Sublime

here, plainly, Updike is more interested in his personal filing-system than in his normal courteousness towards the reader.

soothing susurrus of muttered conversations

an unfaltering distillation of the obvious and the obviously false.

‘Try to be one of the people upon whom nothing is lost!’

But Thomas Hart, who still feared death’s sting, was grieving in his pew under the halted moons. Weak light shone on the brass plaque bolted to the coffin: ANNE MARGARET MACAULAY. So that varnished pine contained her flushed cheeks, walking shoes, prudence, preference for Yorkshire tea, shyness, cuttings of African violet, habit of testing the heat

the unseen shift by the state from monitoring to control, the last chapter of the long tale of democracy, free will deformed into willing compliance.

(‘a miserable mediocrity’).

interlopers like Sir Edward Michelborne

derisive