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My Father's Tears and Other Stories

John Updike

3.70 · Rating details · 1,333 ratings · 207 reviews

John Updike’s first collection of new short fiction since the year 2000, My Father’s Tears finds the author in a valedictory mood as he mingles narratives of his native Pennsylvania with stories of New England suburbia and of foreign travel.

“Personal Archaeology” considers life as a sequence of half-buried layers, and “The Full Glass” distills a lifetime’s happiness into o ...more

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Hardcover, 304 pages

Published June 2nd 2009 by Knopf (first published January 1st 2009)

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Jun 14, 2009 brian rated it really liked it

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 superior 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 superior mine was. ugh. the cycle of life is cruel.

well, updike croaked this year and this is his last collection of stories. it’s wonderful. sad and elegaic and gentle. one of his best. and i’ll take the stodgy white male over most of these young whippersnappers running up the scene these days. lemme explain:

in Personal Archaeology a guy wanders around the large yard surrounding his country house and takes stock of the place’s history by what he sees -- shards of teacups encrusted into hard soil conjures images of a young girl, thirty years earlier, hastily burying a broken teacup before mom gets back home; mason jars in the shed bring to life their original owners who lived in the house nearly a century ago. through this simple device updike is able to make universal that which is so banal and ordinary that we hardly consider it, but also so mysterious and ineffable that when it does come up we find ourselves eye-to-eye with the abyss: the subjectivity of human existence and experience.

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 confusion and happiness and melancholy, to feel alive in a world of music and flesh and ideas... and wonder if anyone truly understands it the way you do. so we write. and we read. and we learn that other people do feel this shit. and they’ve been feeling it way back before homer was writing and they’ll be feeling it up until the world goes pop. and while we never can know if what i'm seeing when i say 'green' is the same as what you're seeing, or what i'm feeling when i say 'love' is the same as what you're feeling... the investigation isn't wholly arid, it does lighten the burden of existence.

so updike. there are not many writers better at conveying the sense of what it means and feels to be here. to be alive. to be alive right now. to exist on earth with a brain, a heart, eyes, a cock/cunt, a soul... and there certainly aren't many writers better at putting across the sense that, despite all of this, most human interaction is marked by botched attempt and missed opportunity.

now get off my damn lawn and turn down that music. ...more

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Jan 05, 2010 Red Fields rated it it was ok

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 while ...more

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May 28, 2015 Shane rated it it was ok

This is by far the weakest of the Updike books I have read. The themes are familiar: memories of youth, aging lust, infidelity, late second marriages, guilt over the collapse of the first long marriage that begat children, death and insignificance. Updike seemed to be eternally atoning for the breakup of his first marriage as he neared the end of his days, as evinced in this posthumously published collection.

Except for the 9/11 piece “Varieties of Religious Experience,” which is narrated from th ...more

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Sep 26, 2009 Kathleen rated it it was amazing

I have rarely read short stories that made me so reflective. I would read one, savor it for days, and then move on.

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Apr 30, 2013 Bill rated it it was amazing

Shelves: literary

Proustian Reflections on American Life

Updike, John (2009). My Father’s Tears and Other Stories. New York: Random/Ballantine.

Eighteen previously published stories of fifteen to twenty pages make up this posthumous collection. Each one is a gem – not a bad one among them, and that is all the more remarkable because they are superficially about the most mundane aspects of everyday life in America in the twentieth century. Characters go to the store or a dinner party, a class reunion, or have a fami Proustian Reflections on American Life

Updike, John (2009). My Father’s Tears and Other Stories. New York: Random/Ballantine.

Eighteen previously published stories of fifteen to twenty pages make up this posthumous collection. Each one is a gem – not a bad one among them, and that is all the more remarkable because they are superficially about the most mundane aspects of everyday life in America in the twentieth century. Characters go to the store or a dinner party, a class reunion, or have a family vacation in Spain, or join a tour group in India. High drama ensues when one character holds a glance a moment too long, or the electricity goes out at home during a storm, or a character visits his dermatologist. All the action, all the drama, is on the inside. In most cases, the main character reminisces about life and love, time and death, and longs for meanings that never appeared.

