I'm a budding short story writer ,myself, and no course, no workshop, no amount of instruction can subsitute for the lessons one learns leafing through and ingesting these exquisite paragraphs of John Updike. I find myself, in this volume, more than other Updike works, reading and re-reading the prose, even emailing sections to friends, like a fine restaurant I want to tell people about. Like a band that plays exceptionally well live which you get to catch on a great night, Updike, here , is "on", he is at the absolute peak of his craft. I only wish there were more collections of short stories written as well as these.

There is little, if anything, one is able to say that can possibly capture the beauty or majesty of a great Updike story. The gentle yet exact measure of his sentences, the bewilderingly complex yet infinitely fluid (and eventually near-epiphanic) weaving of narratives, his control of internal characterization--few are masters in the manner that John Updike is a master.

And this volume contains his greatest story--possibly what I feel to be the greatest piece of literature in all of latter-half 20th century American literature (and we're including it all here, not just short stories). The last story of the volume: Packed Dirt, Churchgoing, A Dying Car, A Traded Car.

Enough with the theoretics and generalities here. This story can change your life. Or, at the very least, it can alter the way in which you interact with literature--what you can expect out of literature.

One piece of advice, though: read it in one sitting.
Seriously.
Don't get up, even just for a little while to fix something to eat. Don't read it bit by bit (it's long, so you may be tempted). And, whatever you do, don't look at the last page before it's time.

It may seem disjointed. It may seem an odd accumulation of narratives. Don't stop reading.

Two years, and a hundred readings later, I still haven't gotten over that first experience. What I wouldn't give to have it again...

These stories are sublime. Read "Flight" and try not to grunt with pleasure! And let Archangel take you on a trip through the magic of words. Updike is at his best here. "Pigeon Feathers," the story for which the book is named, will astound you. Each story is a gem. If you want to read fiction that is beyond the assembly-line garbage...far, far beyond...read this book. See for yourself that America is still producing world-class literature. If you are a writer of short stories, make this your Bible.

This short but sweet story gives a hilarious look of the ever so familiar creature-the human through the recognizable figures...Adam and Eve.

Mark Twain presents the journals of Adam and Eve. In a satirical tone we see how they cope with new things. Eve names things and animals and is appreciative of nature. She comments on the moon which falls out of the sky and is brought back. She recalls her reflection in the water, but regards this as a separate entity all together. Adam, differently, builds shacks and searches the land. They eventually find a baby, Cain, who for Adam may be a fish, a bear, a kangeroo, or parrot. He eventually sees that the baby is, of course, a premature human.

There are many instances of humour. The reader is left to wonder how it might have been for the 'first' couple. Kierkegaard remarked that Adam and Eve must have felt trapped by their own freedom, not knowing what to do. I myself regard Adam and Eve as mythology but can see the curiosities of what a 'first couple' would have been like. Would they be happy? Would they be attractive? What were their conversations like? It gives to the imagination, undoubtedly. But like Twain, I can't take it seriously.

Mark Twain creates a fascinating experience of a man and a woman discovering each other, learning to live together in the real world, growing up toward being a whole being.

Throughout the entire delicious epic of the story, the two characters grow from unaware children to mature humans, able to make a living together through all difficulties.

Adam, on one side, starts regarding Eve in a critical way that reminds the rigorousness of an engineer and ends warmly with the calm passion given by a lifetime of togetherness.

Eve, on the other, depicted here as the essential expression of the womanhood, appears as a living miracle of contradictions. She is so playful, sunny, innocent and wildly alive, that Adam finally realizes he's happy to be sentenced to love her forever. It is worth saying that even the Sin is reconsidered here rather as an abuse of Eve's ingenuity than an assumed trespassing...

The friendly, optimistic approach to life, the art of putting strong, fundamental feelings into everyday's words, the gentle humor far from cheap melodrama, the subtle metaphor of the joy of living arising from each chapter made me to consider this novel the most touchy love story ever written.

read one of the short pieces in this anthology. They are also incredibly uplifting too. A brilliant bedside companion for any dog lover.

