Put and Take

PIGEON FEATHERS AND OTHER STORIES (278 pp.)--John Updike--Knopf ($4).

John Updike is a brilliant writer who has so far failed to write a brilliant book. Admiring readers who have watched him warm up for the last several years, exhibiting his perfect half volleys and cableknit sweater, soon may begin to wonder when he is going to get on with the match. The warmup continues in the present collection, as the author jogs his beautifully developed style through a not very demanding series of mood studies, stories and sketches.

All of the glittering words are on view; on page after page the reader's eye is caught by a lambent phrase that subtly calibrates a mood, or a rasping epithet that tears through surface felicity at exactly the point where the author wants granite to show. But before long, although Updike's gifts of language have no trace of falsity, the repeated realization of cleverness begins to be annoying. Unwillingly the reader commences to play put-and-take, acknowledging a score for the author after an especially well-put sentence, taking a point away when a mannerism becomes obvious or the author's pride of word shows through.

Plastic Twin. Updike is a delver into himself, much in the manner of Proust. Most of his protagonists in this collection are really the same thin, brooding young man. although they are given different names. Clearly they are different ages of a fabricated Updike, the kind of plastic twin brother that Proustians invent when they want to probe their own insides without disturbing the machinery. The trouble is that Author Updike does not really seem interested in exploring time and soul, but merely in finding some minimal core to be crusted with his magnificent words. This dedicated 29-year-old man of letters says very little, and says it very well.

An instance is a brief story called The Crow in the Woods. In lacelike prose, with just enough homely obtrusions to prevent his art from seeming precious, Updike tells of a young man's epiphany. The hero wakes up on a winter morning, regards the beauty of his still-sleeping wife, and looks in awe at trees transformed by snow. He rises, fondly changes his baby daughter's diaper, and carries her downstairs, warmly conscious of the absent-minded pat of her hands on his neck. His wife bustles down and prepares breakfast. While he is eating it, he sees, through a window, a great crow settle on a snowy branch. It seems to him the most wonderful thing he has ever seen, and he calls his wife excitedly. "The woman's pragmatic blue eyes flicked from his face to the window where she saw only snow and rested on the forgotten food steaming between his hands. Her lips moved: 'Eat your egg.' "

Words Fondly Tasted. It is beautifully said. But what it says is just not enough.

So it goes throughout the collection. Even the book's best story--a young A. & P. food checker watches three girls in bathing suits pad through the store, and quits his job impulsively when his boss reproaches them for their immodesty--is as forgettable as last week's New Yorker.

The impressions left are of risks untaken, words too fondly tasted, and of a security of skill that approaches smugness. No doubt it is unjust to say these things of a writer who is, after all, better than almost all his contemporaries. But then the apportionment of ability is also unjust, and John Updike must be measured against his outsized (and burdensome) share.

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