John Updike. Museums and Women (1972)

     John Updike. Museums and Women (1972) A collection of Updike’s stories from the 60s and 70s. Most of these were first published in the New Yorker, and it shows. These are New Yorker stories, and then some. All the same, Updike has a gift that transcends that genre. From time to time his sentences make you gasp. He felt her wonder, Who is this child? It was as if the roof of the house were torn off, displaying the depths of the night sky. (From “Solitaire”.)
     He is very good at delineating that vague melancholy that invades people who have nothing much to struggle for, and have found no compelling passion in their lives. They just go on doing what they do because they can think of nothing else that they would rather do. They want happiness, yet their search for it is undercut by a suspicion that they don’t know what happiness is. Updike’s people have everything they could desire, and nothing that they really want. A steady diet of Updike causes a kind of spiritual queasiness. One wonders whether anything has a any sort of point. *** (2002)