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Rabbit Redux (Rabbit Angstrom #2)

by John Updike

3.71 · rating details · 3,858 ratings · 277 reviews

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, h

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Paperback, 368 pages

Published August 27th 1996 by Random House, Inc. (first published 1971)

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1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die

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The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

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Nov 29, 2008

brian rated it

xxx

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Apr 14, 2010

Moira added it · 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.

***

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 wri...more

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Jan 18, 2009

Greg rated it

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...moreI 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

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" Brew...moreAs 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

· 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

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 ar...more

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Apr 14, 2010

Ben rated it

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 t...more

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Mar 05, 2009

Drew Cauthorn rated it

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

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 b...more

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Dec 10, 2011

P.Sannie rated it

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 ...more

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Sep 25, 2011

Sergio Negrón rated it

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 li...more

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Jul 21, 2011

Patrick rated it

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...more

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Feb 19, 2011

Holly rated it

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 ...more

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Dec 21, 2010

Brittney rated it

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 ti

...more

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Nov 29, 2010

Ian Mapp rated it

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, th...more

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Aug 19, 2010

Jee Koh rated it

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" ...more

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Apr 20, 2010

Mbmar rated it

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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Jul 01, 2009

Hollis rated it

· 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 o...moreUpdike 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

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...moreThis 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

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....moreTen 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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Nov 03, 2011

Newton rated it

This is the second book of John Updike's Rabbit Series; it seems to generally be the least talked about of the collection, and I can see why. The first issue I had is it is dated. It still holds some interest as a sort of time capsule of the late-60's, but I did not connect with much of it on a personal level. It does not help that I found little sympathy for any of the characters, including Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, with whom I so strongly identified in the first book (Rabbit, Run)....more

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Aug 12, 2011

Fabian rated it

Like the decade of the ’60s, “Rabbit Redux” is a bit tricky. Wee complications arise in so liberal a landscape, especially if the everyman in the novel is absurdly conservative. Add then a haze proliferated by drugs (weed and alcohol and pills) in the mix, and what you have left over is Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, older but none the wiser. This time around, ten years after the first Rabbit novel, Janice, Harry’s sad, insipid wife runs away, leaving Rabbit with the kid. Add then too the elements tha...more

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Jun 23, 2011

Jogle rated it

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Shelves: fiction, 1001-books2readb4udie

In the second instalment of the Rabbit series, Harry Angstrom is ten years older, America is about to win the race to the moon and Vietnam is showing all the signs of being a disastrous miscalculation. The sexual revolution of the sixties has taken place and Rabbit is settled into married life with a teenage son . . . but Rabbit is never really settled. Any reader would need to read the first in this series to understand the undertows that are pulling at Rabbit. I didn’t enjoy this a much as the...more

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May 21, 2010

Angela rated it

Recommended to Angela by: Jeremy

Rabbit and Janice's marriage has fallen into a familiar pattern. They split up for a while, kill somebody, and then get back together without resolving any of the issues that drove them apart. Whatever lifts their luggage, I suppose, although I could have done without the third of the book in which Rabbit explores his cuckolding 3-way fetishes with his beafroed black power intellectual houseguest while reading Frederick Douglass passages. This part of the narrative occupied most of the drive thr...more

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Apr 20, 2009

Gregg rated it

Shelves: americanlife, smalltown

Not quite as satisfying as "Rabbit, Run." Too sexually graphic for even my taste. The politics wandered aimlessly, and the characters were way too broad, or even cliched, for any kind of empathy on my part. Yet I kept reading it. So Updike must know something I don't about the meaning of Midwestern life.

