The redescription in Updike���s criticism is obviously of a high order, and [of] a certain kind of generosity, too���that���s to say, he was a very patient and hospitable quoter of other people���s texts. But I always felt that there was a certain kind of ungenerousness in Updike���s work, too. The maddening equilibrium of his critical voice���never getting too upset or too excited���enacted, I always felt, a kind of strategy of containment, whereby everything could be diplomatically sorted through, and somehow equalized and neutralized, and put onto the same shelf���and always one rung below Updike himself. That���s perhaps unfair. But I think his fiction worked in the same way, too, despite the passionate attention of his prose: It existed to clothe the world in superb words, to contain it, somehow.

James Wood on Updike