We are but a blink in the universe's eye, he seems to say. Yet these exquisite eulogies to the smallness of human life grow tedious. All but a few stories fail in this regard. These stories feel cut from the same cloth, a wallpaper of sorts. One has the sneaking suspicion Updike has many, many reams of this kind of fiction stashed away.
Some stories are embarrassingly subpar.
Both stories progress from chance encounter to hasty seduction to fervid sex with the predictable swagger of second-rate porn. Perhaps Updike is loafing. When he brings back his most feckless hero for another whirl, Updike seems to be grabbing at straws. A pain in the night, a sour number on the doctor's lab tests, and the skid would begin. After 40 years of chronicling the failures of marriage, now Updike ironically hints at its pleasures.