A & P - John Updike

A breath of fresh air kind of story, light and yet with a good grip, like a fancy jump rope with five-pound handles encased in rubber. But seriously, folks, A & P is told from the point of view of a nineteen year-old boy (man?) who happens to work at the Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company in his neck of the woods. Enter girls. That's it! We focus (enargeia) with hollow-pitted stomachs on the loving description of three curvacious semi-nude female bodies dancing (wafting?) down the store aisles lined with cardboard boxes and cellophane wrapped merchandise. The image Updike creates is that of a pinball machine, and the narrator is waiting to see out of which tunnel the balls will fly in a bee line toward the flippers. Suntan lines, the complexion of luscious vanilla breats, an ethereal gait in the making (think teenage goddess), jiggling cans (ahem!), the soft and clicking inflexion of a young voice. Voyeurism? Sure. Coming of age narrative? Sure: Sammy quits his "swell" job over a flap with his manager. His manager, it seems, embarrassed the girls with his no-shirt, no-service policy enforcing mien. The leader, Queenie, had persuaded the other two to accompany her wearing nothing but bikinis into the supermarket to pick up a vat of smoked herring in sour cream on an errand for her mother. And who should come along to burst Sammy's bubble but Lengel, the store manager, with his puritanical demeanor. And with no job, he realizes how hard the world will be with him from then on. A & P is also a critique of modern consumerism and the vapid, "gray" lifestyle that it spawns among American suburbanites.