Tolstoy gives his narrator omniscience in Anna Karenina, but...

Tolstoy gives his narrator omniscience in Anna Karenina, but he's selectively omniscient. Is that uncommon?

He made me question where I got some devices I used in Columbine, which I thought had come from Faulkner. Faulkner probably got a lot of ideas from Tolstoy.

I just noticed how relieved I was to hear from the servants about Dolly's visit to Anna, and marked "Objective!" in the margin. Even though the narrator had shown us the visit from many POVs, and gone deep into their heads repeatedly, illustrating how they were hearing the same exchanges differently . . . "he" (the narrator) never told us which was "true."

It wasn't till the ride home, when Dolly had the urge to ask her servants--and they volunteered their opinions just before she did (itself highly telling, as the servants of many of the other characters would never dare), that I felt a refreshing burst of "objectivity." I trusted their take--and that's exactly why it was provided.

I had been under the impression I already had an objective narrator, though. He's highly object in refusing to take sides, but he's actually much more subjective on behalf of whoever's head he's taking us into. He's reticent to give his own opinion. (I think. I better watch more closely and see if that's true. I've been under the impression I'm getting a lot of Tolstoy's opinions on things, but mostly by making characters look kind of pompous or foolish, and allowing other characters to have at them.)

I don't recall this as being one of the possible POVs we learned in English class. Haha. But I failed to see the power of POV then, and really kind of hated memorizing the types and just did it to pass the test. Meaning I didn't retain it all: the broad strokes only, none of the finer points.

(I forgot to post this. I had 160 pages to go when I wrote it, but I've finished now. More on that soon.)