Talking About Books -Short Fiction by John Updike

****Print copies of all 4 short stories are available at the Information Desk at the Main Library. We continue to green this event and encourage you to ask us to send you digital copies to your email to save paper.****

Join Dr. Mark Schenker for a series of discussions of four short novels by John Updike. The author’s remarkable output in a half-century of writing—fiction, non-fiction and poetry—included 18 short story collections. From the hundreds of Updike’s short stories, Schenker has selected works from the first and last decades of Updike’s career.

September 20 “The Happiest I’ve Been” (1958)
October 4 “The Bulgarian Poetess” (1964)
October 18 “A Sandstone Farmhouse” (1990)
November 1 “My Father’s Tears” (2006)

Mark J. Schenker has been at Yale College since 1990. He is currently a senior associate dean of the College and dean of academic affairs. A former lecturer in the English Department at Yale, he received his Ph.D. from Columbia University with a concentration in 19th-century and early 20th-century English literature.

For over 30 years, Dean Schenker has lectured on literature and film and has led book discussion series in more than 100 venues in Connecticut, including public libraries, museums, and cultural centers. For a decade he presented programming at public libraries in association with the annual summer productions by the Shakespeare on the Sound theater company located in Fairfield County, and since 2007 he has conducted Literature and Medicine Programs to health care providers at Connecticut hospitals. His affiliation with the Florence Griswold Museum (Old Lyme) has resulted in nearly 100 sessions there on literature, film and the visual arts.

Dean Schenker also conducts monthly book discussions for a number of private reading groups in Connecticut. In 2001, he received the Wilbur Cross Award for Outstanding Humanities Scholar, presented by the Connecticut Humanities Council.