Rabbit Redux

Apr 14, 2010 Moira Russell rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: underwhelmed

This is actually cut and pasted from a long comment on someone else's review! It focuses primarily on this book, altho there are some sentiments in it I'd apply to all the Rabbit stories.

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warning! terribly tl;dr

Ben said:
Updike swung for the fences; he wanted to represent the 60s in one novel; but it was like he didn’t really immerse himself in it; like he was trying to write about it from the outside, as an observer. Novels written by the “observer writer” can work, of course; but typically, I...more

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Nov 29, 2008 brian rated it 3 of 5 stars

xxx

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Mar 15, 2012 MJ Nicholls rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novels, merkins

This book is where the Angstroms became the Osbournes, without the cracking heavy metal catalogue. Or, as other reviewers have pointed out, it’s where Updike tackles Big Questions of American politics and culture within his sexy literary soap opera framework. I also see I was wrong in attempting to empathise with Angstrom—he’s clearly being set up as a Great White Dope, where racist and sexist poison accumulates and infects those unfortunate enough to fall under his sway. So we open with Rabbit’...more

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Jan 18, 2009 Greg rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

I wrote this review a few years ago for a different site. I called it Rabbit's A Reactionary Racist. It's been edited a little bit from it's original context.

What is the novel about? Well it’s about Harry ‘Rabbit’ Angstrom: a man in his early thirties, with a wife, a son and a job on the verge of being made obsolete by technology. In the first novel, Rabbit ran away from his wife and young child. The novel dealt with the way he is pulled between his freedom and responsibility. In Rabbit’s secon...more I wrote this review a few years ago for a different site. I called it Rabbit's A Reactionary Racist. It's been edited a little bit from it's original context.

What is the novel about? Well it’s about Harry ‘Rabbit’ Angstrom: a man in his early thirties, with a wife, a son and a job on the verge of being made obsolete by technology. In the first novel, Rabbit ran away from his wife and young child. The novel dealt with the way he is pulled between his freedom and responsibility. In Rabbit’s second appearance on the literary scene he is at the other end of the estranged spouse paradigm. Rabbit’s wife leaves him to live with her smooth talking car salesman boyfriend. After being cuckold by his wife Rabbit feels sorry for himself, blames his troubles on others, shacks up with an 18 year old hippie, lets an African American criminal on the run move into his house, works through 400 years of racial injustice through his discussions with the hippie and the criminal, has his house burned down by racist neighbors and ultimately gets back together with his wife. This all sounds sort of familiar if you’ve read the first novel. Many of the incidents have just been changed slightly and the novels overly peppered with events from 1969 to make sure the reader never forgets that the action takes place as man first walked on the moon, Laugh-In and the Mod Squad played on the telly and movie-goers were packing theatres to see Kubrick’s cerebral 2001: A Space Odyssey. The actions similar to the first tale of Rabbit but the times are a changing. Poor Rabbit though isn’t changing with the times though. Maybe if Updike could have written Rabbit as adapting better to the turmoil of the 60’s this novel would have been more enjoyable (or at least less offensive).

I might be wrong but I don’t think the word cunt was generally used to describe women in 1969. . I don’t think the word experienced much of a mainstream vogue in America, but if I took Updike’s picture of the cultural terrain of America at this time as an example then I’d believe that good Americans, Conservative Americans at the time believed that women could be reduced to this term. Not just reduced but defined as just being walking cunt’s with interchangeable faults attributed to them. Updike uses this term more often that Irvine Welsch does. The word is used constantly to an annoying degree. Added to the excessive use of this word as catch all for all women (except for poor Rabbit’s mom) is a good healthy dose of racism. Rabbit believes it’s not worth his son caring too much about a girl he likes being dead because there are a few billion more cunt’s in the world. Rabbit doesn’t like blacks on the bus with him because they smell. Rabbit doesn’t like hippies because they don’t love the country. Rabbit likes the idea of bombing Vietnam into the pre-historic age. Rabbit’s a good American trying to raise his son but only thinks twice before joining his counter-culture housemates in smoking dope in front of his kid. Rabbit’s a total hypocrite.

One might try to argue that through his talks with the on the lam criminal, Skeeter, that Updike shows the way that even the close minded archetype of middle America can learn to empathize with Civil Rights. One might if they were ignoring the way that Updike treats all of his minority characters. There are three African American characters. One if a drunk co-worker / part time pimp, the second is a pot smoking alcohol swilling lounge singer / prostitute, and the third is Skeeter a small time pot dealer / irrational revolutionary who thinks his the living incarnation of Jesus Christ. The first two characters are presented for color and for Rabbit to have masturbatory fantasies about. The third argues the case for Black Power in the most schizophrenic, irrational and flat out moronic manner possible who discredits all of Civil Rights leaders in favor of some acid induced logic. Rabbit starts to agree with him at times, which makes no sense except to prove that Rabbit’s a moron. I don’t know what Updike was trying to do with this. Especially because he wastes almost half of the book involved in these discussions between Rabbit and Skeeter.

