Wednesday, February 09, 2022

Short Story Wednesday: WIFE-WOOING, John Updike

 




This is from the collection TOO FAR TO GO, which collected all of the stories about the Maple Family that John Updike wrote in the sixties and seventies. I know Updike is reviled by many today. I am not sure if it's his writing style or the people he writes about that angers readers. I love his stories. Yes, his writing is a little florid and he writes about the upper-middle class, but if he wrote about another socio-economic group he might be accused of cultural appropriation. Updike was a lower-middle class kid though. It is the college he went to and his career that brought him into a more Cheever-like world. 
 
"Wife-Wooing" is a very short story and the second in this collection. If you google it, you will find anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, English professors all weighing in on this story and what it tells us about sexual dynamics in young marriages of that era.  Lots of discussion of the first scene and its similarity to a prehistoric cave family. 
 
This story opens with   young family sitting in front of a fire eating hamburgers and french fries thae Dad has brought home. (Updike had four children in very quick succession). The husband finds his wife very attractive and is considering how best to approach her later for sex. He knows she is tired from caring for the three tots and yet is undeterred. He watched her read a book on Nixon and wants her to put it aside. Before he can pounce, she falls asleep and in the morning her charm has fled for him. But that night, she is the amorous one.
 
These are some of my favorite stories. You watch a marriage fall apart over the course of the collection. "Giving Blood" is my favorite. 

Favorite line. "Courting a wife takes tenfold the strength of winning an ignorant girl." 
How I wish he had used "innocent" instead of "ignorant."

13 comments:

Jerry House said...

I suppose there are many people like the husband in this story, but his on-again, off-again approach to his wife is abhorrent to me. I think I'll find something else to read.

Margot Kinberg said...

I have to admit, Patti, Updike isn't tops on my list of authors. Still, I haven't read his short stories. I probably ought to at least try them...

George said...

In one of the later Maple stories, the wife wants to have sex with her husband and he says, "It's too far to go." That line shocked me when I read it. John Updike was one of the best book critics of his era. Political Correctness now relegates Updike to the trash heap.

pattinase (abbott) said...

I'd like to see the television movie of it with Blythe Danner and Michael Morriarity but it's not streaming anywhere.

Jeff Meyerson said...

Patti, totally agree with you here. I've tried to read my way through the Updike stories beginning to end but got bogged down at one point, but the Maples stories are a highlight. They were made into what I remember as a very good television movie, TOO FAR TO GO, starring Michael Moriarty (who generally leaves me cold) and the fabulous Blythe Danner, who makes anything she's in worth watching. Oh, I see you mentioned the movie too. I haven't seen it since 1979 when it first ran but still remember the feel of it.

My reading is still way slow for me. I seem to be spending hours online (but I always do!), plus eating out and shopping and then watching even more television (possibly an extra hour each night) than we do at home. I've been reading one or two of the Ed Hoch stories from THE NIGHT MY FRIEND a day. "In Some Secret Place" was another historical one written from a child's point of view, about his visits to his uncle's farm as a child. The uncle falls off a tractor, hits his head and is killed, or was it not an accident? Not nearly as clever as last week's "Day for a Picnic." I downloaded the new Peter Lovesey collection and plan to start it today.

pattinase (abbott) said...

May I highly recommend a novel just nominated for best first novel by MWA. The crime is secondary to a beautifully told story set in Nebraska and the voice is excellent. It is called DEER SEASON, by Erin Flanagan.

George said...

Patti, I've seen the Blythe Danner and Michael Morriarity TV movie. Maybe your Library has it or can inter-loan it for you. Be prepared for sadness...

Rick Robinson said...

It’s all the amateur “critics” on social media who should be reviled and put on the trash heap. I liked Rabbit Run, Of the Farm and The Witches of Eastwick. I haven’t read any short stories by him.

Todd Mason said...

Old Correctness, that any fiction that wasn't contemporary/mimetic, Instructive historical or Very self-consciously metaphorical (and all of theses had better mind their Ps & Qs) was trash, and important work was that about people very much like "elite" reviewers, wasn't a happier situation, fwiw. Such as, indeed, "ignorant", above. You can hear the echo of "wench" in the background.

That said, he did write a fair amount of minor work, along with a lot of good.

TracyK said...

I have no experience with John Updike's writing, although it seems like I might have tried RABBIT RUN many, many years ago. Or not.

But a book of short stories all about one family sounds good to me. I looked at various options for copies and will find one to try.

pattinase (abbott) said...

Yes, a number of his novels are not as good but enough are that I hold him dear. I saw him once at the Metropolitan Museum in NYC and almost fell down their massive steps.
The Maples is a good one to sample. Although very sad especially since it is so autobiographical.

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