The book jacket for Memories of the Ford Administration shows a split portrait of James Buchanan and Gerald Ford, but neither president is the main character of the novel. Instead, the personality of Alfred Clayton provides the chief interest for readers of this comic tour de force. The narrator is not just another absent-minded professor, nor just a middle-aged man in limbo between wife and mistress, Clayton is one of Updike's most entertaining comic figures. The comedy, of course, often depends upon Clayton's enormous capacity to confuse reality and romantic dreams. While taking pride in his separation from the Queen of Disorder, the narrator cannot see that his story will lead inevitably to their reconciliation. His foolish attempt to promote a mistress to the status of Perfect Wife is doomed from the start, but Alfred Clayton will be the last to know.

The wife and mistress in the...