Rabbit Angstrom's adventures pick up after the first novel: he's back with his wife, but they separate. He's about to lose his job. He shacks up with a hippie girl of sort...more

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Aug 19, 2009

Rick rated it

Shelves: non-fiction

At the end of Rabbit Redux is a wonderfully affecting reconcilation between two life- and self- battered lovers that is beautifully observed and true to life at its most poignant. Clear proof that Updike is not just a master stylist but a gifted observor and chronicler of life’s disappointments and consolations. Before that, however, is a manic-depressive narrative of less than credible events and choices linked to the emblematic turmoil of the 60s in ways that leave the reader disconnected from...moreAt the end of Rabbit Redux is a wonderfully affecting reconcilation between two life- and self- battered lovers that is beautifully observed and true to life at its most poignant. Clear proof that Updike is not just a master stylist but a gifted observor and chronicler of life’s disappointments and consolations. Before that, however, is a manic-depressive narrative of less than credible events and choices linked to the emblematic turmoil of the 60s in ways that leave the reader disconnected from the characters we’d come to know in Rabbit, Run. Manic-depressive because some things happen fast without clear logic and at other times things just loiter without movement, like everyone is too depressed to care about what might happen next. Janice’s Revenge or Rabbit Discovers Black People might serve as sub-titles if Hollywood’s penchant for tagging sequels with secondary titles beneath the franchise name had been invented when Updike knocked off this second of four novels on the life and times of Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom. Rabbit, Run ended with Harry fleeing his wife for the second time. Rabbit Redux begins ten years down the road. Harry works with his father and has reconciled with his wife, though nine years without another episode of fleeing seems the only evidence that the reconilation is a success. Rabbit’s life remains a mess. He is paying scant attention as his mother’s health worsens, despite his dad’s worried appeals for attention, though these pleas are dressed with insinuations about Rabbit’s wife running around with someone. Rabbit confronts Janice , who is having an affair with a car salesman employed by her father, and she leaves her upset but also indifferent husband. Pretty soon Harry has taken in (to live with him and his twelve going on thirteen year old son) Jill, a maybe 18-year-old, drug-addicted runaway white girl (temporarily clean), and a crazy black Vietnam vet named Skeeter, who has skipped bail. Just as Harry was told or told folks he was lovable in the first novel, in this one he is labeled “passive.” It’s supposed to explain a lot. Oh, he’s passive! That’s why he does the unthinkable! Smoking dope, listening to obscenity laced political rants, having sex with an 18 year old, watching Skeeter bully, badger, and return Jill to addiction, all with his son as a trapped in an bizarro world episode of Father Doesn’t Know Best witness. So many inexplicable events happen that when you arrive at its final pages and the brilliantly rendered reconcilation scene you don’t believe that either character could be interested in the other except as a subject for legal action. Instead you have to imagine that it’s not Rabbit and Janice but perhaps Peggy and Ollie’s reconcilation you’re eavesdropping on. Overall it’s an appalling novel not because Harry behaves appallingly or because Skeeter does or because Mim, Janice, Jill, and Peggy seem to exist not as real people but people to be fucked and abused, but because you don’t for a minute believe any of it is real. Skeeter isn’t a real black person, he is a late 60s cliché of a black character. Jill escaped from a cautionary episode of Dragnet 67. It’s the well-ordered imagination of Updike slumming with a chaos he hasn’t figured out himself with people he can mimic but doesn’t know. He manipulates his characters across the surface of these mad times to no discernible end or reason. Very disappointing sequel.(less)

