My Father's Tears and Other Stories is a collection of 18 works of short fiction by John Updike. The volume was published posthumously in 2009 by Alfred A. Knopf and is the final collection to date of Updike's stories.Carduff, 2013 pp. 948-958: Note on the Texts.Battersby, 2009: "Of the 18 stories, all but one are recent. The Roads of Home which appeared – as have nine of the others – in the New Yorker, has been retitled The Road Home."
Stories The stories first appeared in The New Yorker, unless indicated otherwise.Carduff, 2013 p. 955-956: Note on the Texts. The collection was published posthumously.Battersby, 2009
"Morocco" (The Atlantic, November 1979) "Personal Archaeology" (May 29, 2000) "Free" (January 8, 2001) "The Laughter of the Gods" (February 11, 2002) "Varieties of Religious Experience" (The Atlantic, November, 2002) "Spanish Prelude to a Second Marriage" (Harper's Magazine, October 2002) "Delicate Wives" (February 2, 2004) "The Guardians" (March 26, 2001) "The Walk With Elizanne" (July 7, 2003) "The Accelerating Expansion of the Universe" (Harper's Magazine, October 2004) "German Lessons" (Playboy, January 2006) "The Road Home" (February 7, 2005 [originally "The Roads of Home"]) "My Father's Tears" (February 7, 2006) "Kinderszenen" (Harper's Magazine, November 2006) "The Apparition" (The Atlantic, in its "Summer Fiction Issue" 2007) "Blue Light" (Playboy, January 2008) "Outage" (January 7, 2008) "The Full Glass" (May 26, 2008)
Reception
Literary critic Simon Baker of The Guardian offers this mixed assessment of the collection:
Calling the collection "a memory book"Battersby, 2009: "Death and age are dominant themes. This is a memory book." literary critic Eileen Battersby registers high praise for the Updike's posthumously issued collection of short fiction:
Battersby singles out a passage from the title story "My Father's Tears" as an appreciation:
Footnotes
Sources Baker, Simon. 2009. "A Wry Eye on the American Condition". The Guardian, July 19, 2009. Retrieved 21 March 2023. Battersby, Eileen. 2009. "The Master Takes a Final Bow". The Irish Times, June 20, 2009. Retrieved 21 March 2023. Carduff, Christopher. 2013. Note on the Texts from John Updike: Collected Later Stories. Christopher Carduff, editor. The Library of America. pp. 948–958