Review of John Updike’s My Father’s Tears and other stories

“It has taken old age to make me realize that the world exists for young people” (Updike, 283).

The above quote is just nine pages from the end of this 292 paged collection of 18 short stories. It is not highlighted as important or even necessary within its parent story, The Full Glass, but is rather there and then gone. Yet I find that this quote is the closest-to-accurate descriptor for what it was that I came away with from Updike’s last collection (he passed away earlier this year). These stories are about the reflections of older gentleman on times gone past and the lives they lived (and have yet to live). Even the progress of the collection reflects this ‘on times gone past’ mentality in that each story further matures the narrator when compared to its predecessor. From start to finish this collection travels with aging humanity, beginning at a peak just shy of that past-prime cusp (Morocco) and ending with an 80-something trying to remember the times of a ‘full/filled’ life (The Full Glass).

For me, though, it’s hard to take this collection much beyond these understandings. Don’t get me wrong, My Father’s Tears and other stories holds gem after gem after well written and beautiful gem. There were even times that I could only hope that, in 30 years, I was writing things as good and moving as these works. However, today as a 22 year old, many of the most important aspects of these stories went right over my head; I’m just too young to adequately understand the things Updike wrote. From what I could understand it seems that there needs to be a near equally aged knowledge of the world that a 20 year old simply could not have, and I would even go so far as to say that this book might be unapproachable to the average 30-something. Those 40 and up would likely have the necessary life experiences and aged mentality to both understand and deeply appreciate what Updike writes and says and, as such, I highly recommend this collection to them.

As a final note I will mention that one of the stories that I did understand, titled Varieties of Religious Experiences, is one of the few stories that I simply could not finish in one sitting. This work, a traveling narrative that expertly jumps between four different perspectives, centers itself around the events of 9/11/2001. Though I can’t honestly say Updike writes a perfect story, it does what I feel a lot of artists would like to have done with that horrible experience. That is to say, Updike humanizes the event while, at the same time, avoids diminishing its short term and long term consequences, a feat that I have only seen (or rather heard) done better once.

Updike, John. My Father’s Tears and other stories. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009