Customer Reviews

The Afterlife and Other Stories

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The Afterlife and Other Stories by John Updike exemplify the admirable qualities of John Updike as a writer. No matter what your perception of Updike's "take" on the world (and while we're on that subject-let us not confuse the character's feelings and views for those of the author), one is forced to admit that Mr. Updike is a very gifted writer.

There is a lot to admire and be entertained by in The Afterlife and Other Stories. Mr. Updike clearly demonstrates why he is known as one of the greatest prose stylists of the past century. These stories make the things one would typically view as mundane come to spectacularly sparkling life.

The locations of these stories have a personality of their own. Houses and landscapes interact with characters in a ways that, while difficult to describe, are very character-like in their own right. This gives the stories a sense of wonder that is palpably felt throughout the book.

Forces of nature-the blowing of a breeze, a rainstorm, the heat of the day, the light of the moon in the middle of the night-all echo the inner workings and turmoil of the character's souls. This gives the book an almost spiritual intensity...something lacking in much of today's two-dimensional "cookie cutter" writing.

The Afterlife and Other Stories is rich in imagery, meaning, and irony. There are a lot of interesting points and perspectives for the reader to ponder. One cannot read this book without having been challenged, entertained, and moved.

The tales told in The Afterlife and Other Stories taken individually are very entertaining. Taken as a whole, The Afterlife and Other Stories is something very special.

Updike is a powerful writer. I have enjoyed several of his novels. However, I appreciate his short stories deeply. The Afterlife and Other Stories is probably my favorite collection of Mr. Updike's stories. I recommend this book.

A lengthy collection with wonderfully loquacious language and plots with lethargic unfolding, in Afterlife can be found a salt-of-the-earth kind of stories. Most of the stories revolve around middle-aged individuals, the experience of dealing with death, revisiting one's memories in its place of origin or just the seemingly simple act of falling in love. What makes the stories great is their humanistic nature but what kills the collection of that essential one extra star is the overused foci stated above. A few stories truly set themselves apart from the rest, but most are comfortably languid with their likeness.

And this being my first introduction to the literature of Updike, I'm happy to have found a writer who challenges perspective, timelessness and even the genre of fiction itself. My horizons have been broadened.

Afterlife - 4/5 - A somewhat near-death experience allows a man to enjoy some of the subtle things in life while on vacation in England. 17 pages

Wildlife - 4/5 - A man revisits a rural town and enjoys the rustic charms it still maintains, including his son. 9 pages

Brother Grasshopper - 5/5 A gangly teen is befriended by stronger coed through college and through life, during which time they share vacations and experience memories which will last for longer than intended. 15 pages

Conjunction - 5/5 - Revisiting a prior love of astronomy through life, a man finds an acquaintance amidst the conjunction of Venus and Mars, a synergy of passion and brevity. 8 pages

The Journey to the Dead - 4/5 - A dying women needs the assistance from an old college friend, his pain exacerbated by his loneliness, juxtaposed by her own terminal illness. 20 pages

The Man Who Became a Soprano - 4/5 - A small group of recorder players experiences the effect of long-term group dynamics, should rubbing and idiosyncratic flaws. 17 pages

Short Easter - 4/5 A man experiences the subtle transition between life's autumn years and the dreary winter years to come. 11 pages

A Sandstone Farmhouse - 5/5 - A man revisits his home of his youth and deals with the fact of his late mother's death; an uncomfortable contrast to the women he remembers from his youth. 33 pages

The Other Side of the Street - 5/5 - Revisiting the neighborhood of his youth, a man enjoys the intricate difference and similarities of the landscape, memories and people. 12 pages

Tristan and Iseult - 5/5 - An inexplicable puppy love develops between a dentist's patient and the unwitting doctor. 6 pages

George and Vivian: Aperto, Chiuso - 4/5 - Amidst the perfectly bucolic landscape of Italy, George and his 20-year junior wife experience a contrast of his openness to Italy's bounties and Vivian's myopic tendencies. 18 pages

George and Vivian: Bluebeard in Ireland - 3/5 - A continually whiny Vivian drags her 20-year senior husband through panic attacks and lulls of apathy while driving and walking the majestic nothingness of Ireland's coast. 18 pages

Farrell's Caddie - 3/5 - A seemingly omniscient caddie instructs his player on how to run his game on the course and off the course. 10 pages

The Rumor - 4/5 - Homosexual rumors of an art gallery owner spurs suppressed memories of prior male physique idolatry all the while assuring his wife it's all a rumor. 15 pages

Falling Asleep Up North - 4/5 - Loquaciously written but for all the right reasons, Updike reflects on the precarious, sometimes precipitous, barrier of wakefulness and the state of dreaming. 10 pages

The Brown Chest - 3/5 - Childhood memories of an heirloom chest in the family's attic are brought back when a man's son comes to look at the furniture with his bride-to-be. 9 pages

The Mother Inside Him - 4/5 - When approaching sixty years of age, a man becomes more and more like his mother at thirty years of age, filtering the bad from good. 8 pages

Baby's First Step - 5/5 - As refreshing as walking again after three months, there's nothing quite like getting the extra-marital zing back in your life for a man in the seemingly mundane Bureau of Weights and Measures. 8 pages

Playing with Dynamite - 5/5 - An elderly man learns that often daily routines are merely rehearsals for death and he reflects upon how to live. 11 pages

The Black Room - 3/5 - Revisiting a childhood home, a man and his mother reminisce about the house layout, changes to the neighborhood and what each room used to hold, physically and emotionally. 10 pages

Cruise - 2/5 - In a fantasy curve ball thrown by Updike, a lecturer is seduced by the spirit of Calypso while aboard a Mediterranean cruise and island tour. 15 pages

