Sure, Jane Smiley thought a lot about sex as she was writing her new novel, but the more she wrote about it, the less it had any shock value for her. “Then, just as the book was about to be published, it was declared by no less than Mr. John Updike (in a review in the New Yorker) to ‘set a new mark for explicitness in a work of non-pornographic intent.’ What was I doing?”