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chris (Japan) (2013/02/05):
When this classic collection of stories first appeared—in 1962, on the author’s thirtieth birthday—Arthur Mizener wrote in The New York Times Book Review: “Updike is a romantic [and] like all American romantics, that is, he has an irresistible impulse to go in memory home again in order to find himself. . . . The precise recollection of his own family-love, parental and marital, is vital to him; it is the matter in which the saving truth is incarnate. . . . Pigeon Feathers is not just a book of very brilliant short stories; it is a demonstration of how the most gifted writer of his generation is coming to maturity; it shows us that Mr. Updike’s fine verbal talent is no longer pirouetting, however gracefully, out of a simple delight in motion, but is beginning to serve his deepest insight.”The images in these stories are so lyrical, so sadly ethereal, I'd not be surprised to find the pages of Pigeon Feathers flap invisibly from my hands and into those of a Pennsylvania native, whose land, childhood and eventual disillusionment are so heart-wrenchingly documented in this collection. "A&P," a staple of contemporary American fiction anthologies, is a companion piece
to longer, stronger stories, like "Flight" and the final two episodic stories, showcasing the defining moments of adolescence and young adulthood; moments when the voice inside assuring us of our own greatness and immortality grows fainter and fainter.
Philosophically, this collection is held together by the idea that beauty, love and fame are tenuous phenomena, no more substantial than
shapes of light skating across a room, or the images of a film projector (see "Flight"). This motif is always at the forefront of Updike's poetry and diction. ("The Persistance of Desire," which plays upon the indispensible role of eyesight, literal and figurative, ingenuously spins a pun out of the optical effect of the persistance of vision for its title.)
This philosophy rarely overshadows Updike's gift for an unorthodox, reflective style of narration. Conflicts figure prominently in every story, but almost always the battle is staged in the heart and mind of its protagonist. Updike is a Cicero and Keats blessed with a unique penchant for American storytelling.
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