H o w t o R e a d L i t e r a t u r e1 9 4way it propels itself through so many sub- clauses, all draped
around the main verb ‘steps’, without for a moment losing its
balance.
There is a lot of such stuff in Updike’s fiction. Take this portrait
of a female character from the same novel:
Pru has broadened without growing heavy in that suety
Pennsylvania way. As if invisible pry bars have slightly spread her
bones and new calcium been wedged in and the flesh gently
stretched to fit, she now presents more front. Her face, once
narrow like Judy’s, at moments looks like a flattened mask.
Always tall, she has in the years of becoming a hardened wife and
matron allowed her long straight hair to be cut and teased out
into bushy wings a little like the hairdo of the Sphinx.‘Like the hairdo of the Sphinx’ is a pleasing imaginative touch.
Once again, however, the passage draws discreet attention to its
own cleverness in the act of sketching Pru. This is ‘fine writing’
with a vengeance. The phrase ‘in that suety Pennsylvania way’ is
rather too knowing, and the image of the pry bars is striking but
too contrived. ‘Contrived’, in fact, is a suitable word for this style of
writing as a whole, as Pru herself threatens to disappear beneath
the density of detail with which she is overlaid. The passage has the
effect of describing an object rather than a person. Its style freezes
a living woman into a still life.
Contrast Updike’s prose with this extract from Evelyn Waugh’s
short story ‘Tactical Exercise’:
They arrived on a gusty April afternoon after a train journey of
normal discomfort. A taxi drove them eight miles from the