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John Updike's fiftieth book and fifth collection of assorted prose, most of it first published in The New Yorker, brings together eight years' worth of essays, criticism, addresses, introductions, humorous feuilletons, and-in a concluding section, "Personal Matters"--Paragraphs on himself and his work. More matter, indeed, in an age which, his introduction states, wants "real stuff-the dirt, the poop, the nitty gritty-and not-the obliquities and tenuosities of fiction." Still, the fiction writer's affectionate, shaping hand can be detected in many of these considerations. Herman Melville,…