John Updike [in his "Problems and Other Stories"] has some questions to put to us; "problems" to pose, as math teachers used to use the word, not in the contemporary, fallen sense of "Don't mind John Updike, he's just having problems at home." The problems concern divorce, the guilt of divorce, childhood memories, the guilt attaching to certain childhood memories, lust, the guilt that follows hard upon lust, and the fate of American Protestantism. (p. 1)
I find [the title story] "Problems" to be a work of really awesome literary cunning. The cunning, or much of it, is in the sudden darkening of the question: "Which has he more profoundly betrayed?" The words "more profoundly" rescue the passage from a weakening-by-cleverness. They lack coolness in exactly the right degree; they seem emoted rather than devised. They call us back from the play of wit—real wit, for once, like Thackeray's or Pope's—to remind us of the human costliness of an everyday situation. That is what John Updike does for a living: he reminds us of what things humanly cost. (pp. 1, 44)
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