More thoughts on Updike's style in Rabbit at Rest

 Further observations on John Updike's style as evinced in Rabbit at Rest (1990): As noted in previous post much of Updike's prose and narrative style centers on his acute observations of topical details: e.g., what a house in 1950 central Pennsylvania might look like, for example, down to the smallest detail of decor, aroma, objets d'art and objects of daily use; the amount of detail, whether observed or recollected, in any of his late novels is beyond compare and astonishing, and maybe frustrating, to any reader (those who want the pure forward motion of plot will be dismayed by the overlay of topical detail, which some - not I - would consider ornamental). The second level of his prose: insight, as the topical detail isn't just "background" or "setting"; rather, each (or at least many) of the topical details spiral off on to observations by the narrator or, more often, by the characters (Rabbit, almost exclusively, in this novel) - what does the recollection from the past mean to them? What memories are evoked and released by these seemingly needless details? Updike's obvious influence here is Proust, but in Updike's case the novel never feels like memoir or a piece of auto fiction: Nobody will confuse Rabbit w/ Updike. The insights are, or appear to be, those of his characters. A third facet, which I overlooked in the earlier post on this topic, is Updike's wealth of information; this novel in particular is heavily researched - not only the news of the day over the year or so span that then novel covers (1988-89) but all sorts of arcana that the characters would know and the novelist would most likely not know off hand, such as the economics of running an auto dealership, the various processes involved in heart surgery. Amazingly, Updike wears his learning light - we never (or at least seldom) feel that he's showing off, as the information he includes is central to the lives of his characters and fundamental in building a novel that is in part a novel of ideas. These three aspects of style - observation, insight, information - all are channeled to the key work of a novelist such as JU, as stylistic elements that give us access to consciousness of another.