Newly Relevant: The Early Stories: 1953 – 1975

John Updike published his first story in The New Yorker in 1954 when he was 22. Over the next 55 years, until his death last week, he published more words than perhaps any other major novelist in America. But many believe that his early New Yorker stories are still his best. The Early Stories: 1953-1975 features 107 stories, some of which feature famous characters like Updike’s Jewish alter-ego Henry Bech and his unhappy couple, the Maples. Reviewing The Early Stories for The New York Times, Cynthia Ozick wrote that the collection “revealed the mind of an artist on whom nothing is lost, for whom seeing is fused with the most filigreed turns of language.”