Story of the Day: A&P by John Updike. On a hot summers day, Sammy, a teenage boy, is working the cash register at the local A&P when three girls in bathing suits enter the store. He does what boys do, and imagines who they are based purely on their appearance. As boys do, he eyes them up, building an understanding of them based on their images alone. And when the manager challenges them on the unsuitability of their attire for shopping, Sammy – in solidarity, and hoping to impress – resigns on the spot. But when he gets outside, the girls have already gone. Updikes short stories are touchstones for me, and I consider him a master, one of my two or three favourite American short story writers of the past half-century. I like the quietness of his plots and the intimacy his characterisations achieve on the page, and I am rarely held less than spellbound at the richness of his imagery and the sheer beauty of his sentences. The man was clearly in love with the song of language. Because its been so frequently anthologised, A&P is probably his best known story. I have to admit that, only because there are so many, and of such quality, its a bit down the list of my own favourites (today Id go with something like Gesturing, Snowing in Greenwich Village or The Happiest Ive Been – tomorrow, my choices would probably be quite different...). Part of my reason for choosing it is because I can find a link to it online (the one unbreakable rule for these Story of the Day posts), but it is also a really fine story, one that works on several levels as a consideration of growing up, surface judgements, class difference and conformity.
Posted on: Sat, 30 Aug 2014 16:53:00 +0000
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