Authors: View from the Catacombs

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noting that the Updikes are the ringleaders of a group of like-minded couples whom the older Ipswichers call the Junior Jet Set. Updike has organized endless basketball, volleyball and touch-football games, led the jet set on skiing trips, and presided over countless intramural parties. Says one member of the set: "What we have evolved is a ritual. It sets up a rhythm where we are all available to each other. It's rather as if all of us belong to a family." Adds another friend without elaboration: "You can't sustain that very long without its being very destructive."

To Feel Evil. Updike heightens the historic parallels by writing into Piet many of his own identifying characteristics, from Dutch name to parlor gymnastics. "If John feels even slightly neglected at parties," says a friend, "he'll fall off the couch." In the novel, Foxy turns to Piet and says: "At first I thought you fell downstairs and did acrobatics to show off. But really, you do it to hurt yourself."

But in the end, the novel must make its way without reference to its gossip quotient, and Updike knows this better than anyone. "Jacques Maritain somewhere says that to write about evil a man needn't have done evil—only felt the evil within himself," Updike remarks. "If people want to make a different conclusion, fine. If the book has passion in it, it's my own. I would hope that at least I have the will to put things down the way they are, under the assumption that there's something beautiful about them in any case. I think a writer has no choice but to deliver what goods he has."