Too Far To Go: The Maples Stories was adapted as two-hour television movie directed by Fielder Cook in 1979. Entitled Too Far to Go the adaption starred Blythe Danner, Michael Moriarty, Kathryn Walker and Glenn Close.[8] The linked stories focus upon the marriage and eventual divorce of Richard and Joan Maple and depict a 1960s New York City and New England milieu through the 1970s typical of much of Updike's fiction. Many of the stories were initially published as occasional stories in The New Yorker from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s.[9]
Literary critic Richard Detweiler wirtes: "The television dramatization of Too Far To Go, produced in 1979 (with Blythe Danner and Michael Moriarty playing Joan and Richard Maple), was a popular and critical triumph which demonstrated how good television, at times, can be.[10]
The story "Your Lover Just Called" was later adapted into a playlet by Updike himself. It is included in his collection More Matter (1999). Most of these stories were also included in Updike's 2003 collection The Early Stories, except those published after 1975; namely, "Waiting Up", "The Red-Herring Theory", "Divorcing: A Fragment", and "Here Come the Maples". In August 2009, Everyman's Library published The Maples Stories, a new edition of Too Far to Go, including the final Maples story "Grandparenting".
