In Anagrams a guy gives his girlfriend a scented drawer sachet that reads, “I Pine for You, and Sometimes I Balsam.” A woman scribbles down a list of all her old lovers, loses the list, and cracks jokes about it being “mislaid.” That sort of thing.

Her essay on Updike is totally pun-free, but, as someone who never got into the Rabbit novels but loved Updike’s book reviews, it was neat to read her theory about what made his nonfiction so good:

Even when his essays included a harsh criticism, he politely coiled it, tucked it inside, part snake, part rose, and the reader would feel the bite sprung silkily only at the end — in a balletic allegiance to both generosity and candor. Self-knowledge and self-forgiveness bestowed their own empiricism: he knew too what it was to create weak art.