The main characters are nearly all adult males, most older, retired, or elderly. They remember fumbling through marriages, affairs,and divorces. They are generally alone now, isolated, divorced; feeling dissatisfied and perplexed; facing irrelevance, meaninglessness, and death. A couple of main characters are young boys who describe confusing, impoverished childhoods in the Depression as they try to find meaning in experience, and describe the often pathetic old people that populate their lives. In most stories, the settings are suffocating New England towns where emotions are locked up by traditional roles and relationships. In a big city setting, we see nothing of wild, creative chaos, but only the staid, emotionally constricted lives of the characters.

So in a sense, these stories are depressing, since they are all about escaped happiness, longing, loss of meaning, unrealized love, and so forth. But isn’t that how life turns out ultimately, for any thoughtful person? There is a sense of sharp self-recognition in the reader. The characters are so alive, and the writing so lyrical, that one becomes deeply immersed. Marveling at the writing, I sometimes got stuck re-reading a single paragraph for a half hour. For example:

“The worst seemed to be over when, in mid-afternoon, his computer died under his eyes. The financial figures he had been painstakingly assembling swooned as a group, sucked into the dead blank screen like glittering water pulled down a drain. Around him, the house seemed to sigh, as all its lights and little engines, its computerized timers and indicators, simultaneously shut down. The sound of wind and rain lashing the trees outside infiltrated the silence.”

The omniscient narrator is strong, even intrusive, so much so that it is difficult to read more than two or three of the stories at a stretch without that narrator becoming tedious. Likewise, the sets become claustrophobic, the tone aridly cognitive-intellectual, and all the characters and locations start to blend into just a few archetypes. The stories are therefore best read in short bursts separated by a day of rest.

Nearly all the stories are third person, past tense, omniscient; a form that facilitates a strong narrative voice. One, written from the point of view of a young boy, is third person, present tense, which struck me as awkward and contrived, but maybe that’s just because it is less common. A story about the attacks of 9-11 switches among several points of view, from a grandfather watching the towers fall to one of the hijackers on Flight 93 into Pennsylvania. All the stories are masterpieces. ...more

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Oct 16, 2009 Harold Griffin rated it liked it

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 "impending disappearance from it ...more

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Dec 26, 2014 Catherine rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I have not read Updike before but this collection seems a rather transparent recollection of his own (short) stories. Here is a reminiscence of travel, of how ambivalent families and places can make one feels, of loves come and go, of id and ego in battles, of how memories can be grand and insignificant all the same. Here and there, as it is unavoidable of a recollection, you sniff a what if. And how comforting for the soul that the mind can offer such an alternative.

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Feb 24, 2020 Tom rated it really liked it · review of another edition

List of John Updike short stories contained in this book:

MOROCCO
PERSONAL ARCHAEOLOGY
FREE
THE WALK WITH ELIZANNE
THE GUARDIANS
THE LAUGHTER OF THE GODS
VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
SPANISH PRELUDE TO A SECOND MARRIAGE
DELICATE WIVES
THE ACCELERATING EXPANSION OF THE UNIVERSE
GERMAN LESSONS
THE ROAD HOME
MY FATHER’S TEARS
KINDERSZENEN
THE APPARITION
BLUE LIGHT
OUTAGE
THE FULL GLASS

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Aug 02, 2011 Christopher Roth added it

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 theme of all Updike's ...more

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Jun 08, 2012 Alan rated it really liked it

I love Updike, so it was sad reading his last book of short stories. These seem so personal that they must be at least half autobiographical. Many take places in Pennsylvania, where he was born, and featured characters in the last part of their lives. Updike stories always show off his great vocabulary, concise and vivid descriptions, and lusty characters. He was interested in sex and illicit relationships all of his life and these stories are no exception. I think his main point was that people ...more

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Aug 07, 2019 Heather Alderman rated it it was ok

I picked this up to complete a book challenge, but was also really looking forward to reading these short stories by Updike. I enjoyed the first story, but then each of the subsequent stories felt like a similar version of the first. All the stories had a semi-autobiographical feel to them but with different names and very slightly different characters.

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Oct 21, 2020 Books I'm Not Reading rated it did not like it

Shelves: short-story-collections

The one star goes to ONE particular story that was good. The rest ... ugh.