Although each of the pieces in this book was inspired by the loss of a much beloved dog, this is really a book about vibrant, fully-alive dogs: family pets, fellow hunters, soul mates, and best friends. And while none of the dogs remembered so fondly here still lives, Old Dogs affirms the remarkably special place in the heart we reserve for our dogs. My own dog is sturdy in her middle-age, but reading the eulogies and odes in this moving anthology has made me appreciate more all the quirky habits I take for granted, like how she can't resist running off with one of my Reeboks when I'm shoeing up for our evening walk--the little prance she performs when I tell her, "Bring the shoe back!" Not a sad read but a celebratory one, required for every dog owner!

This is a remarkable anthology of stories and poems by outstanding authors of the past, as well as more recent times. Although these moving remembrances are only of beloved dogs, the lovers of any species of pet will find identical sentiments for their own losses. Whatever kind of companion animal you had, you will find your own bereavement and healing tears reflected here, as well.

Care was taken to avoid over-sentimentality, in this assortment of loving reflections of dogs, celebrated here. These accounts are full of love, and are sometimes even funny - and we are thrust into the realization that perhaps that is the most wonderful kind of living memorials we can have for a beloved pet. Too often, we lose this perspective, while trying to keep from drowning in our own bereavement and sorrows.

Rather than being a collection of sad literary memorials Old Dogs Remembered is a joyful celebration of life with pets. This inspires healthy new points of view and adjustments to moving on into our new lives, without them.

Here we are treated to many different outlooks on how they permanently enriched the lives of their owners. Reading these heartwarming pages will broaden the understanding of each reader, concerning his/her own personal bereavement. Here, we are offered the collective wisdom of others, who reminisce on their honored pets. There is much to be shared and learned here, as well as enjoyed.

With so many different authors, one must appreciate that references and styles have changed drastically, through the ages. As an example of this, some might find the essay by the dramatist John Galsworthy to be interesting, but a bit troublesome to read. And, as with any anthology, there may be some accounts not everyone would appreciate. But all pet lovers will readily identify with the overall shared remembrances, here. This is a heartwarming collection, which can be enjoyed comfortably, in several installments.

There will be many an uplifting tear shed in its reading, and we suggest it for your reading pleasure.

John Updike is arguably, with Saul Bellow, the greatest of living authors writing in English. This volume exemplifies his strengths. His evocation of growing up in middle-America is often quite beautiful. Yet this book is not a memoir in the conventional sense of a chronological account, but more of series of scenes and reflections from a full and satisfying life. Updike's moving account of his struggle with psoriasis and his marital difficulties is personal without degenerating into the narcissism of so much second-rate autobiography, even if he pays slightly more attention to his rakish period in the 1970s than we might strictly wish to know.

Updike writes poignantly but with resolution of his lonely status as a liberal writer in the 1960s who did not lose his ideals as a liberal Democrat, in the traditional sense of that term, and thus who abjured the descent into extremism and anti-anti-Communism of many of his contemporaries. To have believed that the Vietnam War was imprudent and prosecuted by morally dubious means, yet known the noble cause that was at stake in it - namely, preventing a country from falling to a ferocious Communist tyranny - won Updike few friends and lost him many, yet his stance was an honourable and principled one.

The final chapter of the book is, for me, the best. Updike writes particularly well of his liberal religious faith, which almost amounts to fideism. One can admire his honest wrestling with such questions without sharing his conclusions, and admire even more the quality of writing and personal reflection here expressed.

