John Updike tells good stories in his new collection, "Pigeon Feathers." What's more -- or, rather, what helps to make them good -- is his conspicuous devotion to the perilous marksmanship of words. All readers are bound to be grateful to him for that. He is no Pater and he is no Joyce. Clichιs and banalities he knows, have their valued uses in making a story flow. They provide comfortable, reassuring cadences -- and he employs them when he does not want to interrupt our concentration on what's going on with a trip to the dictionary or a muttered what-the-devil-does-that-word mean. Time and again, though, he finds just the right words to give a fresh shine to a familiar situation. He speaks, for example, of an encounter with a very junior doctor, "not much older than myself but venerable with competence and witnessed pain." He skips the bits about the smell of hay a....

Number Of Pages: 8

Number Of Words: 2192

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