Volume 26, Number 17 · November 8, 1979
Cuisine Minceur
By Robert Towers
Problems and Other Stories
by John Updike
Knopf, 288 pp., $10.00
After the glitter and exoticism of The Coup, a novel that forced readers of Updike—admirers and denigrators alike—to take a new, hard look at him, the present collection seems as unsurprising as a gravel driveway in an affluent suburb. Having welcomed The Coup as an exhilarating departure from the coziness of A Month of Sundays and Marry Me—as indeed his strongest work since The Centaur—I found it difficult to overcome a nagging sense of déjà vu[1] as I made my way through Problems, difficult to reach an assessment of the stories on their own merits quite apart from a consideration of the Updike oeuvre as a whole. But with any prolific author it is only fair to recognize the difference in impact between a novel of unusual concentration and a scattering of stories composed over a seven-year period, most of them predating The Coup. Though my final response to the collection was tinged with disappointment, I must quickly add that several of the stories are as good as anything Updike has written.
Review, 2389 words
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