Updike's fiction is well-known for its realistic style that renders every nuance and texture of daily life. The use of this technique in Rabbit at Rest, however, almost affords too much of a good thing. Details of contemporary America accumulate for more than five hundred pages. The reader may weary of hearing about every physical sensation, pain, desire, regret, and heart murmur that worry Harry Angstrom, but because Updike pays such loving attention to detail, the result is a style that forms the semblance of a life fully resonant with the experience of decades. The more Rabbit suffers in his fifties, the more he relives the various stages of his life, and thus Updike's realistic style is designed to reveal the complex layers of memory.

The tradition of literary realism offers several precedents for Updike, but he probably learned most about the use of...