**From one of the most gifted American writers of the twentieth
century--and the author of the acclaimed Rabbit series--the first
one-volume hardcover edition of the eleven autobiographical stories
closest to his heart. With full-cloth binding and a silk ribbon marker.
EVERYMAN'S POCKET CLASSICS.
**
In an interview, Updike once said, "If I had to give anybody one book of
me, it would be the Olinger Stories." These stories were originally
published in The New Yorker and then in various collections before
Vintage first put them together in one volume in 1964, as a paperback
original. They follow the life of one character from the age of ten
through manhood, in the small Pennsylvania town of Olinger (pronounced,
according to Updike, with a long O and a hard G), which was loosely
based on Updike's own hometown. "All the stories draw from the same
autobiographical well," Updike explained, "the only child, the small
town, the grandparental home, the move in adolescence to a farm." The
selection was made and arranged by Updike himself, and was prefaced by a
lovely 1,400-word essay by the author that has never been reprinted in
full elsewhere until now.