SOURCE: "John Updike's 'A & P': A Return Visit to Araby," in Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. 30, No. 2 Spring, 1993, pp. 127-33.

In the following essay, Wells demonstrates how narrative and thematic details of "A & P" closely resemble those of Joyce's "Araby."

John Updike's penchant for appropriating great works of literature and giving them contemporary restatement in his own fiction is abundantly documented—as is the fact that, among his favorite sources, James Joyce looms large.

With special affinity for Dubliners, Updike has, by common acknowledgment, written at least one short story that strongly resembles the acclaimed "Araby," not only in plot and theme, but in incidental detail. That story, the 1960 "You'll Never Know, Dear, How Much I Love You"— like "Araby"—tells the tale of a poor, romantically infatuated young boy who, though obstructed by parental slowness, journeys with innocent urgency, coins in hand, to a seemingly magical carnival...