false http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166485403m/11666.jpg 11666 19 It's 1989, and Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom feels anything but restful. In fact he's frozen, incapacitated by his fear of death--and in the final year of the Reagan era, he's right to be afraid. His 55-year-old body, swollen with beer and munchies and racked with chest pains, wears its bulk "like a set of blankets the decades have brought one by one." He suspects that his son Nelson, who's recently taken over the family car dealership, is embezzling money to support a cocaine habit.<p> Indeed, from Rabbit's vantage point--which alternates between a winter condo in Florida and the ancestral digs in Pennsylvania, not to mention a detour to an intensive care unit--decay is overtaking the entire world. The budget deficit is destroying America, his accountant is dying of AIDS, and a terrorist bomb has just destroyed Pan Am Flight 103 above Lockerbie, Scotland. This last incident, with its rapid transit from life to death, hits Rabbit particularly hard: <blockquote> Imagine sitting there in your seat being lulled by the hum of the big Rolls-Royce engines and the stewardesses bring the clinking drinks caddy... and then with a roar and giant ripping noise and scattered screams this whole cozy world dropping away and nothing under you but black space and your chest squeezed by the terrible unbreathable cold, that cold you can scarcely believe is there but that you sometimes actually feel still packed into the suitcases, stored in the unpressurized hold, when you unpack your clothes, the dirty underwear and beach towels with the merciless chill of death from outer space still in them. </blockquote> Marching through the decades, John Updike's first three Rabbit novels--<I>Rabbit, Run</I> (1960), <I>Rabbit Redux</I> (1971), and <I>Rabbit Is Rich</I> (1981)--dissect middle-class America in all its dysfunctional glory. <I>Rabbit at Rest</I> (1990), the final installment and winner of the Pulitzer Prize, continues this brilliant dissection. Yet it also develops Rabbit's character more fully as he grapples with an uncertain future and the consequences of his past. At one point, for example, he's taken his granddaughter Judy for a sailing expedition when his first heart attack strikes. Rabbit gamely navigates the tiny craft to shore--and then, lying on the beach, feels a paradoxical relief at having both saved his beloved Judy and meeting his own death. (He doesn't, not yet.) Meanwhile, this all-American dad feels responsible for his son's full-blown drug addiction but incapable of helping him. (Ironically, it's Rabbit's wife Janice, the "poor dumb mutt," who marches Nelson into rehab.)<p> His misplaced sense of responsibility--plus his crude sexual urges and racial slurs--can make Rabbit seems less than lovable. Still, there's something utterly heroic about his character. When the end comes, after all, it's the Angstrom family that refuses to accept the reality of Rabbit's mortality. Only Updike's irreplaceable mouthpiece rises to the occasion, delivering a stoical, one-word valediction: "Enough." <I>--Rob McDonald</I> 2580165 1990 Rabbit at Rest total:1256|5:404|4:491|3:272|2:67|1:22| 1256 4956 2000 86 4 16 false false Sun Dec 14 08:28:04 -0800 2008 Sun Dec 14 09:34:30 -0800 2008 more...]]> 4 1 false false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Sat Dec 15 20:00:26 -0800 2007 Wed Jan 30 09:53:25 -0800 2008 more...]]> 5 1 false false Tue Feb 10 12:49:53 -0800 2009 Tue Feb 10 12:49:53 -0800 2009 2 0 false false Sun Feb 15 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Sun Feb 15 15:54:09 -0800 2009 Sun Feb 15 16:14:01 -0800 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Tue Jul 07 12:17:46 -0700 2009 Tue Jul 07 14:09:04 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 1 false false Wed May 06 09:58:35 -0700 2009 Wed May 06 09:58:35 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false true Sun Jan 18 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Mon Jan 19 10:26:17 -0800 2009 Tue Jan 27 13:38:21 -0800 2009

January 18, 2009 -- I am so relieved to finally finish Rabbit at Rest, by John Updike, the last book in his Rabbit series. I am softened, too, by having read this final book. While I dislike the character of Rabbit...more...]]> 4 0 false false Fri Apr 10 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Apr 16 20:04:53 -0700 2009 Mon Apr 27 20:38:43 -0700 2009
I had never read anything by Updike, never really even contemplated it, until his passing this year. Updike was a frequent contributor of short stories to the New Yorker and a few issues featured articles devoted to the literary giant and his work....more...]]> 3 0 false false Mon Aug 10 22:55:10 -0700 2009 Tue Aug 11 21:22:07 -0700 2009 Rabbit at Rest might just be literature's longest death scene, and also one of its most ambivalent. War and Peace made me cry... Rabbit at Rest made me want to eat a salad. Just like the macadamia nuts, bacon double cheeseburgers, and beers Harry continues to pound after his first hear...more...]]> 4 1 false false Fri Jun 29 23:25:13 -0700 2007 Fri Jun 29 23:26:06 -0700 2007 5 0 false false Sat May 02 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Feb 19 21:15:35 -0800 2009 Sat May 02 20:45:27 -0700 2009
Throughout, Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom has been a pretty reprehensible character and he still maintains those chops in this book. He is the unch...more...]]> 5 0 false true Sun Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Tue Jun 10 08:24:48 -0700 2008 Mon Nov 10 13:26:24 -0800 2008 more...]]> 5 0 false false Tue Feb 26 12:08:29 -0800 2008 Sat Mar 29 12:48:05 -0700 2008 more...]]> 3 0 false false Tue Jul 14 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sun Jun 28 13:40:39 -0700 2009 Mon Aug 31 13:11:05 -0700 2009 more...]]> 0 0 false false Mon Feb 02 13:28:43 -0800 2009 Mon Feb 02 13:32:36 -0800 2009
My old boss working at Andre Deutsch at the time gave mea copy of the manuscript before this was published and I was converted instantly from a non-Updike reader to a devoted follower. The description of the fallout from the Pan-Am/Lockerbie plane was chi...more...]]> 5 0 true false Mon Feb 16 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Fri Feb 13 02:52:28 -0800 2009 Mon Feb 16 01:20:10 -0800 2009 1 more...]]> 4 0 false false Sun Feb 01 17:23:19 -0800 2009 Sun Feb 01 17:31:25 -0800 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Fri Dec 19 09:17:27 -0800 2008 Fri Dec 19 09:20:47 -0800 2008 more...]]> 2 0 false false Thu Aug 13 09:04:02 -0700 2009 Thu Aug 13 09:07:11 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Mon May 25 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon May 25 08:32:16 -0700 2009 Mon May 25 08:36:00 -0700 2009 more...]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=11666