The Panopticon: John Updike’s Apartment Stories

Has there, in American letters, at least, ever been a better noticer than John Updike?  By “noticer,” I don’t mean “writer of detail,” exactly.  There are many writers whose use of detail I find more narratively effective:  Saul Bellow, Joan Didion, Toni Morrison, Denis Johnson, Stephanie Vaughn, etc.  Updike’s use of detail, as I discussed in a recent essay, often impinges upon the realism, or “realism,” of his fictional worlds, overlarding them with sensory detail that too often alerts the reader to the writer’s presence.  But in terms of pure, preternatural eye for the minute, the ephemeral, and the easily missed, it is difficult to think of another writer who can compare.

Here are a couple of excerpts from “Incest,” one of the earlier stories (contained, in fact, in the wonderful ), many of which endeavor