“[Updike’s] interests are wide . . . his prose is clear and straight, and his powers of organization and explication are formidable. . . . There is an immensely attractive, nonacademic attentiveness to his reviews. At his best he goes right to the human center, the heart of a writer expressed in his art.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Updike is a strong reviewer. . . . He describes precisely, praises judiciously, criticizes fearlessly, and ponders seriously.”—The New Republic
“Updike possesses that intuitive sense of other writers’ temperaments that raises literary criticism to the level of art. . . . If he wished, Updike could become one of our finest literary critics as well as novelists, an heir to that imposing predecessor in the pages of The New Yorker, Edmund Wilson.”—James Atlas, The New York Times Magazine
