Who Made Yellow Roses Yellow?

"Who Made Yellow Roses Yellow?" is a short story by the novelist John Updike, published in his collection The Same Door (1959). The title refers to controversies over organic farming versus synthetics.

Plot Synopsis

The story's first sentence sets the scene effectively. "Of the three telephones in the apartment, the one in the living room rested on a tabouret given to Fred Platt's grandmother by Henry James, who considered her, the Platts claimed, the only educated woman in the United States."

Fred Platt, as the story begins, is about to place a call to a college friend he hasn't seen in years. Platt, as that opening sentence indicates, comes from 'old money' -- he is three generations removed from its acquisition. He wants a job -- and he wants to acquire one without the contaminating hand of his father's connections.

Accordingly, he calls his old friend Clayton Thomas Clayton, now an executive in the advertising wing of a large chemical company (hence the story's title). The drama in this story consists of Fred's horror at Clayton's gauche, new-money ways, a horror that he with some effort suppresses in the interest of asking Clayton for work.

Some nice touches arise from Fred's brief conversations with each of the two secretaries through whom his phone call must pass before he can talk to Clayton. For example, the second secretary asks, "About what was it you wished to speak to him?" and one senses an earnest and newly-educated woman's effort to avoid ending a sentence with a preposition.

Fred, when he does finally reach Clayton, asks (in counterpoint), "Who are all these girls you live in the midst of?"