It’s not easy being a writer these days, you see just how hard it can be to get attention from the mainstream, especially when the old masters deliver stories like ‘Delicate Wives’. When the shelves are filled with stories from John Updike and John Cheever, it makes it very hard to justify why someone would sit down and write short stories of their own. Sure, we all have something to say, but, after a while, is it any different than the instructions on the back a shampoo bottle?
I’ve said this before, Updike and I have only just gotten to know each other, (how a dead man can know someone still above ground is a mystery to me) and it’s rather disturbing how intense the stories in My Father’s Tears are to read. It’s also hard to spend so much damn time praising these stories, but that’s my problem.
I love how it starts, “Veronica Horst was stung by a bee…” We quickly realize that Veronica is the old lover of our narrator Les who is hearing a story from his wife about Veronica’s low tolerance to bee stings, but Les is listening and pretending he’s nothing more than an friend of Veronica, which he and his wife Lisa are. Veronica is married to Gregor, and over time we learn that Gregor is the better husband when Les thinks about how Gregor saved his wife from the bee sting, Les doesn’t think he could have pulled it off. Updike tends to these characters so carefully, Les talks about his affair while he looks down on Veronica from his office window, and finally catches up to her on the street. These little details make for such a smooth portrait, simple and urgent. By the time Les and Veronica talk turkey over lunch Les is miserable with loneliness as he has long ago admitted to himself that he married the wrong woman, but as it turns out, can do nothing about.
-JR
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