Licks of Love: Short Stories and a Sequel is a collection of 12 works of short fiction and a novella by John Updike. The volume was published in 2000 by Alfred A. Knopf.[1]
The novella included in the collection entitled Rabbit Remembered, is a sequel to Updike's four previous novels that feature his literary invention Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom.[2]
Stories
The stories first appeared in The New Yorker, unless indicated otherwise.[3]
"The Woman Who Got Away" (October 9, 1995)
"Lunch Hour" (December 18, 1995)
"New York Girl" (April 1, 1996)
"My Father on the Verge of Disgrace" (March 10, 1997)
"Rabbit Remembered feels false: its tone jars against the tumble that went before. Surely Angstrom's great strength as a character was his constant moral sloppiness, his fidgety craving for an intangible something that was always around the next corner. You sense that the living Rabbit would have bridled at the cozy, contrived send-off his creator arranged for him, found some way to kick it to pieces. It would have made for a more real and a more Rabbitesque swansong if he had."—Literary critic Xan Brooks, "Rabbit Stew" in The New York Times, March 7, 2001[4]
In the short stories comprising Licks of Love, Updike is preoccupied with "themes of loss", based on reminiscences from his youth and middle-age—often recounting "blue-remembered infidelities."[5][6]
Film and cultural critic A. O. Scott, writing in The New York Times, comments on the key thematic element that characterizes this short fiction:
These stories share a theme of retrospect and a bittersweet tone of forgiveness. Not all the memories are sexual…but most of them chase after the vapors of vanished erotic contact. The narrators and third-person protagonists of these stories seem to have their carnal histories perpetually at their fingertips and to remember the intimate smells and shapes of women they knew many years ago, and sometimes barely at all.[7]
Describing the short works as "ghost stories", literary critic Xan Brooks writes:
In Licks of Love, the author does not so much create as repeat and reclaim. In stoking the embers of old glories, he turns up a drift, a whiff, the pale glow of a talent left idling.[8]
Brooks adds: "In terms of technique, this curious, twofold creation can't be faulted. Updike still writes with his usual easy grace, demonstrating his casual mastery at piloting a narrative. But the whole thing is coloured by a strange lack of rigor and ambition."[9]
↑ Carduff, 2013 p. 955-956: Note on the Texts And: The Note section does not record "His Oeuvre", but the story appears in the 2000 Borzoi Book edition.
Carduff, Christopher. 2013. Note on the Texts from John Updike: Collected Later Stories. Christopher Carduff, editor. The Library of America. pp.948–958 ISBN978-1-59853-252-4
John Hoyer Updike was an American novelist, poet, short-story writer, art critic, and literary critic. One of only four writers to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once, Updike published more than twenty novels, more than a dozen short-story collections, as well as poetry, art and literary criticism and children's books during his career.
Rabbit at Rest is a 1990 novel by John Updike. It is the fourth and final novel in a tetralogy, succeeding Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; and Rabbit Is Rich. A related novella, Rabbit Remembered, was published in 2001. Rabbit at Rest won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1991, the second "Rabbit" novel to garner that award.
Rabbit Is Rich is a 1981 novel by John Updike. It is the third novel of the tetralogy that begins with Rabbit, Run, continues with Rabbit Redux, and concludes with Rabbit at Rest. There is also a related novella, Rabbit Remembered (2001). Rabbit Is Rich was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction in 1982, as well as the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction in 1981. The first-edition hardcover "rainbow" dust jacket for the novel was designed by the author and is significantly different from the horizontal-stripe designs deployed on the other three Rabbit novel covers. Subsequent printings, however, including trade paperbacks, feature the stripe motif with stock images of a set of car keys or an image of a late-1970s Japanese automobile.
Brewer, Pennsylvania is a fictional city that serves as the major setting for American writer John Updike's "Rabbit" cycle of novels. It is the center of the only fictional universe which Updike developed across multiple works, and symbolically represents his assessment of American culture from 1959 to 1999.
Rabbit, Run is a 1960 novel by John Updike. The novel depicts three months in the life of a 26-year-old former high school basketball player named Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, who is trapped in a loveless marriage and a boring sales job, and attempts to escape the constraints of his life. It spawned several sequels, including Rabbit Redux, Rabbit is Rich and Rabbit at Rest, as well as a related 2001 novella, Rabbit Remembered. In these novels, Updike takes a comical and retrospective look at the relentless questing life of Rabbit against the background of the major events of the latter half of the 20th century.
Rabbit Remembered is a 2001 novella by John Updike and postscript to his "Rabbit" tetralogy. It first appeared in his collection of short fiction titled Licks of Love. Portions of the novella first appeared in The New Yorker in two parts under the title "Nelson and Annabelle".
Rabbit Redux is a 1971 novel by John Updike. It is the second book in his "Rabbit" series, beginning with Rabbit, Run and followed by Rabbit Is Rich, Rabbit At Rest, published from 1960 to 1990, and the related 2001 novella, Rabbit Remembered.
Pigeon Feathers and Other Stories is a collection of 19 works of short fiction by John Updike. The volume is Updike's second collection of short stories, published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1962. It includes the stories "Wife-Wooing" and "A&P ", which have both been anthologized.
Trust Me: Short Stories is a collection of 19 works of short fiction by John Updike. Each story originally appeared in The New Yorker or other literary journals. The stories were collected in 1987 by Alfred A. Knopf.
My Father’s Tears and Other Stories is a collection of 18 works of short fiction by John Updike. The volume was published posthumously in 2009 by Alfred A. Knopf and is the final collection to date of Updike’s stories.
The Same Door is a collection of 16 works of short fiction by John Updike published in 1959 by Alfred A. Knopf. The stories in the volume first appeared separately in The New Yorker, some in a slightly different form than in the collection. The Same Door is Updike's first volume of short stories.
Olinger Stories: A Selection is a collection of 11 works of short fiction by John Updike published by Vintage Books in 1964.
Museums and Women and Other Stories is a collection of 25 works of short fiction by John Updike, first appearing individually in literary journals. The stories were collected by Alfred A. Knopf in 1972.
“The Music School” is a work of short fiction by John Updike that first appeared in The New Yorker on December 12, 1964. The story was collected in the volume of Updike's fiction The Music School: Short Stories (1966), published by Alfred A. Knopf.
“Giving Blood” is a work of short fiction by John Updike first appearing in The New Yorker on March 29, 1963. The story was collected in Too Far to Go: The Maples Stories (1979), published by Fawcett Publications.
“Wife-Wooing” is a work of short fiction by John Updike which first appeared in The New Yorker on March 12, 1960. The story was collected in Too Far to Go: The Maples Stories (1979), published by Fawcett Publications.
"Problems" is a work of short fiction by John Updike first appearing in The New Yorker on November 3, 1975. The story was collected in Problems and Other Stories (1979) published by Alfred A. Knopf.
"The Egg Race" is a work of short fiction by John Updike which first appeared in The New Yorker on June 13, 1977. The story was collected in Problems and Other Stories (1979) by Alfred A. Knopf.
“Ace in the Hole" is a work of short fiction by John Updike that first appeared in The New Yorker on April 9, 1955. The story was collected in the volume of Updike's fiction The Same Door (1959), published by Alfred A. Knopf.
The Afterlife and Other Stories is a collection of 22 works of short fiction and a novella by John Updike. The volume was published in 1994 by Alfred A. Knopf.
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