A novelist's omniscience soon enough becomes a kind of secret sharing; this is called free indirect style, a term novelists have lots of different nicknames for--'close third person', or 'going into character'.

Might 'stupid' reflect a slight asperity or distance on the part of the author? Or does the word belong wholly to the character, with the author, in a rush of sympathy, having 'handed' it, as it were, to the tearful fellow?

His stories, through written technically in authorial third person, seem to emanate from a community of Sicilian peasants; they are thick with proverbial sayings, truisms, and homely similes.

Updike must work to establish the quiddity of his character

the third horse of this troika

he wants to discipline this welter of detail

This tutoring is dialectical. Literature makes us better noticers of life; we get to practice on life itself; which in turn makes us better readers of detail in literature; which in turns makes us better readers of life.

My own taste tends towards the sketchier fictional personage, whose lacunae and omissions tease us, provoke us to wade in their deep shallows

It is presented by the author in full exegetical mode

there is something piquant about a man who is at once an omnivorous roamer of the world's knowledge and literatures, and at the same time a little Welsh provincial