One of the main regrets of my five years in Shillington (ages 12-16) was that I did not realize that I was walking in the footsteps of one of the greatest authors of all time. John Updike's autobiography, especially as it concerns Shillington, was like reading a bit of my own life. He was an alter boy at the church that is behind my old Miller Street home. I was a busboy at the restaurant that used to be his doctor's office that used to be a house. He used to walk up New Holland Avenue to the cemetary, passing number 39, which would years later be a home (apartment) to me. The hallowed halls of Governor Mifflin Jr. High, where I labored from 7th to 9th grade, were once the halls of the old high school that Mr. Updike once passed through. I wonder if we shared the same locker? The old movie theater, in which I saw my first movie alone, still holds a special place in my history. But through my many walks up and down Philadelphia Avenue, I am saddened by the fact that I was never drawn to number 117. My visits to Shillington in the past decade have been unfortunately too brief, and even before reading Mr. Updike's autobiography I have wanted to return to retrace my old footsteps. However, the walk up and down Philadelphia Avenue will include a stop, a reverential pause, at number 117, the shadow of my life in Shillington.

For those who have always wanted to befriend an author who has brought them much joy, this book is a must. John Updike as honest as a friend can be climbs out of the pages of this book and I feel I know him. Who else would share back seat of car stories with you? Only a friend

HUGGING THE SHORE : Essays and Criticism by John Updike. 919 pp. London : Penguin Books, 1985 (1984).

'Hugging the Shore' is collection of essays and criticism, gleaned from eight years of reviewing, and makes for fascinating reading. Although I've read a great deal of literary criticism, I've never read Updike's before and was enormously impressed as it seems to me that he's right up there with the best of them. Not only is his prose style lively, sophisticated, and engaging, but he has a razor-sharp mind and an incredibly wide range of interests.

His knowledge of China, for example, as demonstrated in his 'The Giant Who Isn't There' and 'The Long and Reluctant Stasis of Wan-li,' struck me as remarkable, but he seems equally well-informed on a whole range of other subjects. He tells us in his Foreword that while writing these reviews he lived within easy reach of several excellent libraries, and the fruits of his careful research are everywhere in evidence.

There is so much in this book that it would be impossible to adequately describe, but anyone who isn't brain-dead will certainly find something or many things here to interest them. I was particularly taken by, among others, his essays on Melville, Joyce, Henry Green, Beckett, Kundera, and Bettelheim; also by those on such widely disparate figures as Doris Day, Naipaul, and Ngugi wa Thiong'o; but most especially by his marvelous review of 'Watunna : An Orinoco Creation Cycle' by the French ethnologist Marc de Civrieux. In fact, he got me so excited about 'Watunna,' a book I'd previously never heard of, that I went on the Internet immediately and ordered a copy.

Anyone who likes reading at all will love Updike's book. It's one of those rare books that is not only excellent itself, but that stimulates and sends one, not only back to the familiar, but also off into all kinds of previously unknown and unexplored areas. Like me you'll probably find yourself compiling a mental list of books that, once having viewed them through Updike's lively sensibility, you are inspired with the urge to read them and find out for yourself.

'Hugging the Shore' is a book that can be dipped into at any place, and no matter how often one dips one still seems to find something new and interesting. If, as I did, you happened to borrow your copy from a friend, like me too you probably won't want to part with it for a very long time.

In 'Hugging the Shore' you will find Updike ranging through American and British and European fiction and poetry, African and Oriental authors, studies in art, anthropology and theology, famous critics, movie stars, and even pro golfers. It's an endless source of interest, and a mammoth volume that will delight all book junkies. But if you acquire a copy - don't ever lend it out. Because if you do you may never see it again. . . .

I've always felt that Updike is better as a critic and essayist than as a fiction writer; not that he isn't superb at both, but the fiction is (sometimes) too smooth, paradoxically too well-written. Updike's striking insights (Doris Day as an American Pelagian) and widely ranging topics make this collection worth reading again and again.

From a brilliant essay on Melville to great book reviews to presenting the works of other writers (such as Yevtushenko), this volume is entertaining, enlightening, and wonderful.

This was truly, an amazing read! The words that will be written here, can never begin to tell the complexity of this story. Soren tells, of seductive love, and loss of, through Johannes and Cordelia. Was Kierkegaard a scheming madman, or simply a fool...

