James Wolcott on Updike in LRB: ‘In a letter to Ian McEwan in 2005, he [John Updike] mused: “It occurs to me that since you interviewed me that first time in a BBC studio you have risen to be generally called the best novelist of your generation whereas I have fallen to the status of an elderly duffer whose tales of suburban American sex are hopelessly yawnworthy period pieces.”’

Yes, Updike is out of fashion, but so are Philip Roth and Bernard Malamud, and who is still reading Gore Vidal?

Wolcott: ‘Even novels regarded as misfires or miscalculations contain phosphorescent passages of which no other writer, save Nabokov in his magic shop, seemed capable.’

I find Nabokov’s ‘phosphorescent passages’ sometimes hard to endure, but I’ll give Updike another chance.

Updike’s obsession with ‘cunts’ – a problem in our times – is forgiven.

Suburban sex still exists; that’s the main thing.

America still exists.

(a sf 2065)