Reputations and Renewals (on John Updike’s My Father’s Tears; Alice Munro’s Too Much Happiness; Lydia Davis’ The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis; The Best American Short Stories 2009, edited by Alice Sebold; and The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories: The Best Stories of the Year, 2009, edited by Laura Furman)

Greg Johnson, whose reviews have appeared regularly in our pages across many years, has published two novels, five collections of short stories, and several volumes of nonfiction. He lives in Atlanta and teaches in the graduate writing program at Kennesaw State University.