This novel left me feeling kind of offended. Aside being offended I felt nothing. The prose is nice and clean but I have hundreds of books that are well written. I know that I’m going to read the last two novels with clenched teeth because I am unable to not finish a book or a series no matter how much I hate it. I don’t recommend entering into Rabbit’s world, or if you do read the first novel and then use your imagination about what he would be doing ten years down the road. (less)

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Jul 14, 2009 Katherine rated it 3 of 5 stars

As Rabbit Redux begins in 1968, we learn that our man-child anti-hero has grown up into... one of those crew-cut wing-tipped lawn-mowing wife-slapping N-bomb-dropping don't-sass-me-punk-I-did-my-time-in-that-Korean-thing weasels that populate every single white suburban boy's 1960s coming of age story ever written, the ones who serve as a foul-mouthed foil for the young hero's eventual enlightenment.

In my review of Rabbit Run I touched on the divide between the "clean" Brewer and the "dirty" Bre...more As Rabbit Redux begins in 1968, we learn that our man-child anti-hero has grown up into... one of those crew-cut wing-tipped lawn-mowing wife-slapping N-bomb-dropping don't-sass-me-punk-I-did-my-time-in-that-Korean-thing weasels that populate every single white suburban boy's 1960s coming of age story ever written, the ones who serve as a foul-mouthed foil for the young hero's eventual enlightenment.

In my review of Rabbit Run I touched on the divide between the "clean" Brewer and the "dirty" Brewer, and on the fact that Rabbit could take an extended holiday in Dirty Brewer and return to Clean Brewer seemingly untouched by the experience. We saw suggestions that the split between the two cities was a racial one as well: the Chinese food that has featured so far in all of Rabbit's experiences with prostitutes, the "colored" waitress at Ruth's favorite juke joint, and so on. As long as Dirty Brewer stayed a bus ride away from Clean Brewer, everything was fine for guys like Rabbit. Now, Dirty Brewer hasn't just invaded the city proper, it's often indivisible from the last refuges of Clean Brewer.

This time, Rabbit's wife Janice walks away from the marriage in favor of one of her father's salesmen, a small-time Aristotle Onassis figure known for getting into loud liberal arguments. In the lonely aftermath, he takes in a parole-jumping drug dealer and self-styled Black Jesus, Skeeter, and a rich-girl hippie runaway, Jill.

And here's where the book falls on its face. If Skeeter and Jill were anything other than cartoons, some grouchy suburban dad's slapped-together idea of what the civil rights movement is and what the hippie counterculture lifestyle is, then maybe...

There's a bleakly funny moment about two-thirds of the way into the novel, in which Rabbit is confronted by his neighbors over the fact that some neighborhood kids have glimpsed a black man and a white woman having sex in his living room. Repulsed by the extremity of their racism, he defends his right to do anything he wants with his own damn private property - the same argument often used and especially in the 60s and 70s to prevent women, Jews and Catholics, and people of color from entering spaces traditionally held by white Protestant men. If the entire book had carried this same kind of conscious irony, Rabbit Redux could have been much more intelligent than it is.

But despite everything, I read the damn thing at a clip. There are gems here - Janice searching frantically for emergency nitroglycerin to dose her lover comes to mind - and it was mind-expanding to read something that didn't portray the sixties as the glorious homeland revolution. (I grew up in a household with strong hippie roots.) Everything Rabbit eats or drinks tastes vaguely of chemicals. He is laid off when the job he has had for 12 years becomes functionally obsolete. They don't play outside or talk to their neighbors anymore, unless it's in hostile boundary-defending confrontations. They have less money, more worries, fewer opportunities.

Rabbit is Rich is up next. This series is like Harry Potter for bitter people.(less)

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Aug 06, 2007 Liz rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: people who HAVE to read things through in order

Shelves: library

Ugh. I'm committed to reading these through, but this had better be the low point of the series (ahem, tetralogy). Updike is compelled to use the word "cunt" as often as possible, and the Skeeter character is boring and obnoxious. The third section dragged (all those quotes from "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas"?!) and there wasn't enough of Updike actually writing the beautiful descriptions of landscape and feeling that he's capable of.

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Apr 09, 2009 Frank rated it 4 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Rabbit Redux is sort of a trainwreck. It's like that episode of Six Feet Under where Dexter smokes crack. There are so many wrong turns that it is almost beautiful. I could not put this thing down.

