| Trust Me: Short Stories | |
| Author: | John Updike |
| Country: | United States |
| Language: | English |
| Genre: | Short Stories |
| Pub Date: | 1959 |
| Media Type: | Print (hardcover) |
| Pages: | 302 |
| Isbn: | 978-0394558332 |
Trust Me: Short Stories is a collection of 19 works of short fiction by John Updike. Each story originally appeared in The New Yorker or other literary journals. The stories were collected in 1987 by Alfred A. Knopf.[1]
The stories in the collection first appeared in The New Yorker, unless otherwise indicated.[2]
Literary critic Marilynne Robinson at The New York Times writes:
Literary scholar Robert M. Luscher notes a stylistic shift in Trust Me in that “the highly adjectival style has been replaced with a slightly leaner one that accentuates his poetic precision and makes it even more evident that his command of the language exceeds that of most of his contemporaries.”[3]
Updike’s “thematic concern with trust” is an examination of mostly middle-aged or elderly New England suburbanites who are “increasingly conscious of death, aging and illness.”[4] Literary critic Robert M. Luscher writes:
The dust jacket, portraying 19th Century artist Picart’s The Fall of Icarus (1731) was selected by Updike and is consistent with the volume’s theme. Critic Robert M. Lischer writes: “While Daedalus has instructed his son to [use his wings] prudently, Icarus betrays his trust, succumbing to the temptation to soar close to the sun…Updike has provided an appropriate mythological parallel before we even open the first story, since these issues— broken trust, family bonds, the fragile nature of promises, and our inevitable falls— are central to the stories within.”[5]