Too Far to Go


Too Far to Go: The Maples Stories is a collection of 17 short stories by John Updike, published by Fawcett Publications in 1979. Most of the stories first appeared in The New Yorker.
The stories comprise the saga of Richard and Joan Maple, a middle-class couple living in New York City and New England in the 1950s and 60s.

Stories

Unless otherwise indicated, all the stories first appeared in The New Yorker.
  • "Snowing in Greenwich Village"
  • "Wife-wooing"
  • "Giving Blood"
  • "Twin Beds in Rome"
  • "Marching Through Boston"
  • "The Taste of Metal"
  • "Your Lover Just Called"
  • "Waiting Up"
  • "Eros Rampant"
  • "Plumbing"
  • "The Red-Herring Theory"
  • "Sublimating"
  • "Nakedness"
  • "Separating"
  • "Gesturing"
  • "Divorcing: A Fragment"
  • "Here Come the Maples"

Critical assessment

Literary critic Jane Barnes places the Maple stories as among the most accomplished of Updike's literary career:
Barnes continues: "Because of the purity and sureness of the writing, the Maple stories are a clear medium for the narrator's moral dilemma. The medium is rendered clearer still by the fact that the Maples' experience is considered all by itself, in terms of Richard and Joan and their children.
Literary critic Richard Detwieler considers the central theme of the volume "the dissolution of a marriage and the varieties of attendant suffering."

Adaptations

Too Far To Go: The Maples Stories was adapted as a two-hour television film directed by Fielder Cook. Entitled Too Far to Go, it stars Blythe Danner, Michael Moriarty, Kathryn Walker and Glenn Close, and aired on NBC on March 12, 1979. The linked stories focus upon the marriage and eventual divorce of Richard and Joan Maple and depict a 1960s New York City and New England milieu through the 1970s typical of much of Updike's fiction. Many of the stories were initially published as occasional stories in The New Yorker from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s.
Literary critic Richard Detweiler wirtes: "The television dramatization of Too Far To Go, produced in 1979, was a popular and critical triumph which demonstrated how good television, at times, can be.
The story "Your Lover Just Called" was later adapted into a playlet by Updike himself. It is included in his collection More Matter. Most of these stories were also included in Updike's 2003 collection The Early Stories, except those published after 1975; namely, "Waiting Up", "The Red-Herring Theory", "Divorcing: A Fragment", and "Here Come the Maples". In August 2009, Everyman's Library published The Maples Stories, a new edition of Too Far to Go, including the final Maples story "Grandparenting".