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Jan 13, 2010 Regina Mclaughlin rated it really liked it

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 assoc ...more

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Apr 03, 2010 Cecilia rated it liked it

Shelves: read-2010

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 book. I could ...more

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Mar 31, 2013 Tom Ferguson rated it liked it

Updike had an interesting view of the world. He lived in a world of trolley cars and old houses in the midst of suburban transformation. His writings often look back to the 30's and 40's and he likes his protagonist to be an older man remembering his childhood. I am especially drawn to some of his sharp commentary on life - "It is easy to love people in memory; the hard thing is to love them when they are there in front of you." An interesting set of stories and a nice read. ...more

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Aug 16, 2009 Thomas J. Hubschman rated it it was ok

Disappointing. I haven't much cared for his work as a whole, but I did greatly admire his use of the language in an earlier collection. In this he seems prolix and repetitive and preoccupied with his own navel. ...more

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Nov 01, 2012 Stephen Murley rated it it was amazing

One of the last collection of stories from one of America's finest storyteller. Beautiful sentences you want to read over and over. "Personal Archaeolgy" was my favorite story. This is a must read for any Updike fan. I really miss him! ...more

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Feb 12, 2010 Sandra McLeod rated it really liked it

Shelves: memoir, short-stories

Updike is the ultimate storyteller and weaves a delicate and bittersweet thread through all these stories that will stay with you long after you close the book.

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Sep 29, 2015 latner3 rated it liked it · review of another edition

The prose the narrative it really is something else."Varieties of Religious Experience."And "The Accelerating Expansion of the Universe."Will stay with me for a while.All the stories are good. ...more

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Sep 27, 2017 Leftbanker rated it it was ok

Jesus, what a huge bore this was to read. I won’t say that Updike is out of touch but just that whoever he is trying to touch isn’t anyone I recognize. I think he spent too many years in the sterile environment of the New Yorker to have anything to say to anyone outside of his microscopic world.

I’m a bit ashamed to admit this but I wanted to hate this collection of John Updike stories. They are just about exactly what I expected from having read some of his novels. For the most part these are to Jesus, what a huge bore this was to read. I won’t say that Updike is out of touch but just that whoever he is trying to touch isn’t anyone I recognize. I think he spent too many years in the sterile environment of the New Yorker to have anything to say to anyone outside of his microscopic world.

I’m a bit ashamed to admit this but I wanted to hate this collection of John Updike stories. They are just about exactly what I expected from having read some of his novels. For the most part these are totally pointless exercises in writing with little or no concern for actually telling a story with structure, things like a beginning, middle, and end. I don’t even like him as a person. He’s weak and full of himself and the “writer’s life” which means extra-marital affairs or whatever.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say this again: for as respected a writer as Updike has been over the course of my adult life I’ve never met anyone who would say that he is their favorite author or that one of his books are among their favorite. I’d make the same claim of Bellow, Joyce Carol Oates, John Cheever, and Phillip Roth. I think they are all huge bores with nothing much to say.

I’m guessing that Updike’s target audience is literature professors, douche bags who make a career out of focusing on some ridiculous and pointless aspect of an author’s work or life, discovering some heretofore secret buried in the boundless wisdom of the writer. I’d rather write for factory workers or convicts.

Morocco – A complete coward and his family drive around Morocco back when it was completely safe to do that sort of thing. He lets some old dude jerk off watching his family at the beach.

The Guardians – “Lee by now was pursuing an M.F.A. degree in Iowa City.” I’ve said of all the above-mentioned literary titans that once you start talking about writing you’re finished as a write, at least in my book. They say that you should write about what you know so go out and learn about something and don’t sit in your university office contemplating the next faculty cocktail party and which grad student you want to fuck. There is nothing that I would call a story in this story.

Varieties of Religious Experience – Of course, Updike just has to throw his hat into the ring of 9/11 rememberers. And get this, it from different points of view! Ugh, not very interesting at all. I thought he would have at least gone further into the terrorists’ thinking.

The Accelerating Expansion of the Universe – A completely ridiculous and pointless telling of a violent mugging in Spain of a dim-witted American tourist which he tries-

But the fact, discovered by two independent teams of researchers, seemed to be that deep space showed not only no relenting in the speed of the farthest galaxies but instead a detectable acceleration, so that an eventual dispersion of everything into absolute cold and darkness could be confidently predicted. We are riding an aimless explosion to nowhere. Only an invisible, malevolent anti-gravity, a so-called Dark Force, explained it. Why should Fairchild take it personally? The universe would by a generous margin outlive him—that had always been true.

