For Dorothy Borders, who writes “The Nature of Things” blog, John Updike was “a master wordsmith.” In “Hugging the Shore by John Updike: A review” of Updike’s 1983 collection of essays and criticism, she notes,

“He could string words together with the best of them, and it is a pleasure to read his smooth and flowing sentences, even when those sentences were written on a subject that didn’t necessarily interest me, like golf. Just to view his writerly craftsmanship was an instruction to the art of writing. I expect I will continue to dip into this book for months to come.”