The dozen short stories in Updike's new collection revisit many of the locales of his fiction: the small Pennsylvania town of Olinger, the lonely farm to which the hero moves as an adolescent, the exurban New England of adult camaraderie and sexual mischief, and the New York City of artistic ambition and taunting glamour. The title derives from a story in which an American banjo virtuoso demonstrates his licks to an enthralled Soviet audience in the heart of the Cold War, while being hounded by the epistolary aftermath of a one-night stand in Washington D.C. To these is added a novella-length sequel to Updike's quartet of novels about Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom in which several old strands come together at last.

"If John Updike had never published anything but short stories-if the novels, essays, verse, and reams of occasional prose vanished into thin air - he would still be a presence to reckon with in American letters."