One of the main characters is Skeeter who is a black Vietnam vet who has moved in with Rabbit and Rabbit's possibly underage hippie girlfriend. They smoke a lot of pot and talk about the war, and I realize that Updike is trying to do something about race, but all of his black characters are either pim...more

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Apr 14, 2010 Ben rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: families, important-message, read-in-2010, romantic-love-and-hate

A year ago I vowed to myself (and you, if you had read my review of Rabbit, Run) that I’d read a Rabbit novel annually until I’m done with the four-novel series; the idea being that I could look back and see how I’d changed in the past year, comparing the changes in my life with those incurred by Rabbit. But it’s the same shit different day for me over here, ya hear? And I’m not turning this into some kind of self centered review about me-me-me. Instead, I’m going to (eventually) talk about the...more

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Mar 05, 2009 Drew Cauthorn rated it 4 of 5 stars

My first Updike. This is not the best introduction to the Rabbit Series. Updike is a wonderful writer. He certainly captured the late '60's in this novel--which I lived through, being only a few years younger than Harry A.

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Jan 04, 2009 Noah Dropkin rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is the second novel in the Rabbit tetraology, written in 1971. John Updike is without a doubt one of the best novelists of the past 50 years. Some authors like Updike and Philip Roth write with such ease it is obvious when you read their prose.

Ten years after the first Rabbit novel, this book is about many things - marital infedilty and the challenges of middle-age, the 1960s, Vietnam and of course the furher development of Harry Angstrom, an anti-hero whose best times seem to be behind him...more

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Apr 14, 2013 Stephen Thomas rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

STILL STEWING IN HIS OWN JUICES

Rabbit is back and it's 1969. Set against the backdrop of the first moon landing and the Vietnam war Harry Angstrom is once again thrown into personal turmoil. His wife leaves him for a co-worker, his mother is slowly dying, and his job is none too secure. Harry repopulates his house, and his life, with an itinerant 18-year-old rich girl and a black messianic veteran. His son Nelson remains at home with his father and has to come to terms with this new bohemian lif...more

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Apr 08, 2013 Mj Perry rated it 2 of 5 stars

Consider Updike's trip through the decade: he kicked it off with Rabbit Run as the 20-something whiz, won the National Book Award for the Centaur and in '68 made the cover of Time after Couples aired the laundry of New England. Likely, he thought he had the nation's ear and was cocky enough to try to write The Book of the 1960s. Can't blame the guy drinking his own popular brand of Kool Aid, but that big novel was beyond him. The rich Jill/every Rabbit pairing is a stretch;he barely maintains co...more

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Apr 06, 2013 Mmars rated it 4 of 5 stars

Really 3.5 or maybe 4. This is undoubtedly an important book in the world of publishing, but I felt Rabbit, Run (despite how disturbing I found the ending) was much better written. Perhaps this was one was more disturbing, but in a different way. Where Rabbit was just plain immature in the first book. Here he's just plain spineless. I had a hard time believing how much he loved his mother in the end of the book - where did THAT come from???? To me he was mixing love with pity. But then, Rabbit i...more

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Feb 07, 2013 Al rated it 3 of 5 stars

In this sequel to Rabbit, Run, John Updike resumes the spiritual quest of his anxious Everyman, Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom. Ten years have passed; the impulsive former athlete has become a paunchy thirty-six-year-old conservative, and Eisenhower’s becalmed America has become 1969’s lurid turmoil of technology, fantasy, drugs, and violence. Rabbit is abandoned by his family, his home invaded by a runaway and a radical, his past reduced to a ruined inner landscape; still he clings to semblances of d

...more

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Feb 06, 2013 Dan rated it 3 of 5 stars

This novel was a huge disappointment. I had such high expectations after Rabbit, Run. It's 1969, and Rabbit communes with a hippie chick and a black radical because, like it's the '60's, man. And he like totally digs it when Skeeter, the black guy, goes on and on about the oppression of the white man. Rabbit's sun and his girlfriend take the position of the reader, begging Rabbit to stop. But Rabbit, taking the position of the author says, "no, let's hear some more." Ugh.

Unlike Rabbit, Run, Upd...more

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Dec 31, 2012 Tim rated it 4 of 5 stars

John Updike's second novel about Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, far from being a dated, passe update of the protagonist's life, is instead a sharp, resonant snapshot of its times. Published just two years after the time in which it was set, 1969, "Rabbit Redux" tackles and moves among the era's issues and defining moments: race, the space program, drugs, the Vietnam War, modern angst. It also shows Updike's ability to make a lot out of a little, plot-wise.

"Rabbit, Run" was very good, not great; "Rabbi...more John Updike's second novel about Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, far from being a dated, passe update of the protagonist's life, is instead a sharp, resonant snapshot of its times. Published just two years after the time in which it was set, 1969, "Rabbit Redux" tackles and moves among the era's issues and defining moments: race, the space program, drugs, the Vietnam War, modern angst. It also shows Updike's ability to make a lot out of a little, plot-wise.

"Rabbit, Run" was very good, not great; "Rabbit Redux" is better, and very nearly great.

