 First edition cover | |
| Author | John Updike |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Short Stories |
| Publisher | Alfred A. Knopf |
Publication date | 1966 |
| Media type | Print (hardcover) |
| Pages | 272 |
| ISBN | 978-0394437279 |
| OCLC | 1150851608 |
The Music School: Short Stories is a collection of 20 works of short fiction by John Updike, first appearing individually in The New Yorker . The stories were collected in this volume by Alfred A. Knopf in 1966. [1]
The stories in the collection are listed chronological order with respect to their appearance in The New Yorker [2]
“In Football Season” (November 10, 1962)
“The Indian” (August 17, 1963)
“Giving Blood” (April 6, 1963)
“A Madman” (December 22, 1962)
“Leaves” (November 14, 1964)
“The Stare” (April 3, 1965)
"Avec La Bebe-Sitter" (January 1, 1966)
"Twin Beds in Rome" (February 8, 1964)
"Four Sides of One Story" (October 9, 1965)
“The Morning” (July 18, 1964)
"At a Bar in Charlotte Amalie" (January 11, 1964)
"The Christian Roommates" (April 4, 1964)
"My Lover Has Dirty Fingernails" (July 17, 1965)
"Harv is Plowing Now" (April 23, 1966)
“The Music School” (December 12, 1964)
“The Rescue” (May 9, 1964)
“The Dark” (October 31, 1964)
“The Bulgarian Poetess” (March 13, 1965)
"The Family Meadow" (July 24, 1965)
“The Hermit” (February 20, 1965)
Literary critic Charles Thomas Samuels offers this praise for the collection: “The Music School is Updike’s best collection [to date], with superior examples of every sort of story that he writes.” [3]
Literary critic George W. Hunt remarks upon the nexus of style and theme that characterize the story's in the volume:
The Music School collection holds a distinctive place in the Updike corpus because it contains several stories that, in addition to more familiar Updike themes, especially engage the issues of artistic self-consciousness and the act of composition itself.” [4]
The often idyllic world of Updike's youth and the largesse of “unexpected gifts" as portrayed in Updike's Olinger stories are no longer available to the protagonists of The Music School. Now in their adulthood, they struggle to regain a measure of their former optimism through “epiphanic moments” while plagued by “romantic discord” and “a sense of perplexity.” [5] Abandoning the rural settings of Olinger (a literary creation of Updike's hometown in Shillington, Pennsylvania), The Music School tales take place in suburban Tarbox, “the fictional equivalent of Ipswich, Massachusetts.” [6]
Literary critic Robert M. Luscher notes: “divorce becomes the volume’s dominant metaphor, with separations occurring from spouses, youth, the society, and life itself.” [7] In terms of technique, Updike exhibits a broad versatility of style in his depictions of irretrievable youth: Standard linear narrative (“The Rescue"), meditative mode (“Leaves"), historical sketch (“The Indian") ala Hawthorne, and epistolary (“Four Sides of One Story”). [8]
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.
The Centaur is a novel by John Updike, published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1963. It won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. Portions of the novel first appeared in Esquire and The New Yorker.
To Far to Go: the Maples Stories is a collection of 12 works of short fiction by John Updike. The stories first appeared in The New Yorker and were included in the volume published by Fawcett Publications in 1979
Of the Farm is a 1965 novel by the American author John Updike. Of the Farm was his fourth novel. The story concerns Joey Robinson, a divorced, thirty-five-year-old Manhattan advertising executive who visits his mother on her unfarmed farm in rural Pennsylvania. He has come with his new wife, Peggy and her son, Richard, a precocious eleven-year-old. The novel explores both Joey's relationship to his widowed mother, a flinty woman who reveres her farm, and to Peggy, a kind, sensual woman. Joey feels guilt for leaving his mother, and anger at her stubborn refusal to leave the farm, and anger at her from having uprooted his late father from the suburbs to move to the farm decades ago. Joey is buffeted by doubt, angst, and anger, and is pinballed between his dueling mother and Peggy.
Pigeon Feathers and Other Stories is a collection of 19 works of short fiction by John Updike. The volume is Updike's first 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.
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.
The Early Stories: 1953–1975, published in 2003 by Knopf, is a John Updike book collecting much of his short stories written from the beginning of his writing career, when he was just 21, until 1975. Only four stories published in this entire time period have been omitted from this collection by John Updike himself: "Intercession", and "The Pro", "One of My Generation", and "God Speaks". The majority of the stories were originally published in The New Yorker magazine. In 2004, the book received the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.
The Housebreaker of Shady Hill and Other Stories is a collection of short fiction by John Cheever. Composed of eight short stories, the volume was first published by Harper & Bros. in 1958. Reissued by Hillman/MacFadden in 1961, the works are included in The Stories of John Cheever (1978). The works were originally published individually in The New Yorker.
“Pigeon Feathers” is a work of short fiction by John Updike which first appeared in The New Yorker on April 27, 1956. The story was collected in Pigeon Feathers and Other Stories (1962) by Alfred A. Knopf.
Problems and Other Stories is a collection of 23 works of short fiction by John Updike. The volume was published in 1979 by Alfred A. Knopf. The stories were first carried in literary journals, 17 of which appeared in The New Yorker. Problems and Other Stories is one of two collections of Updike's short stories that appeared in 1979.
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.
"The Happiest I've Been" is a work of short fiction by John Updike, first appearing in The New Yorker on January 3, 1959. The story was collected in The Same Door (1959) 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.
“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.