The story is told by Johannes, a man ten years Cordelias senior, who spins a web, to bring this young girl of seventeen, into womanhood through an erotic seduction of the mind. Johannes, a brilliant intellectual, I believe, uses the ripple effect of thought to determine the out come of each move that he plots. For instance, when you drop a stone into water, it sends out a ripple of rings, each one, a different path to take, each with it's own set of consequences. Constantly, he's questioning, thinking, and calculating.

Johannes, purposely studies everything about Cordelias' life. Her circle of friends, her family, her daily schedule. Then he makes sure to intervene un-noticed. For example, he knows that at 11am she will be walking down a particular street, he makes a point to walk past her. A day of shopping , to be in the store where she is at. But never approches her, always standing in the shadows. Subconsciously, he's placing his image in her mind. When he discovers that she lives with her Aunt, he sets out to court the Aunt, and befriends Edward, a shy, awkward boy, who's infatuated with Cordelia. But Johannes only uses Edward, to his own advantage of course, exposing Cordelia to the differences between Edward, the boy, and himself, the man. Eventually, Cordelia takes notice, and poor Edward is soon discarded. It's at that point when Johannes askes the Aunt for Cordelia's hand, in an engagement. The Aunt agrees, and Cordelia and Johannes begin their journey.

If you have ever been in love, truly in love, you will feel it written within the pages of this book. The kind we may only find once in our lives, if we are lucky enough for fate to expose it to us with open eyes. I believe that Johannes, found the truest, purest love, with Cordelia, but chose to play a game of the mind, instead of listening to the heart. Which in the end, haunted him the rest of his life!

This book is filled with visionary metaphors, which only adds to it's beauty. Once you attain the rhythm of the prose, it flows like sweet nectar on the palate.

it was awesome, it is full of emotion! i feel bad for edvard and especially cordelia. all the characters end up getting shafted at the end, except johannes which is shafted by his existence, the guy has mad people skills, but is a total dumb ass, (he is living the worst kind of existence according to kierkagard's 3 possible life choices; 1. aesthetic 2. ethical 3. religous) but you kind of feel sorry for him too.

This reader is torn between joy that this amazing text-within-a text is in print and available to an English-language audience and concern that it is taken out of the context of its intellectual "home," the monumental philosophical work Either/Or. Be that as it may, the Seducer's Diary alone is an entrancing read. The layers of metafiction and seduction are dizzying, the tone and pace wonderfully genteel, but with a hard and frightening core that is guaranteed to give most readers pause. The Diary was written as a supreme example of the concept of the asethetic in the "Either" section of Either/Or. "Or" takes up Kierkegaard's notion of the ethical. Both the aesthetic and the ethical turn out to be pathetic stages on life's way according to Kierkegaard, the only true path being the religious. But don't let the philosophy hamper your enjoyment of the ultimate reflective seducer. Kierkegaard's Johannes makes Don Juan look like a clod.

It is really hard to overstate the importance of Marshall Boswell's critical achievement here. His goal is to explain Updike's literary vision in constructing the Rabbit tetralogy, "a dialectical vision" which he calls "an interdependent matrix of ethical precepts, theological beliefs, and aesthetic principles-less a creed than a versatile formal device; it is, in effect the scaffold on which Updike has built the entire tetralogy" (p. 3). That goal is what distinguishes this book from the only other text wholly devoted to a discussion of the tetralogy, editor Lawrence Broer's Rabbit Tales: Poetry and Politics in John Updike's Rabbit Novels (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1998). That work, helpful in isolated essayists' insights, lacks the coherent analysis and penetrating structural insights of the whole Rabbit mega-novel which make Boswell's book so valuable. Indeed, it seems fair to say that henceforth no commentator on the Updike tetralogy will be able to avoid coming to terms, up or down, with Boswell's carefully-wrought interpretation.
The four chapters analyzing the four Rabbit novels are really excellent examples of careful reading translated into readable prose. Students and general readers will find much of value in those chapters, each novel taken on its own terms, but also as expressions of the overall tetralogy vision. The Introduction lays out in careful detail the assumptions Boswell brings to this task. The key interpretive assumptions are taken from Kierkegaard and theologian Karl Barth-Kierkegaard providing the philosophical concept of mastered irony which presumes an author's vision "emerges indirectly via the unresolved tension produced by the interplay of that thematic dialectic" (p.4), and Barth providing the theological metaphysics of the "dialectic of evil, the concept of 'something and nothingness,' [and] the argument for a serenely unproveable God." According to Boswell, "An unsettling Manichaean vision, Barth's dialectical theology appeals to Updike for its worldliness and its intellectually elegant explanation for the presence of evil" (16).
Those who dissent from this reading will likely do so at the point where Boswell assumes that the vision of the Rabbit tetralogy represents the entire Updikean picture of personal human experience as religious. Withal, a very impressive book, indeed.