I suppose this is the author’s attempt at gravity and seriousness and for story there is a mugging, a “near-tragedy” because Spain, like his earlier story about Morocco, is a land of great peril. ...more

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Apr 15, 2021 Luís rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: usa-and-canada, 2021-readings

I expected better given the author's very caustic and cynical reputation.
The last collection of short stories written before his death (but published posthumously) cannot help but think that some short stories are unfinished or proofread. Likewise, we note (bitterly?) that a consecrated author can afford largesse with the short story genre. Ultimately, it is more the publisher than the author who is responsible for such a mixture.
The whole is, therefore, unequal. There are pearls, on 9/11, for e ...more

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Feb 24, 2018 Owen Townend rated it liked it · review of another edition

I probably shouldn't have read this, Updike's last collection, first.
I found the nostalgic tone overwhelming and felt that the descriptions went on perhaps a bit too long.
That being said, Updike constructs some beautiful images and sentimental sentences. I really came to appreciate the gentle optimism demonstrated in these later life tales.
I also had no idea that the classic author lived into the 21st Century.
I think I'll read his first novel next...

Notable Stories

• The Guardians - the most succ ...more

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Oct 28, 2020 Judith Squires rated it really liked it

Shelves: reading-challenge

I've always loved his writing. This, I believe, was one of his last short story collections. A lot of these are melancholy and concerned about aging, and looking back at childhood and early married life. He had an absolutely uncanny ability to notice the most ordinary details and childhood and make them extraordinary. He once said that his writing was an attempt "to give the mudane its beautiful due." He succeeded. ...more

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Jul 05, 2018 Cody Winfrey rated it really liked it

Updike touches on some of the linguistic brilliance of his earlier work, but the nearness of death and a fondness for flashing back to an era when he could write about young love souring and rust belt infidelity shows that even at the end he knew his limits and wasn't really reaching. Varieties of Religious experience ( the 9/11 one) is cringeworthy though. ...more

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May 21, 2019 Jun Chen rated it really liked it

Updike wrote his stories like he was telling them. You could almost hear his reading, sometimes the ups and downs, the punctuation drenched in emotions and thoughts; sometimes tame as a stream in the midsummers day.

But my favorite joke about Updike is from Bojack Horseman -

Todd- "What's updike?" Mr. PB- "Not much, dyke, what's up with you?.. is Dyke an okay thing to say now?" ...more

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Feb 12, 2017 John rated it really liked it · review of another edition

A good read

The stories start off slow, but eventually grow on you. Without having fantastic tales of murder, sex or betrayal the stories were nevertheless still riveting in their prose and in their detail and passion.

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Feb 20, 2018 Aranya Iyer rated it it was ok

Couldn't bring myself to finish it after the first couple stories.
The writing style was amazing and the imagery was vivid but I agree with other reviews that say that it's the same story again and again and again.
Maybe I'll give it a try later in my life. ...more

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Jan 06, 2019 Russell George rated it it was ok

Somehow this collection felt a bit laboured. Clearly Updike is concerned with looking back at his life, and that’s fine, but the stories themselves lacked spark. Many of them were much longer than they needed to be, and tended to meander. Shame really.

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Aug 05, 2018 Bill Kidd rated it it was amazing

Quite wonderful, some of the most beautiful writing I have encountered since the last time. I had forgotten how fabulous he is. The master at his best.

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Nov 22, 2018 Rosemary Roddy rated it really liked it

Shelves: all-time-favorites

My Father’s Tears captures the power of memory beautifully. I would recommend this short story collection to anybody interested in aging, family dynamics, or boyhood.

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About John Updike

John Updike

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John Hoyer Updike was an American writer. Updike's most famous work is his Rabbit series (Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit Is Rich; Rabbit At Rest; and Rabbit Remembered). Rabbit is Rich and Rabbit at Rest both won Pulitzer Prizes for Updike. Describing his subject as "the American small town, Protestant middle class," Updike is well known for his careful craftsmanship and prolific writing, havin ...more

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“It is easy to love people in memory; the hard thing is to love them when they are there in front of you.” — 2993 likes

“Her hair had been going gray as long as he could remember; she bundled it behind in a bun held with hairpins that he frequently found on the floor when he lived boyishly close to the carpet.” — 3 likes

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