“The Boyfriend” was fascinating to me. Born to a pair of Soho artists of little acclaim and fading wealth in the 70s, he grew up in a well-heeled bohemian milieu that haunted him. In this scene, he was tortured by his own mediocrity: not lucky enough to be a nepo baby, not talented or driven enough to create the extraordinary life to which he felt... See more

This, I think, is another reason why Updike has so many detractors. Ever since F.R. Leavis wrote The Great Tradition , there has been a school of literary criticism that has demanded that great novelists also be great moralists: that the job of the writer is not just to reflect the world but to tell it the difference between right and wrong.

That is... See more

Like many before them, Sylvie and Jérôme mistake their pursuit of taste for a pursuit of knowledge, and believe themselves to be acquiring a kind of legibility—to others and to themselves. Theirs is, in effect, “the most idiotic, the most ordinary predicament in the world.” By the novel’s penultimate page, the couple’s notion of happiness—a... See more