Processing this number of shifts normally requires some extra effort on the part of the reader—a sort of fee gets charged in readerly attention. But here we barely notice, charmed by Tolstoy’s “fundamental accuracy of perception.” When we go into a character’s mind, what we find there feels familiar and true. We’ve had versions of those same thoughts ourselves, and so we accept them, and the result is a view of the situation that feels holographic and godlike.