Here, the self-centered Rabbit has the tables turned on him as his wife has an affair and eventually moves out. Left home with his 12-year-old son, Nelson, Rabbit doesn't know what he's searching for, but it finds him and sends his world spiraling. Rabbit, 36, works with his father at a printing press, stringing together words of a turbulent, ever-expanding world around him. His own world pulls him down and brings with it a young woman half his age, whom he meets at a club with friends of a black co-worker. While his wife seems to be finding her footing away from him, he's kicking it with the interesting chick upon whom his life will center for several months. Well, there's also Skeeter, a somehwhat radical black man who hides from the law at Rabbit's place and comes to dominate the lives of Rabbit and Jill, pushing racial and sexual buttons, stirring up shame and guilt and fascination. It's a dark, slow spiral down this Rabbit hole, and a fascinating one. Rabbit, who certainly has shown racist tendencies previous to this, himself seems unsure as to why he lets this man stay, and the sex and the twists of race talk and war talk make it not exactly a suitable environment in which to raise a child, one would think, but Rabbit is held by the centrifugal force and can't escape.

It's a very insular world Rabbit's tied himself to, but it's a fascinating one spiced with some astonishing writing. Really, there are many moments when this is about as good as it gets as far as beauty of the written word, though here and there Updike probably is guilty of overwriting. But so what? "Rabbit Redux" is an amazing chronicle of a 1969 that was still hot then and still fascinating now.
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Aug 13, 2012 B. Glen Rotchin rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

At the beginning of the summer I set myself the goal of polishing off the first four of John Updike's five Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom novels. As I near the end of book #2, Rabbit Redux, I might have to admit defeat. I don't think I'll make it past this one, for now. I wasn't expecting light summer fare, but these novels drag. They are virtually plotless, completely character and relationship driven. The aspect that rankles most is the uncanniness of the main character, by which I mean that he is bo...more At the beginning of the summer I set myself the goal of polishing off the first four of John Updike's five Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom novels. As I near the end of book #2, Rabbit Redux, I might have to admit defeat. I don't think I'll make it past this one, for now. I wasn't expecting light summer fare, but these novels drag. They are virtually plotless, completely character and relationship driven. The aspect that rankles most is the uncanniness of the main character, by which I mean that he is both there and not there at the same time. Two novels in and I still don't have much of a sense about what makes the guy tick. Turbulent relationships swirl all around him as in a storm, and he appears to be like the empty vortex in the centre. I want to hate, or love, or feel something for Rabbit, even pity, but ultimately all I feel is indifference. If he can't commit emotionally to what's happening to him how is the reader supposed to? Rabbit spends most of his time evading, which is Updike's point of course. But he can't go on running forever. At some point he has to face up to his problems, and two novels in, he still hasn't and it's as frustrating to the reader as to him. But Updike's ultimate goal was less to chronicle the trials and tribulations of an American man then to write a novel that pronounces on the zeitgeist of the decade in which he lives, in this case the 1960s. The central character is actually America herself and Updike wants to describe how she's being ravaged by social upheaval. So characters become representations instead of real people. Harry is the befuddled and bewildered American middle-class white suburbanite male who supports the war in Vietnam (more for patriotic reasons than for political ones) and carries around some of the lingering racial prejudice and misogyny that characterized white America prior to the civil rights revolution. Contrast Harry as emblem to: Jill, a Porsche-driving spoiled little rich kid junkie who uses sex to gain acceptance, and her dealer, a black Vietnam vet with a messianic complex on the lam named Skeeter. The war, check. Sexual revolution, check. The dissolution of traditional bourgeois family values and the American dream, check. Updike has lined up all his ducks in order to take aim at the social and political issues he wants to address. The novel has that deliberate contrived feel to it, with lots of dialogue, frequently monologue (rants), especially from the oratorically-flamboyant Skeeter. The other relationships of importance to Harry are with his 12 year old son Nelson, his parents, and his estranged wife Janice, who ran off with a car salesman work colleague. Tellingly, the closest Harry comes to making a genuine emotional connection is with his dad (his mom is suffering from Parkinson's and for most of the novel Harry can't muster up the courage to visit her.) The domestic vacuum left by Janice's departure is filled by Jill and Skeeter, which is to say, that it's not filled at all except to add further instability and a sense of impending disaster. Everyone seems to be using everyone else, Jill trades on sex with Harry to gain a roof over her head and the approval of a father figure, and uses Skeeter to get drugs and allay her white bourgeois guilt. Harry uses Jill for sexual pleasure and comfort. Skeeter uses Harry for refuge and as an audience to mouth-off about the injustices done to black Americans from slavery onward. Harry uses Skeeter to allay his guilty feelings for supporting the war. It's a pathetically dysfunctional square-dance; partners coming together to trade-off their guilt, shame, victimization, self-righteousness, bigotry, misogyny, immaturity and irresponsibility which is how Updike seems to see the way the 'new' America works (or rather doesn't work). Not much genuine tenderness is in evidence, except in the relationship between Jill and Nelson, which is its own special recipe for disaster, he seeing a sister/mother-figure in a lost, self-destructive, immature girl not much older than him. As social commentary - and given Updike's own objectives, I believe it's the only way to see this novel - it doesn't offer much hope, let alone balance. As a novel, well, let's just say I'm tired of seeing Rabbit run.(less)

