On reading Updike's "Couples"

Updike is vaunted as a realist par excellence, a careful chronicler of our suburban mores, but what I found in these pages seemed pretty fantastical to me. Certainly it bore no resemblance to the suburbia I knew. His characters talked about Bertrand Russell, bristled at undercooked lamb, and screwed each other senseless at every possible interval. It called my own world into question.

Dan Piepenbring, at The Paris Review website:  http://blog.theparisreview.org/2010/08/10/couples/