demise. Victorian writers, someone said, wrote only about sex and death, and that could as More...
A wonderful and moving collection of short stories which appeared the same year that John Updike died at age 77. They are told from the point of view of old men who both look back on their lives while simultaneously living in the present and in the last story, “The Full Glass”, appropriately enough, look forward to their demise. Victorian writers, someone said, wrote only about sex and death, and that could as More...
Jul 19, 2011
Ryan
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I like Updike's writing style and the way he crafts his short stories. Yet these were just the musings of a sexually charged old man. I couldn't finish them because every story I read contained some sort of sexual overtones; needless to say that it wasn't particularly delightful to my particular taste. I obviously didn't finish the book because I wasn't sure it was going to get any better (also took a note from other reviews written about this work that suggested the same thing).
Oct 10, 2009
Dylan
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A fitting tribute to the man who was once called "a penis with a thesaurus" (no disrespect). This collection offers readers an intimate window into the aged man. It is almost as if one can tell that he knows that he's in the last chapter of his life. The stories range from the reflective and ponderous, to the jovial and redemptive. All in all, the book is not a bad read if it is viewed as a celebration of an author who will be poured over for many years to come.
Jan 10, 2010
Joe
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I found these stories, usually from the viewpoint of an older narrator looking back at his life or particular times in life, really close to my heart. The stories of death and loss were especially strong for me.
I've never read any updike before; maya told me she didn't like him because of his elite-white-male point of view. Maybe these stories, written when he was near the end of his life, avoid this elitist viewpoint and show more empathy.
I've never read any updike before; maya told me she didn't like him because of his elite-white-male point of view. Maybe these stories, written when he was near the end of his life, avoid this elitist viewpoint and show more empathy.
Jan 09, 2011
Jeffrey
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There are many "coming of age" books but very few "growing into age". This is a wonderful collection of stories from an older person's memory. With the aging of the baby-boomers, we need more books like this. It's as if John Updike was saying goodbye.
I saw a bumper sticker once that said: "Inside every old person is a young person asking 'What the heck happened!.'" Ain't it the truth. I know I'm getting older when I find myself saying things my parent
I saw a bumper sticker once that said: "Inside every old person is a young person asking 'What the heck happened!.'" Ain't it the truth. I know I'm getting older when I find myself saying things my parent
Jul 12, 2011
Much to my surprise, I enjoyed this collection of short stories. I don't usually like the short story format because I prefer to get inside the characters over time. In a short story, by the time you remember the various characters' names, the story is over. But there is a warmth and cyclical nature to this collection that is very endearing. Now I would like to try one of his novels.
Dec 17, 2009
Fonting
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Updike is a great writer and these stories showcase that. He successfully illustrates a point or perspective in brief succinct stories of lessons learned and memories cherished. Since this book became his last, the "wisdoms" he shares are eerily transcendent and profound.
My only criticism is that some stories I actually wanted to continue to see how they developed further.
My only criticism is that some stories I actually wanted to continue to see how they developed further.
Aug 19, 2009
Joshua
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Although Updike's descriptive writing is beautiful, and I did enjoy some of the stories, mostly this book was very boring. Many of the stories had no real plot, and were just an old man's ramblings. Subjects like growing old, infidelity and death are repeated in each story without really drawing the reader in or saying anything interesting. I did enjoy the story about 9/11. That one was well thought out and took me on somewhat of an emotional journey. Mostly, however, this book just depress
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Apr 25, 2011
alicia
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The stories are listed chronologically from when Updike wrote them. The true standout is the namesake of the collection, My Father's Tears. I think those in early-but-mature adulthood (25-35) will really appreciate the strained relationships and personal development of the narrator. I had to put the story down a few times and just let it sink in.
Dec 15, 2009
Rachel
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A collection of short stories published after Updike's death on Jan 2009. Stories of remembrance of parents young and aging, New England, and European travel. Small town high school reunions with aging classmates remembered from kindergarten. A gentle collection of looking back at childhood and first marriages. A shocking story of 9/11 from different perspectives.
Aug 28, 2009
Renee
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A well woven collection of short stories, published posthumous
One of my favorite lines "I have never really left Pennsylvania, that is where the self I value is stored, no matter how infrequently I check on its condition." Like any collection of short stories, I enjoyed some more than others; but all made me salute this great author in his passing.
One of my favorite lines "I have never really left Pennsylvania, that is where the self I value is stored, no matter how infrequently I check on its condition." Like any collection of short stories, I enjoyed some more than others; but all made me salute this great author in his passing.
Jul 14, 2009
Erik
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I sometimes think Updike's earliest stories can be long and meandering, but this is a collection of taut gems by a master craftsman. I suspect he wrote most of them while he knew he wasn't much longer for this world, but you needn't be dying to appreciate them. They capture perfectly the exquisite poignance of regrets, mistakes, and missed chances.
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Aug 10, 2011
Leah C
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Elise said I should review the books, not just give stars, so this is a first ... I'm not really a fan of short stories but when I started to read one in this collection, I decided I'd read one every night as my bedtime story. My favorites were the title story (My Father's Tears), The Walk with Elizanne, Varieties of Religious Experience, Delicate Wives and The Road Home. I was able to relate in some way or another to the characters and experiences in these stories. Updike's story-telling is de
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Jul 24, 2011
Keith
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Simply superb. A beautiful, beautiful collection of stories that touch the heart with prose that sings like the strings of a violin. The best Updike since Rabbit - maybe better. The title story will make you miss your own father and the author himself. I savored these over a couple of weeks and could have read twenty more. A wonderful find.