This is essential reading for anyone interested in John Updike. Boswell summarizes the Rabbit books, Updike's best work, and presents a dynamic analysis of their importance. Updike doesn't just build characters, says the author, but presents the inner mystery of the human condition from a cosmic, really a theological, viewpoint.

As a golfer, have you ever wished that you could go back to the early 20th century, and play the game as it was played then? Does the smell of hickory and balata put you in mind of Ouimet, Vardon, Ray and Jones? What is it about golf that creates in its adherents a love for the game bordering on obsession? Settle down of an evening with Arnold Haultain's "The Mystery of Golf" and you shall have a very pleassant evening indeed. The book will make you long for those halcyon days of golf, from 1890 to 1930, when the golfiong heroes bestrode America and Britain like Titans. Read it, and then consider: Where is Haultain now, when we need him most?

This little book, written in 1908, says everything that"Golf in the Kingdom" had to say 70 years later, but it saysit more clearly and succinctly. It is basically a love letter to golf -- don't look for instruction or anything like that. It captures the essence of golf without becoming as incomprehensible as a zen koan. The author was a Canadian scholar who took up golf in middle age and pondered why the game had become such an obsession. Despite the dissimilarity between the game in 1908 and the game today, it is amazing how many of the author's insights still hold true (virtually all of them, with the notable exception of his misguided belief that the game would never descend to the level of crass profesionalism). Even though he was not an accomplished player, he had a real understanding of and feel for the game... This has been compared to Izaak Walton's "The Compleat Angler," and you should be forewarned that the prose is sometimes archaic and demands careful reading. Anyway, if you've played golf for any length of time, you'll surely find this more worthwhile and enjoyable than the latest book of tips from some PGA nonentity.

Rabbit Angstrom exemplifies the human core in ways that aren't shown enough in other popular fiction. He is nice, funny, mean, angry, selfish, well.....you get the picture. John Updike clearly portrays what a man goes through in his life from his petty grievances to his untamed lust and his hatred for people he should love. It's just so damn realistic that a lot of people don't want to believe these are normal characterisitcs of the human condition....but they are. They are! Excellent writing!

Nothing comes close in the annals of modern literature to the Rabbit series. This is the book everyone should own. Well, every biting narcisist with no particular views, and with a major messianic complex. So, 99% of the population should own this book. There are SO many levels in this maelstrom of contemporary American culture, subculture, conture-culture, and pop culture. To find out more about the books, read the individual reviews, but bear in mind this is THE definitive edition, with an enlightening essay that works as an overture to the grand epic, along with the insertion of several passages editited from earlier volumes. BUY THIS BOOK, if you're ready. This is the closest any prose really gets to art. More relevant than ever, Rabbit will change your way of thinking about life. Two weeks after reading this book, if you wake up shaking, sweating from fear and paranoia over whats happened to your life over the years, you have Mr. Updike to thank. Then take! a breath, and dive back into the book on a second-wind. Be prepaed to laugh, cry, and most importantly meditate on the impact of this book; be ready to experience the Life and Times of Mr. Rabbit Angstrom, a character as deep as life itself.

