- published: 13 May 2016
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Couples is a 1968 novel by American author John Updike.
The novel focuses on a promiscuous circle of ten couples in the small Massachusetts town of Tarbox. (The author was living in Ipswich, Massachusetts when he composed the book.)
Much of the plot of Couples (which opens on the evening of March 24, 1962 and integrates historical events like the loss of the USS Thresher on April 10, 1963 and the Kennedy assassination in November 1963) concerns the efforts of its characters to balance the pressures of Protestant sexual mores against increasingly flexible American attitudes toward sex in the 1960s. The book suggests that this relaxation may have been driven by the development of birth control and the opportunity to enjoy what one character refers to as "the post-pill paradise."
The book is rich in period detail. (In 2009, USA Today called the novel a "time capsule of the era.) The lyrical and explicit descriptions of sex, unusual for the time, made the book somewhat notorious. TIME magazine had reserved a cover story for Updike and the novel before knowing what it was about; after actually reading it they got embarrassed and discovered that "the higher up it went in the Time hierarchy, the less they liked it."
(Konishi/Takanami)
Translators: Andrei Cunha
hon no sukoshi dake
hanashi ga shitakatta
kimi to wa shibaraku
aenaku naru shi
na no ni kotoba wa sugu
togirete shimau
soshite koibito-tachi no
utsukushii natsu no hi wa
owari
tada
sore dake
mo ato sukoshi dake
koko ni ite okure
kimi to wa doshite
sayonara shita no kana
yume kara sameru tabi
wasurete shimau
futari kiri sugoshita
ano utsukushii natsu no
owari
sae
nani mo kamo
itsu no ma ni ka
soto wa
ame ga furidasu
soshite koibito-tachi no
utsukushii natsu ga ima
owaru mo
eien ni
-------------------------------------
all i wanted was to talk to you
just a bit
i won't be able
to talk to you for a while
but the words
won't come out
and our beautiful
summer
will soon
come to an end
that's all
we haven't got much time left
stay here by my side
i wonder why
i said good-bye
but when i wake up
i'll have forgotten my dreams
i've even forgot
that beautiful summer
we spent together
i've forgotten
everything
soon
it will start to rain
outside
and our beautiful
summer
will come to an end
forever