Snowing in Greenwich Village
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| "Snowing in Greenwich Village" | |
|---|---|
| Short story by John Updike | |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Publication | |
| Published in | The New Yorker |
| Publication date | January 13, 1956 |
"Snowing in Greenwich Village" is a short story by John Updike, first published in The New Yorker on January 13, 1956. The story was collected in The Same Door (1959), published by Alfred A. Knopf.
The story is told in the third-person limited omniscient, with Richard Maple as the focal character.
A recently married young couple, Richard and Joan Maple, have moved into a roomier West Thirteenth Street apartment in Manhattan, New York. He works for an advertising agency.
They invite a local acquaintance, Rebecca Cune, for a casual house-warming and a few drinks. She is single and known for her droll and rather cryptic renderings of local characters among their social set. Richard takes special pleasure in playing the attentive host.
Joan, suffering from a protracted cold, senses a subtle sexual charge between her husband and their guest. She is subconsciously alarmed. When Joan is alerted to a passing patrol of mounted police near their apartment, she rushes to the window. Joan is exultant that snow is beginning to fall, and in a display of possessiveness, throws her arms around Richard. Rebecca observes this outburst with apparent detachment. When she prepares to walk back to her nearby apartment, Joan insists that Richard accompany her due to the snow.
Arriving at the housing complex, Richard becomes aroused by Rebecca's body as he mounts the stairs with her. Entering the apartment, Richard notes that her double bed dominates the small dwelling. The two stand near one another without moving for several moments. The spell is broken when Richard retreats to the door, and after an inept effort to make a joke, departs.
The story ends with the omniscient observation that Richard and Rebecca, now neighbors, are acutely aware of their physical proximity: "Oh but they were close."[1][2][3]
Background
"Richard Maple occupies a clearly defined space in the constellation of Updike alter egos. He is the character into whom Updike poured, over a span of thirty-eight years, his feelings about being a husband and father."—Biographer Adam Begley in Updike (2014)[4]
"Snowing in Greenwich Village" is among the eight short stories Updike wrote between 1955 and 1957. Set in Manhattan, and introducing the fictional couple Richard and Joan Maple, the drama closely resembles the lives of Updike and his spouse Mary Pennington Updike.[5][6]
These eight New York stories, of which "Snowing in Greenwich Village" is perhaps the best known, appear in The Same Door (1959).[7][8] Updike would not begin to develop the Maple saga for six years, until reintroducing the couple in the short story "Giving Blood" (1962).[9] "Snowing in Greenwich Village" would emerge as, in Updike' subsequent treatment of the couple "the beginning of the end" of the Maple marriage.[10]
The character Rebecca Cune, who appears as Richard Maple's sexual nemesis, was modeled on a friend of the Updikes. The young woman's bemused reaction to her portrayal, and the hostile reaction from her boyfriend, initially abashed Updike. Upon reconsideration, Updike adopted the doctrine that his literary work was, by necessity, "the truth, slightly arranged."[11]