The Bulgarian Poetess

By: John Updike

Narrated by: Edward Herrmann

Length: 36 mins

Publisher's summary

A selection from the John Updike audio collection.

These extraordinarily evocative stories depict the generation born in a small-town America during the Depression and growing up in a world where the old sexual morality was turned around and material comforts were easily had. Yet, as these stories reflect so accurately, life was still unsettling, and Updike chronicles telling moments both joyful and painful. The texts are taken from his recent omnibus, The Early Stories, 1953-1975.

In describing how he wrote these stories in a small, rented, smoke-filled office in Ipswitch, Massachusetts, he says, "I felt that I was packaging something as delicately pervasive as smoke, one box after another, in that room, where my only duty was to describe reality as it had come to me -- to give the mundane its beautiful due."

Listen to more in The John Updike Audio Collection.

©1964 John Updike (P)2003 HarperCollins Publishers

A Taste of Updike

The writing in this short story is classic Updike, pointed and microscopically observed. The problem for me is Updike's Male Gaze; it is out of step with the times and it made me uncomfortable when he wrote about women. Fifty years ago, he was a genius; today he's an artifact. Edward Herrmann's narration is as always impeccable—and that hasn't gone out of style.