A & P

"A&P" is a comic short story written by John Updike in 1961. M. Gilbert Porter called the titular A & P in Updike's story "the common denominator of middle-class suburbia, an appropriate symbol for [the] mass ethic of a consumer-conditioned society." According to Porter, when the main character chooses to rebel against the A & P he also rebels against this consumer-conditioned society, and in so doing he "has chosen to live honestly and meaningfully." William Peden, on the other hand, called the story "deftly narrated nonsense...which contains nothing more significant than a checking clerk's interest in three girls in bathing suits." "A & P", first introduced in The New Yorker on July 22, 1961, also later appeared in the collection Pigeon Feathers.