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Aug 04, 2012 Christopher MacMillan rated it 4 of 5 stars

More like 4 1/2

The second novel in John Updike's Rabbit series, Rabbit Redux continues the story of Harry Angstrom, 10 years after it left off: it's 1969, the bohemian movement is in full-swing throughout the country, and Harry instead finds himself grumpy, hitting a stone wall in his marriage, and warped into a conservative who despises everything about the hippies, the anti-Vietnam War protests, and the Civil Rights Movement.

But eventually things take place that slowly inspire Harry Angstrom t...more More like 4 1/2

The second novel in John Updike's Rabbit series, Rabbit Redux continues the story of Harry Angstrom, 10 years after it left off: it's 1969, the bohemian movement is in full-swing throughout the country, and Harry instead finds himself grumpy, hitting a stone wall in his marriage, and warped into a conservative who despises everything about the hippies, the anti-Vietnam War protests, and the Civil Rights Movement.

But eventually things take place that slowly inspire Harry Angstrom to question his ideals: the moon landing, a viewing of 2001: A Space Odyssey, his wife's leaving him for another man, getting to know his black co-worker, having a love affair with the young flower child who moves in with him, dabbling with marijuana, and partaking in nightly debates with a Black Panther member all rock the ideas that the angry, sullen Angstrom has come to accept as truth.

What I really liked here though is that, while Harry's opinions start to sway a bit more to the left, he never has any sort of epiphany that makes his mindset take a full 180; rather, he just starts to understand the liberal perspective a bit more, even though - by the novel's end - he's not fully convinced by it. It's a realistic way for Updike to have handled this character, and adds layers of subtle richness to the text. Also realistic about Harry is that he's in no way a noble main character, but rather, a total anti-hero: he's temperamental, prone to violent outbursts and saying blunt, rude things. He cares for very few other people, and takes no issue whatsoever with being neglectful. In Rabbit Redux, however, the tables have turned on his marriage with Janice, and it is now her who runs away, leaving him behind to care for their son. But like its predecessor, even though it's not Harry who's fled this time, he still takes in many life lessons over the course of the novel, and we see him finally start to grow a bit more by the time the book is done.

Rabbit Redux is saturated in 1960s culture and beliefs, much of which is still relevant today, and the character of Harry is so interesting, as we watch his life unfold even more after the existential crises we saw him undergo in Rabbit, Run. Like that novel, the plot here moves at a glacial pace, but this allows the story of Harry to simmer in subtlety as we watch the faintest traces of change begin to take place within him. This is a very smart book, and one which leaves me interested to know what more happens to Harry Angstrom in the next of the saga's novels.(less)

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Aug 02, 2012 Andrea Mullarkey rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: audio

John Updike’s Rabbit series follows Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom from his mid-20s as a young father living in Brewer, Pennsylvania to his retirement 30 years later. In the first book he is looking for a way out of his lackluster life. His marriage, his children, his job, and his family all pale in comparison to his memories of being the star of his high school basketball team. His desire for a brighter life drive him to questionable decisions which have bad consequences. In the end he is back near wh...more

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Dec 10, 2011 P.Sannie rated it 3 of 5 stars

The story of Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom continues in Rabbit Redux and at the end of Rabbit Run, I thought, "Hmm, what's going to happen now?" The second part has a lot of different themes: the Vietnam War, segregation, infidelity, family, how complex relationships can be. Updike's writing is marvelous and captures the humanity of every character. I liked and disliked all of the characters and they come across as very real. All of them are flawed and you can't fault them for being normal. I really l...more

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Sep 25, 2011 Sergio Negrón rated it 3 of 5 stars

Also listened to Arthur Morrey's audiobook version. Performed as well as the last one, this book is just as frustrating: Rabbit is as annoying as ever, full of self-pity and inertia, left by his wife, and a few dozen pounds overweight. This book, I guess, could be considered an overly explicit "political" novel. Explicit in that it jumps into each of the controversial topics of the times (70s), without any sort of subtlety: from race relations, to Vietnam, to free love. It can get a little too o...more

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Jul 21, 2011 Patrick rated it 3 of 5 stars

There are some wonderful sentences in this book - the opening line "men emerge from the little printing plant at four sharp, ghosts for an instant, blinking until the outdoor light overcomes the look of constant indoor light clinging to them" is amongst my favourites. Over a whole novel, though I start to find it a bit tiresome and over-written.