Grandparenting - 4/5 - The divorced and separately remarried parents of a birthing mother are forced into a tepid game of taming the flame of reminiscence and keeping the relationship frosty at best. 18 pages

These stories are signature Updike. They are masterworks in description of the material things of the world, of settings , scenes, locales. They too are masterful in presenting and probing problematic human situations. Many of the stories focus on post- middle- age discontents and desires, with adultery usually being somewhere in the background. The protagonists have often been married more than once. To my mind the most powerful story in the work simply because it seems to touch the deepest layer of human feeling is ' A Sandstone Farmhouse'. This is a story it seems to me Updike has written many times. It is the story of going home again , the story of the late middle- aged man who in telling the story of visits to the home of his dying mother tells again the story of his own childhood. It is the weak father and the frustrated more energetic mother and the single child whose precociousness and sensitivity in observation are that of the future Updike himself. It is remarkable as many of these stories are in its exemplifying Updike 's magical metaphorical descriptive style. But it has a strength most of the other stories lack in that it seems to truly express Updike's deepest feeling. It is not simply a master artist's manipulation of fictional characters whose fate doesn't seem to be of truly vital interest to anyone. As a long- time reader of Updike I also find in it many wonderful passages in which he expresses 'life- wisdom' of his own.

This anthology was my introduction to a man who was one of my favorite authors back in the 1990's. The play on words in the title refers not to the literal afterlife of cosmology, but that period of human life when one is past a certain age, and all is done but one still lives, children raised, career finished, premature death no longer a possibility. The tales Updike tells work out like spokes from the hub of this theme. From a set of old married couples vacationing in England during a rare hurricane, to a twenty-something husband from Cincinnati whose wife informs him he is the victim of a mildly-funny but disturbing rumor that he is a homosexual, these stories are well-worth the few days it takes to read through them.

A series of very deliberate stories, The Afterlife demonstrates Updike's care and his concern at this time with aging. As the title implies, Updike informs most of these stories with the tone of an aging man. His skills at times can overwhelm. He puts so much into each story; so much detail, so much character that we sometimes wonder about the story being told. The images, the sentiment, the feeling of these stories last, while it would much more difficult to try to recall the plot of any story. It begs the question of whether a story can be strong based on setting and character while leaving plot more or less out of it.

Stories must have something to say, something that needs to be expressed, but that doesn't always require a course of action. Often what lingers about a story is the sense of it, the feeling that stays with you, more than what turn of events occurred about two-thirds of the way through. Updike, with his grace and care, shows us in these stories that some of what we learn about short stories is less important when we approach a story with so much care and devote as much as Updike does to each of these stories.

I know that John Updike is one of the more outstanding writers of the 20th century, but I just can't get into his style of writing. What I enjoyed most about the short stories in The Afterlife were the conversations between characters. The conversations Updike weaves creates his characters and the plot, in my opinion. I'm not against rambling thoughts and scenery descriptions, but I'll tell you, there were times when I was reading, and I had to go back and re-read sections because I just began to think of other things.

I did like the progression of the story plots. It seems to go from early marriages to older marriages with a mix of divorces and cheating. Family structure and dynamics are the theme in The Afterlife, so if you find that a bit mundane, I would stay away from this book.

I am a beginner in Updike writings. I have started with the Rabbit series and I loved them. This collection of stories has a different style. One still sees and sense the playfulness of Updike, however, there is too much nostalgia and melancholy which made me down from time to time. I especially liked 'the Rumor'.

It is clear that this is a writer with an extraordinary command of language, someone as capable of surprising readers with the perfect simile as well as drowning them with weighty descriptions. He has a remarkable talent and is able to recreate palpable sensory memories for readers. This author is a masterful literary force writing emotionally weighty tales. In this book of short stories, Updike focuses on depressive characters and pairs them with endings that lack resolution. It's a double whammy on the unsuspecting reader.

In "a Sandstone Farmhouse," for example, the author's unwillingness to provide a hopeful resolution for Joey creates an experiential moment for the engaged reader, but also leaves the reader bereft. The weariness in "Conjunction" was palpable and appropriate for a story about mid-life crisis, but very depressing.

Updike is without question an exceptional writer. It is his subject matter which readers should be prepared for. He deals with serious subjects, lots of attachment issues: the mother-son connection, the process of death, the nature of men, unflattering depictions of women, marriage, and aging. He attracts readers with the universal appeal of such themes. His stories are full of "everyman" characters and he never takes us far from home to explore failings, fears and how we cause our own pain.

It's really a matter of taste. I read his entire Rabbit series and found them interesting, but unsettling in their depiction of marriage, the family as an institution and male-female relationships. This collection of stories, though well-written, were even less appealing to me. I appreciate Updike's mastery of language, imagery and storytelling skills, but I do not share his views, so I am not interested in reading more of his work.

I had greatly enjoyed the Rabbit books and the excellent "Marry Me" and was hoping for more of the same finely tuned and energetic writing, but found to my disappointment that many of the stories in this collection meander without much drive.

The subject manner tends towards an autumnal sense of reflection; this monotony of tone reaches its extreme with two stories in a row that both concern a middle-aged man contemplating the death of his mother.

One story, "Cruise", throws in something like magical realism apparently out of boredom with the same old formula, or maybe just to see if anyone's paying attention (like a student gluing the pages of a report together before turning it in).

For Updike completists only.

Too good to be true. Updike's work has never been better, which is to say much. I am an intelligent small-town teenager-turned-man and I look up to Updike quite a bit. Also check out everything else he's written, especially "Toward The End Of Time," which unfairly got bad reviews.