Novelists bring us the news journalists fail to convey: sex and religion are in many ways two names for the same impulse. Cynthia Ozick distills this intriguing truth from Christian counterpart John Updike, in a lengthy review of of Updike’s short stories for The New York Times Book Review. “What is notable, and curious, in Updike,” writes Ozick, “is that his sexual scenes seem as distanced and skeptical as a lapsed seminarian’s meticulously recited breviary, while his God-seeking passages send out orgasmic shudders, whether of exaltation or distress.” That’d be nothing but naughty were it not for Updike’s ability to reveal religion within the most ordinary moments and things; “Updike,” continues Ozick, “owns the omnivorous faculty of seeing the telltale flame in every mundane gesture.” Religion writers would do well to borrow a bit of that perception.