John Updike’s first collection of new short fiction since the year 2000, My Father’s Tears finds the author in a valedictory mood as he mingles narratives of his native Pennsylvania with stories of New England suburbia and of foreign travel.

“Personal Archaeology” considers life as a sequence of half-buried layers, and “The Full Glass” distills a lifetime’s happiness into one brimming moment of an old man’s bedtime routine. High-school class reunions, in “The Walk with Elizanne” and “The Road Home,” restore their hero to youth’s commonwealth where, as the narrator of the title story confides, “the self I value is stored, however infrequently I check on its condition.” Exotic locales encountered in the journeys of adulthood include Morocco, Florida, Spain, Italy, and India. The territory of childhood, with its fundamental, formative mysteries, is explored in “The Guardians,” “The Laughter of the Gods,” and “Kinderszenen.” Love’s fumblings among the bourgeoisie yield the tart comedy of “Free,” “Delicate Wives,” “The Apparition,” and “Outage.”

In sum, American experience from the Depression to the aftermath of 9/11 finds reflection in these glittering pieces of observation, remembrance, and imagination.

约翰•厄普代克（John Updike，1932-2009）

美国当代公认的文学大师。毕业于哈佛大学，曾供职《纽约客》杂志。一生写过大量体裁多样的作品，包括长篇小说“兔子四部曲”、短篇小说集、诗集和评论集，共计60余部著作。厄普代克两次获得普利策奖、美国图书奖和欧•亨利小说奖，以及其他十余种重要文学奖项，两次登上《时代》杂志封面。“性、宗教、美国、死亡”是厄普代克擅长的创作主题，“美国小镇、中产阶级”是他偏爱的文学世界。厄普代克的文风，对许多作家产生巨大影响，菲利普•罗斯称他是“我们时代最伟大的文学家”。