For me, its of interest mainly as a document of changing times and the upheavals of the 1960s as seen from the point of view of an unremarkable and diffi...more

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Feb 19, 2011 Holly rated it 3 of 5 stars

New York Times

Review by ANATOLE BROYARD
Published: November 5, 1971

RABBIT REDUX
By John Updike
When I began this book and found Rabbit Angstrom 10 years older, fatter, softer, settled and no longer even running as he was in the earlier version, I wondered why Updike had locked himself in with this loser, why he had given himself so little elbow room. He has this habit, I thought, of keeping his people small -- old, precious or ordinary -- so he can write all around them, pin them with his exquisite...more

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Dec 21, 2010 Brittney rated it 4 of 5 stars

While Rabbit Run was essentially the starter Updike book in this class examining Updike's career, Rabbit, Redux was the graduated version. More freestyle than Rabbit Run since Updike had built up his fame in the interim between books and was on his own personal quest to be bigger than Shakespeare (a personal motive brought about by Updike's rise in career even after a reviewer compared him to Shakespeare).

In this novel, Janice and Nelson have bigger roles. It isn't about Rabbit, and this time, h

...more

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Nov 29, 2010 Ian Mapp rated it 2 of 5 stars

Difficult book this. Maybe its just me, but I just dont tend to get American Authors doing the great american novel thing that well.

10 years on from the Rabbit Run, Harry is back with Janice, has a 12 year old boy nelson and is living the american dream - job, house, beers after work.

All of this collapses, as you would expect.

The author also tries to pack the sixties into the novel - at times, we have free love, 60s aggitation against the man, black power, the moon landings etc. all packed into...more

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Aug 19, 2010 Jee Koh rated it 5 of 5 stars

My first Updike, and I exploded with pure pleasure. From the precise beauty of its descriptions. From its beguiling historical detail and allegorical meaning. From its nuanced understanding of men and women, particularly men, but also women, what they want, what they fear, what they fear to want.

The structure of the book is elegantly simple. It opens with a wife walking out on her husband, and closes with the probability of them getting back together again. Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom is a man who...more

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Jul 01, 2009 Hollis rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: literary-fiction

Updike is often mentioned as one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century and the Rabbit books are described as masterpieces of American literature. Am I missing something? As far as I could tell, it was a soap-opera plot mixed in with some tasteless sex scenes, an excessive amount of detail and descriptive language that is so excessively ornate it frequently becomes tawdry and nonsensical. That seems to impress the critics, but it doesn't impress me.

This book is also an opportunity for...more Updike is often mentioned as one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century and the Rabbit books are described as masterpieces of American literature. Am I missing something? As far as I could tell, it was a soap-opera plot mixed in with some tasteless sex scenes, an excessive amount of detail and descriptive language that is so excessively ornate it frequently becomes tawdry and nonsensical. That seems to impress the critics, but it doesn't impress me.

This book is also an opportunity for Updike to step up his long-running competition with Philip Roth to use the word 'cunt' as many times as possible in a serious work of literature. I would estimate that it is used about sixty times in this novel which is impressive in a juvenile way.

Aside from that, I really don't know what much else there is to this novel. It was just a load of sex scenes held together with some bickering conversations. I mean, Updike really is tasteless when he gets going: by the time the phrase 'salt swamp' was used in one of these scenes, I was starting to feel slightly sick and came pretty close to throwing the book across the room in irritation and boredom. I don't know what it is about Updike's style that irritates me so much: it's just so grotesquely pretentious, so smug and self-conscious, like Martin Amis but even worse. Another thing that is annoying is that Updike keeps throwing in these stupid 'revelations' every time Rabbit finishes sleeping with someone. It really is remarkably pretentious. For example:

''How sad, how strange. We make companions out of air and hurt them, so they will defy us, completing creation'.

What does that even mean? It's supposed to be a serious revelation and yet it is clearly meaningless. He does this every page. He even does at the end of every review he does. It's really annoying. How about another one?

''We grope on, under bullies and accountants''.

What? What are you talking about? This doesn't impress people. Well, it does unfortunately, but that's their problem.

A critic on the jacket describes this novel as a ''vindication'' of ''essentially realist'' fiction. On the contrary, I would choose this book as a perfect representation of why it is that ''essentially realist'' fiction is self-destructive when it is taken as far as Updike takes it. As the plots become more and more trivial, the language becomes cheaper and ever more tawdry, the sex scenes and depictions of emotion ever more tasteless, the characters ever more repugnant and the core beneath Updike's sweet sugar coating becomes ever more meaningless. I'll still give it 3 stars because I think to be fair the odd section or paragraph is very well-written and Updike does succeed in pulling the novel together as a whole, but it really didn't strike me as a ''modern classic'' and I have yet to find out why it is that Updike is held in such high regard as a writer.(less)

