[In State of Grace] Joy Williams is pouring forth a tepid Creative Writing ooze which has become stock in trade at the universities, and which is strictly a habit of the permanently would-be novelist. Here are a few of her more wonderfully worked-over set pieces: "Almost all arms and noons and lips and anger are the same and love." "I don't look at all pregnant and never would have thought it of myself, but I've been told firmly that it's so. I peed into a paper cup and now I know."… And in a metaphor that deliberately mixes the organs of speech and sex, Miss Williams has gone well beyond John Updike at his coyest:

I want to have him love me. The fact that he does already troubles both of us. I prop the pillow behind my back and begin a conversation. The room is close. I've...