If you hate Updike, you will not start loving him now. Or ever, probably. He’s still an unapologetic showoff. (In"The Man Who Became a Soprano," a suburban recorder ensemble charms an audience with “a saucy Handel bourree.”) And he still declines to give females a fair fight. (The wives tend to be young and spacey, and they’re quoted in ways - “Fascinating” – that would make anyone sound like a moron.) Still, “The Afterlife” can be extraordinarily touching. It catches up with characters we met decades ago–Joey Robinson from the novel “Of the Farm,” Richard Maple from the collection “Too Far to Go” –and finds them edgy about death, awed by the implications of being a father and a son. These are elegant, demanding stories. These are rocks worth climbing.