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Apr 14, 2009 Geetha rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is the second in the series of Rabbit books by John Updike. At the start of the book, Rabbit seems to have settled down to a more conventional life, he is living with his wife and son, owns a house, and has a job. His excessive interest in sex in “Rabbit Run” has quietened, he is an active father, does housework – (it is Janice who is running around in “Redux” ) but as the book progresses Rabbit’s life unravels. You see the same inability in Rabbit to take hold of things, to cope and organi...more This is the second in the series of Rabbit books by John Updike. At the start of the book, Rabbit seems to have settled down to a more conventional life, he is living with his wife and son, owns a house, and has a job. His excessive interest in sex in “Rabbit Run” has quietened, he is an active father, does housework – (it is Janice who is running around in “Redux” ) but as the book progresses Rabbit’s life unravels. You see the same inability in Rabbit to take hold of things, to cope and organize his life. Again in “Redux” he is bored with life; it seems to have no meaning, directionless “No belief in an afterlife, no hope for it, too much more of the same thing, already it seems he has lived twice” pg 89.
His wife leaves him; he takes a hippie in to live with him who lets in Skeeter. Skeeter emerges as the most complex character in the novel. Skeeter is full of rage at years of black oppression, resentful of the sudden “equality” afforded to blacks on the battlefields of Vietnam and messed up with his drug habits. The reader can tell that that this setup can lead to nothing but disaster. One marvels at how Rabbit allows his son to be exposed to promiscuous sex, drugs and foul language. In spite of everything there is no doubt that Rabbit is a loving father. Nelson has an unusual sense of morality and responsibility given the circumstances of his upbringing.
In Rabbit, Jill and Skeeter three points of view meet – Rabbit represents middle class white America, Jill represents liberal America and Skeeter is the power of the black movement. Jill the hippie and Skeeter the black activist do manage to change Rabbit’s attitudes about racial equality. However one is not quite sure what Updike wants to say about racial equality. All the black characters in the novel are unsavoury, not a good choice of characters if Updike wanted us to be on the side of racial equality.
As in “Rabbit Run”, there is a tragic event at the end of this book as well. Again as in the first book Rabbit is not present when the event takes place but feels responsible for it and as his wife blamed the event upon him in the first book, his son blames him for the event in this book. These tragic events at the end of the book whet the reader’s appetite and one wants to read the next book to see what happens to the characters in the future.
Overall the book is well written. All major events of the 60s are featured making it interesting- Nixon’s Presidency, Armstrong on the moon, Vietnam War, draft dodging, civil rights movement, race riots, free love and drugs. Some of Skeeter’s long and boring diatribes on racism and Vietnam drag on. Readers who have not read Updike must be warned that his books are full of descriptions of explicit sex. I am not sure why Updike feels this much is necessary. May be he was trying to say that excessive focus on physical pleasures of the body would lead to disappointment and emptiness in our relationships. At the end of “Rabbit Redux” Rabbit ponders on this subject “there must be something else” he tells Janice. If we consider the Rabbit Series as documenting Rabbit’s growth, (his mother tells Rabbit when he regrets his loss of wife, job and house “You’re growing up”) this realization would be part of the growth.
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Sep 02, 2011 Richard rated it 4 of 5 stars

Ten years have passed in the life of the book's protagonist, Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, since we met him in the first novel to chronicle his life, "Rabbit Run." Ten years had also passed in the life of the author, and in the life of the United States, in real time, between novels. Rabbit is now about thirty-six years old, and he is settled into a new modest rancher in the burbs of Reading, er, Brewer. He and wife Janice and now-thirteen year old son Nelson are a nuclear family. After his running f...more Ten years have passed in the life of the book's protagonist, Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, since we met him in the first novel to chronicle his life, "Rabbit Run." Ten years had also passed in the life of the author, and in the life of the United States, in real time, between novels. Rabbit is now about thirty-six years old, and he is settled into a new modest rancher in the burbs of Reading, er, Brewer. He and wife Janice and now-thirteen year old son Nelson are a nuclear family. After his running from life's commitments in the first novel, Harry took a job at the printing plant where his father Earl had worked all of his life. Harry is still settling into middle class domesticity ten years later.

The novel begins amid Updike's indelible description of the father and son typesetters leaving work and hitting a bar for a drink before both take their respective buses home. Conversations these days, in July 1969, center often on the raging Vietnam War, and on the race riots taking part in the nation's cities; they are lately overshadowed by television and print news reports about the Apollo space mission which is about to land for the first time on the moon. If you haven't lived through that time, you probably wouldn't understand the fascination and sense of thrill that swept the nation, and the world, over this event. Earl, talking like a a lifelong Democrat, settles into his beer and talks about how the "little man" has been helped immensely by former President LBJ. Updike's power of setting a backdrop for a scene is demonstrated here: " ... he {Harry] sees his father as one of the "little men." Pop stands whittled by the great American glare, squinting the manna of blessings that come down from the government, shuffling from side to side in nervous happiness that his day's work is done, that a beer is inside him, that [Neil] Armstrong is above him, that the U.S. is the crown and stupefaction of human history. Like a piece of grit in the launching pad, he has done his part." (p. 10).

