John Updike - My Father's Tears and Other Stories

John Updike's first collection of short stories in nearly a decade will unfortunately also be his last completed new work to be published. These compelling tales serve as a fitting finale to his legendary career, but they serve as much more than a mere sentimental remembrance of a once-great writer, as Updike effortlessly weaves vibrant ideas into sentences which disguise wisdom as simple observation. Many of the subjects are appropriately autumnal, as aging men confront a present time and place that seems out of sorts with their memories of youth. In "Morocco," a man remembers a harrowing trip when he and his family were alienated in the title country, unable to discern between genuine threats and their own xenophobic paranoia. In the book's title story, a young man sees that his identity is composed solely of an endless series of agreements and disagreements with his father's way of life, a realization that comes to him refracted through his memory of seeing his father cry for the first and only time. Thi