I’m sure the Updike estate is very grateful to Charlotte Allen for noting that there are many passages of explicit sex in his books–copies will now be flying off the shelves! But I really have to point out that if Updike at some point got a mock award for bad sex writing, that was not truly representative of his work. The critical consensus–with which I agree–is that he was one of the very few writers whose explicit descriptions of sex are actually worth reading. And the reason, I think, is his love of the particular–which is itself intimately bound up with his religious faith. He was a lover of God’s creation, a lover of “what is,” and he brought the same celebratory perspective to sex that he brought to other parts of reality. Many years ago, I studied medieval philosophy, and was very taken with John Duns Scotus’s concept of haecceitas–the very individualness of any particular being, that which makes the being what it specifically is. Reading Updike has been, for me, to experience an inkling of a God’s-eye view of this haecceitas in act. The beauty of it all–even, yes, 70somethings having sex. (Remembering the story of Abraham and Sarah, I think that the Lord doesn’t share our generation’s more refined “ew!” reaction.)