Although Harry and Janice have "gone on" with their marriage since the events of 1959, emotional issues started then have not been fully addressed. Prominent is Janice's sense of herself, concerning the emotional and intimacy distance Harry has kept since the death of their second child. Janice also has a job, at her father's used car dealership, and she has been spending more time working late at "the lot." She works with a madras-jacket type of car salesman named Charlie Stavros, a middle-aged single guy who likes to play the field. It doesn't take long for Janice's love affair with Charlie to be deduced by Harry, and Janice moves in with Charlie after a fight with Harry.

The country's struggles with political and social upheavals run parallel to the upheavals and changes in world view experienced by Rabbit. Never comfortable conversing with blacks at his job, he nevertheless accepts an offer from co-worker Buchanan to meet him at a bar frequented by Brewer's blacks. Buchanan's girlfriend has been harboring an eighteen-year-old girl, Jill, an upper-class runaway with a Porsche gifted by her rich parents, and a hippy sense of values. She moves in with Rabbit, and shortly, an acquaintance of hers, a black Vietnam veteran named Scooter, shows up and joins the Rabbit household. Jill lives in Rabbit's bedroom but the household is communal. Skeeter and Jill do cooking and shopping chores while Rabbit works. Rabbit knows there is fooling around between Jill and Skeeter when he is out, and he also knows Jill has been expanding Nelson's horizons in several ways. Evenings are spent watching the era's typical network television, after post-supper living room discussions usually initiated by Skeeter, who brought back a shelf-full of books from Vietnam. Skeeter is confrontational to Rabbit's prejudices, at turns educating and insulting him by open readings from Frederick Douglas and cosmological expositions of his other persona of preacher of a free-floating religiosity, while marijuana smoke fills the parlor. "Black Jesus" can have extremely well-formed positions on the nation's black experience, but he can quickly change to exhibiting delusions of grandeur or rage.

Harry is not completely happy with Skeeter's presence in the home, but he feels that Jill will move out if he demands Skeeter to move out. Jill and Nelson feel frequently frightened by Skeeter. This is a major section of the book, but it can induce a feeling of disjointedness when reading it. Harry seems to get drawn into Skeeter quickly, given that he could have served as the example for Norman Lear's upcoming sitcom starring Archie Bunker up to now. He has been an argumentative Vietnam war hawk, and frequently voiced his disdain at "Wops, Pollocks" and blacks. Skeeter is too edgy to be influential to someone like him. Skeeter is known to be on the run from the law for a drug bust and his physical domination of Jill, violently and sexually, is becoming more blatant; there is evidence that he lately has been grooming Jill into using hard drugs. Harry's family, including his and Janice's parents, express alarm over his lifestyle and his suburban neighbors let him know they don't countenance what is going on at his house, including having a black person live with him. And yet Harry seems to become increasingly attracted to this new world of his.

This setup cannot last forever, and, as with "Rabbit Run," great personal tragedy shakes up his world and
moves the story to a different plane. Part of the change needed in Harry's life is initiated by the visit to Brewer of his sister Mim, who lately has been working as a companion/call girl to the gangsters who ran Las Vegas then. Mim becomes instrumental in changing the relationship between Janice and Charley, leading to the very real possibility of hope for a long-term reconciliation between Harry and Janice by the end of the book.

This book continues the Updike pattern of taking a non-heroic everyday character and building a world around him sufficient to draw interest in a series of novels over several decades. This book is gutsier and more raw regarding language and sexual situations than the first book. Harry, for his part, shows signs of maturity but continues to live for the selfish moment. He can be funny, maybe likable, and disgusting at the same time. The worst example of the latter is his propensity for engaging in punching/pushing of both Janice and Jill when arguing with them. Although, as noted, some of his behavior in this book at times seems out of character, he remains traveling on his decade-by-decade life path, aided by Updike's unsurpassed prose.

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Dec 03, 2012 Underhill rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012

I just finished this last night.
It consolidates everything wrong with the 60's and every personality defect know to the modern male and projects it on the main character, Rabbit.

So the story is pretty far fetched. In real life, Rabbit would have been so busted, or fired, or wasted. Plenty of bad things happen to him. He is a crisis magnet. Most logical people would do exactly the opposite of what Rabbit does. Maybe that's what makes it so hard to look away. Plus, Updike details some of the most...more

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title link	preview: Rabbit Redux
avg rating	preview: Rabbit Redux Goodreads rating: 3.76 (6297 ratings)
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BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/46917.Rabbit_Redux?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1333578680l/46917.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/46917.Rabbit_Redux?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Rabbit Redux by John Updike[/url]

Rabbit Redux (Rabbit Angstrom #2)

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