Pure genius. Updike knows everything, it seems, or is close to it. He evokes emotions with relevant detail at the same time, often without mentioning a character for a few paragraphs. I've never been moved so much by descriptive writing as I have with Updike. Your intellect is left enlarged and fulfilled. The Rabbit series is also a mini history source in contemporary America, the ever present thrid person omnisicent who seems to hold sway over Rabbit's life and all his disfunctional family and common friends. A must read for the literary scholar

"The Complete Stories" has everything the beginning Kafka reader neads to get started. Of course this is required reading for the Kafka enthusiast.

A well thought-out forward by John Updike prepares you for your journey into the amazing and complex mind of Kafka. The book is divided into two sections, one for the longer stories and one for the shorter stories (most of which only take up a page or two).

The stories themselves are great. "The Metamorphisis" is included, in which Gregor Samsa awakens to find himself in the form of a rather large insect! "The Penal Colony", "The Judgment" and "A Country Doctor" are also included.

There's certainly hasn't been an author since Kafka able to play upon the fears and emotions of the human mind, those thoughts playing in out head, when we realize that maybe some of this could happen to us.

If you enjoy "The Complete Stories", be sure to pick up "Amerika", "The Castle" and "The Trial". These are Kafka's three novels and will complete your collection. All very much worth it!

Kafka can be a difficult figure to approach for some. His presence looms for some readers as foreboding as that strange unapproachable structure in The Castle looms for the character in that book. One way to get around this is to learn a little about Kafka's own life, especially his relationship with his father. And also to learn that his economical & concise way with language he learned as a student of law and his fascination to the point of paranoia with bureaucracies of various kinds he may have picked up in his career as an office worker in an insurance company. Kafka may never become all together human to some readers. To those who share his particular temperament, however, he will seem very human and become a favorite though a kind of quiet one that lurks in the fringes of your bookcase. These stories are a great introduction. Though they are all prose works in some cases they seem to possess qualities more often seen in parables than in twentieth-century prose ie: use of symbols & layers of possible meanings being more evocative(though sparse) than specific. His work is certainly pessimistic, his landscapes are oblique, and chances are you will have your own way of looking at Kafka the more you read(and there are a vast array of ways to interpret his work). One interesting reader, Jean Paul Sartre, characterized Kafka's work as "the impossibility of transcendence". His exaggerated worlds(Swift was one of his own favorite authors) do provide interesting glimpses into that very often written about terrain alienation but few have ever delved into it so deeply. After Kafka you may be lead down one of the more interesting paths in the history of literature which includes Nabokov, Borges, Cortazar, Calvino and many many others.

Kafka was perhaps the greatest writer ever to live and this volume shows it. Every story, even every sketch of an idea that Kafka wrote down comes filled with brilliant emotions and deep meaning conveyed through simple and serious language. Shakespeare has none of the lyrical abilities of Kafka, and Homer could only dream of equaling Kafka's mastery of plot. Kafka out-psychoanalyzed Freud, and wrote circles around Joyce. His stories seem modern even by today's standards, the things that haven't come true yet in his works I believe will eventually, while I don't believe him to be a prophet he certainly had a great understanding of humankind and knew where it was headed.

"A Country Doctor" is in my opinion the greatest short story ever written, a dark dream sequence with all kinds of slimy worms writhing beneath the surreal surface plot, sticking out through the rotted boards that Kafka puts down to allow us to see what we're standing over. "The Judgement," a purely perfect work of psychology, Kafka dipping deeper and hitting more nerves than in any of his other stories, giving us a picture of what it's like to be a genius controlled by a domineering, and a nonunderstanding father. And of course there are the smaller works from "Meditations," little snippets of images that flash through the mind, a kind of literary whispering in the ear while sitting in the dark. "The Burrow," another favorite, perhaps the most claustrophobic work of fiction ever conceived, the darkness of the tunnel affecting your mind for days.

Read this book, in it the greatest treasure a writer ever gave us shines, a golden nugget, hidden deep within a dark pool that seems unswimable. Take the swim, and I garantee that you will find the nugget. Ignoring Kafka is like denying yourself the best there is.