Introduction & Overview of The Slump by John Updike

The Slump Introduction

In "The Slump," John Updike uses the national pastime, baseball, as the setting to explore one individual's frustration with the world. The story is told by a professional ballplayer who finds himself, for no identifiable reason, unable to hit as well as he once did. He thinks about why this might be, but not very deeply; for the most part, he accepts this slump as his fate and considers what it says about life in general. The story depicts the superstitious nature of athletes in the way that its narrator hopes for better days without having any hope that anything he can do would make his luck return.

Readers can see in "The Slump" the raw talent that has made Updike one ofAmerica's most respected writers for over a half century. The story is meticulously detailed, with sharp observations of even the most seemingly irrelevant actions, raising them to...
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