| Pigeon Feathers and Other Stories | |
| Author: | John Updike |
| Cover Artist: | S. Neil Fujita |
| Country: | United States |
| Language: | English |
| Genre: | Short story collection |
| Publisher: | Alfred A. Knopf |
| Release Date: | 1962 |
| Pages: | 296 |
| Isbn: | 978-0394440569 |
Pigeon Feathers and Other Stories is a collection of 19 works of short fiction by John Updike. The volume is Updike's second collection of short stories, published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1962.[1] It includes the stories "Wife-Wooing" and "A&P (short story)", which have both been anthologized.[2] [3]
Pigeon Feathers and Other Stories was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1962.[4] "A&P" and the title story, "Pigeon Feathers", were both adapted into films (see below).
All the stories were first published in The New Yorker unless otherwise indicated:[5]
"Walter Briggs" (April 11, 1959 [titled "Vergil Moss"])
"The Persistence of Desire" (July 11, 1959)
"Still Life" (January 24, 1959)
"A Sense of Shelter" (January 16, 1960)
“Flight” (August 14, 1959)
“Should Wizard Hit Mommy?” (June 13, 1959)
"Dear Alexandros" (October 31, 1959)
"Wife-Wooing" (March 12, 1960)
"Pigeon Feathers" (April 19, 1961)
Home" (July 9, 1960)
"Archangel" (Big Table Quarterly, 1960)
"You'll Never Know, Dear, How Much I Love You" (June 18, 1960)
"The Astronomer" (April 1, 1961)
"A&P (short story)" (July 22, 1961)
"The Doctor's Wife" (February 11, 1961)
"Lifeguard" (June 17, 1961)
"The Crow in the Woods" (Transatlantic Review, Winter 1961)
"The Blessed Man of Boston, My Grandmother's Thimble, and Fanning Island" (January 13, 1962)
"Packed Dirt, Churchgoing, A Dying Cat, A Traded Car" (December 16, 1961)
Literary editor William R. Macnaughton reports that Pigeon Feathers and Other Stories received “generally popular reviews” upon its release.[6] Time magazine registered some doubts as to the seriousness of Updike’s literature: “This dedicated 29-year-old man of letters says very little, and says it very well…The impressions left are of risks untaken, words too fondly tasted, and a security of skill that approaches smugness.”[7]
Literary critic Arthur Mizener, writing in the New York Times Book Review offered this fulsome praise for the collection: “It is a demonstration of how the most gifted writer of his generation is coming to maturity; it shows that Mr. Updike’s fine verbal talent…is beginning to serve his deepest insight…”[8] Mizener cautions that Updike, taken to embellishing his fiction with “radically irreverent decorative charm” risks “losing track of something he started to express in