Ace in the Hole

“Ace in the Hole" is a work of short fiction by John Updike that first appeared in The New Yorker on April 9, 1955. The story was collected in the volume of Updike's fiction The Same Door (1959), published by Alfred A. Knopf. Plot The story describes a single hour in the life of 26-year-old Fred “Ace” Anderson, an ex-high school basketball star who is now married and rearing an infant daughter with his young spouse, Evey. The couple are representative of a stratum of working-class youth in the America of the 1950s reflected in their enthusiasm for popular music, TV entertainment and laced with beer and cigarettes. Ace tends to dwell on his glory days as a record-setting athlete. He exhibits little ambition. Ace arrives home early: he has been fired that afternoon from his job as a used-car salesman—not his first such setback. He dreads delivering the news to Evey. He turns on the car radio to distract himself with some popular music.