UPDIKE, John (1932-2009)

The Same Door: Short Stories [Review Copy]

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1959. First Printing. Hardcover. First Edition (so stated) of the author's first collection of stories—sixteen in number—published one year after his first novel, The Poorhouse Fair. 8vo: [10],242,[4]. Publisher's turquoise quarter-bound cloth, chestnut-brown paper-covered boards, spine and upper cover stamped in silver, top edge stained lime-green; first issue dust jacket, priced $3.75, with reviews for The Poorhouse Fair on back panel. Laid in is Knopf's date-of-publication notice. An exemplary example, virtually pristine, square, tight and unread, silver lettering and top stain undiminished, pages fresh and bright. As New / Fine. Item #BB1273

These stories appeared originally in the New Yorker in the order in which they appear here. "Ace in the Hole" prefigures Rabbit, Run in having an ex-high school basketball star now married with a child. "Snowing in Greenwich Village" is the first story to feature the Maples, Joan and Richard, whose stories were later collected in Too Far to Go. "Stylistically, [Updike's] early stories were directly influenced by the New Yorker itself, where they primarily appeared. The two writers most associated with the magazine at this time, J. D. Salinger and John Cheever, exerted particular influence on Updike's style and approach. . . . [S]uch early pieces of marital life as “Snowing in Greenwich Village” evoke Cheever's elegant tales of spousal tension and middle-class comfort. At the same time, Updike was every bit his own writer, even early on, looking for deeper inspiration not in his contemporaries but rather in the European Modernists who immediately preceded him, chiefly James Joyce, Marcel Proust, Henry Green and Vladimir Nabokov. Specifically, Updike's lyrical, baroque prose style, as well as his penchant for complex formal design, can be traced directly back to those Modernist masters, all of whom get name-checked in one way or another in the early work." (Literary Encyclopedia) Note: With few exceptions (always identified), we only stock books in exceptional condition, with dust jackets carefully preserved in archival, removable polypropylene sleeves. All orders are packaged with care and posted promptly. Satisfaction guaranteed.

Price: $574.00