Problems And Other Stories

John Updike's first collection of new short stories in seven years deals with such problems as divorce and remarriage, parents and children, prostitution and leprosy, extinct mammals and guilt-gems, resigning from a committee and getting in and out of Ethiopia.

His heroes tend to be forty; his heroines are asleep, seductive, or reproachful. St. Augustine is ambivalent about his concubine. Another man finds extinct mammals easiest to love.

Pain and comedy closely co-exist in this primarily domestic world of the self-seeking Seventies, where our lives dissolve into television commercials and the morning paper brings us news of lost Atlantises.

Jacket design by the author.

Description from inside jacket sleeve.