couple “the beginning of the end” of the Maple marriage. The character Rebecca Cune, who appears as Richard Maple's sexual nemesis, was modeled on a friend of the Updike's. The young woman's bemused reaction to her portrayal, and the hostile reaction from her boyfriend, initially abashed Updike. Upon reconsideration, Updike adopted the doctrine that his literary work was, by necessity, “the truth, slightly arranged.” Theme Updike's Rebecca Cune is a veteran of the Manhattan social scene, who collects anecdotes about the denizens of the city and from these devises a cynical retelling to amuse her cosmopolitan circle of friends. Richard Detweiler writes: The crisis approaches when Joan, in a “risky strategy”, encourages her husband to accompany the attractive Rebecca to her nearby apartment during an impending snowstorm. Upon arrival in her realm, Richard is acutely aware that an “extramarital adventure” both threatens and beckons. At the “crucial moment”, Richard makes a clumsy and stammering retreat from the apartment. Deweiler observes: “Richard has had a quick glance into the tantalizing maze of illicit romance, but also the luck, or the grace, to avoid its penalties- emotional, social and moral…Lust can teach.” Updike leaves the reader with a caveat on the implications of Rebecca's and Richard's final parting: Regarding the moral ambiguity of the story, critic Pritchard notes: Footnotes Sources Allen, Mary. 1976. John Updike’s Love of “Dull Bovine Beauty” from The Necessary Blankness: Women in Major American Fiction of the Sixties. from University of Illinois Press, 1976 in John Updike: Modern Critical Views, Harold Bloom, editor. pp. 69–95 Begley, Adam. 2014. Updike. Harpercollins Publishers, New York. Detweiler, Robert. 1984. John Updike. Twayne Publishers, G. K. Hall & Co., Boston, Massachusetts. (Paperback). 1956 short stories