If you had asked me to name some important American Writers I would have mentioned John Updike.  But the sad truth is that I hadn’t actually read anything by him (the fact that I watched “The Witches of Eastwick” on TV doesn’t really count).

It turns out that there are free New Yorker Magazine podcasts of short stories that appeared in their Magazine years ago. Each story is read by a different author and there is a discussion about the story with the paper’s literary fiction editor.

My first choice was Updike’s story. I listened to it and then found it online too (I’m not linking to it, don’t know about copyright here). I really enjoyed it. You see the scene so clearly, even though the story depicts a time period long gone. I could easily imagine it, the characters are so believable.

Since then, in the first two days after I listened/read the story, I encountered mentions of it! First there was the article about Brendan O’connell – an artist who paints Walmart (sounds awfully odd, doesn’t it?). He mentions the story as one of the sources of his inspiration.

When I began telling my older brother about this, he just heard the name Updike and told me that he’ll never forget the first short story he had learned in college, which was A&P.

I’ll see what the library has of his – any recommendations? In any case, am still reading “The Heritage Museum”. My friend Dorit surprised me with a copy of the book in English so I immediately abandoned the archaic Hebrew translation in two volumes. It is really good!