‘The Blessed Man Of Boston, My Grandmother’s Thimble, And Fanning Island’ by John Updike

The Blessed Man Of Boston, My Grandmother’s Thimble, And Fanning Island by John Updike, 1962

The magic trick:

Stacking three stories on top of one another

Updike combines three stories into one here with a fairly experimental structure. I’m not sure how successful it is. The second story is the most familiar territory for Updike, as he bids farewell to his grandmother with regret. The key idea that gets picked up in the third section is the notion that the narrator left his grandmother – and family – behind when he set off for manhood. The third story then, about a doomed ship of men that gets marooned in the South Pacific, toys with that image nicely. It’s certainly an interesting story structure.

And that’s quite a trick on Updike’s part.

The selection:

I lived with her and she loved me and I did not understand her, I did not care to. She is gone now because we deserted her; the thimble seems a keepsake pressed into my hand by a forsaken woman as in the company of others I launched out from an island into a wilderness.

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