In an era dominated by Philip Roth, Saul Bellow and Norman Mailer, John Updike completed the quartet. When he died this January, he had already written 24 novels, many collection of short stories, poems, essays, children?s books and even a play, winning the Pulitzer, the National Book Award, the American Book Award and so forth. But he is perhaps most well-known for his Rabbit books, four in all.
The hero Harry ?Rabbit? Angstrom is disconnected with the world he is living in, having left behind his best years as basketball coach. His marriage isn?t going anywhere and Updike details the life of ?Rabbit? in the time of unhappiness, when the only saving grace appears to be an extra-marital affair. In this collection of short stories ? some like the eponymous My Father?s Tears have appeared in magazines like the New Yorker ? published posthumously, we find many of the Updike staples like sex, country, men, religion. He grew up in the austere post-World War era and never really came to terms with the social havoc in the 60s and 70s, caused by the feminist movement or even the popular protests against the Vietnam war. His characters, usually losers, often grapple with change, desperately seeking a way out of the chaos. In this collection, some of the stories are left open-ended, others aren?t able to connect with the reader, but four stories stand out. Two are on relationships and love and loss: The Walk with Elizanne, where two old school-mates try to remember a long-lost first kiss at a 50th year reunion (?Elizanne, he wanted to ask her, what does it mean, this enormity of our having been children and now being old, living next door to death??) and Delicate Wives.
The other two (My Father?s Tears and The Full Glass) deal with change ? and old age ? and how people deal with it. As a father waits on a railway platform to bid his son goodbye as he leaves for college, there are tears in his eyes ? ?? my father did foresee, the glitter in his eyes told me, that time consumes us ? that the boy I had been was dying if not already dead, and we would have less and less to do with each other.?