Pigeon Feathers (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)

At a glance:

“Pigeon Feathers” showcases early several of Updike's continuing strengths, for the story wrestles with ontological issues in a prose that is stately and powerful. David is a young boy who has moved with his parents to the rural Pennsylvania farm where his mother grew up, and the move has been disturbing. He is used to his parents’ bickering and his senile grandmother's nervous habits, but when he stumbles upon H. G. Wells's account of Jesus in The Outline of History (1920) that denies his divinity, “a stone that for weeks and even years had been gathering weight in the...

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