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Feb 25, 2011

Mike rated it

Rabbit Angstrom isn't running anymore. After his wife Janice leaves him to move in with Charlie Stavros, a car salesman at her father's car lot, Rabbit is adrift. He and his son, Nelson, now thirteen, are going it alone at their home in the burbs. Enter Jill, a rich runaway from Connecticut complete with Porsche. Rabbit is alone no more. In fact, when Stavros tells Rabbit he's growing tired of Janice, Rabbit's not ready for Janice to come home. Rabbit stands his ground. And he takes chanc...moreRabbit Angstrom isn't running anymore. After his wife Janice leaves him to move in with Charlie Stavros, a car salesman at her father's car lot, Rabbit is adrift. He and his son, Nelson, now thirteen, are going it alone at their home in the burbs. Enter Jill, a rich runaway from Connecticut complete with Porsche. Rabbit is alone no more. In fact, when Stavros tells Rabbit he's growing tired of Janice, Rabbit's not ready for Janice to come home. Rabbit stands his ground. And he takes chances he never dared to in younger years. Enter Skeeter, an angry young black man who has jumped bail on a drug charge. Because he is a friend of Jill's, Rabbit offers Skeeter sanctuary. Skeeter lives to bite the hand that feeds him. He happily supplies Jill with stronger and more dangerous drugs to gain sexual favors from her in exchange for the next fix. He glories in humiliating Rabbit by cuckolding him openly in his own home. Rabbit, the American patriot, who flies an American Flag decal on his Ford Falcon, wonders why blacks are always so loud on the bus, and a staunch supporter of the war in Vietnam, suddenly begins to find his beliefs turned upside down. And Rabbit is politely told by his suburban neighbors that his harboring a black man who does things in front of open windows with a white girl is not acceptable in the neighborhood. Throw in Rabbit's sister, Mim who has returned home to visit their dying mother. Mim's philosophy is never have the same man more than three times unless it's a good investment. Updike paints a vivid portrait of a changing America in the Vietnam era, rife with conflict between the hawks and the doves, racial tension and the age of a growing sexual revolution. Rabbit returns older, wiser, angrier, and a puzzled participant in American life, so different from the man first introduced in 1960. Rabbit isn't a man you are going to love. However, when you reach the last page of the book you will be pleased to know that Updike brings Angstrom back in "Rabbit is Rich" and "Rabbit at Rest." It's good to know that one day Rabbit rests. Not only Rabbit is drained by the end of his second literary appearance, so is the reader. Why four stars? It's human nature not to turn away from a train wreck. Updike compels us to keep turning the page. (less)

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Sep 02, 2009

Jeff rated it

Recommends it for: middle aged, relatively well-off honky dudes (like me)

When i was in my mid-20s (closer to 30, though), i read Rabbit Run and felt like Updike really understood me. Now that i'm 40, i figured it was time to read Updike's novel about Rabbit Angstom in his mid-30s.

I have a hard time writing anything about either of these two Updike books, the only ones i've ever read, because his style is so non-stylish. Well, 350+ pages and i barely made a note in the margins and i never underlined-and-exclamation-pointed a single sentence. That tells me ...moreWhen i was in my mid-20s (closer to 30, though), i read Rabbit Run and felt like Updike really understood me. Now that i'm 40, i figured it was time to read Updike's novel about Rabbit Angstom in his mid-30s.

I have a hard time writing anything about either of these two Updike books, the only ones i've ever read, because his style is so non-stylish. Well, 350+ pages and i barely made a note in the margins and i never underlined-and-exclamation-pointed a single sentence. That tells me he doesn't do much to excite my appreciation for language. But he conveys "normalcy" convincingly.

As happened with me and the first book, my feelings for Rabbit morphed from my typical reader-protagonist empathy (identification) into a distanced distaste. Simply put, Rabbit's actions and ideas aren't always palatable. He's an anti-hero, but without the flashiness of Philip Marlowe (The Big Sleep) or the baseness of Molloy or the self-delusion & misguidedness of Humbert Humbert (Lolita) or the mysterious allure of the unnamed murderer/narrator of The Third Policeman (to cite 4 recent reads). You'll have to take Rabbit's good with his bad. As with a real person, you gotta decide for yourself if you wanna be friends with him any longer; there ain't no style benefit offsetting his shortcomings.

So, the plot. Rabbit is about 36 years old. His son is entering puberty. And it seems his wife is, too. As is Rabbit ... or maybe the whole country for that matter. It's the swingin' early-70s and everything's upside down in America — for us apathetic relatively well-off honkies, anyway. If Rabbit, Run was about how he runs away from responsibility, then Redux has him desperately clinging to what he decided to run toward at the end of the first book. His mother's health is failing. His father nears retirement. His employer feels the pressure of the incipient computer age. Women are liberated and "the blacks" are acting like the free citizens they allegedly have been for almost a full century. Oh, and freakin humans are ... Walking ... On ... The ... MOON!

There's not much going on except a domestic drama about a nuclear family, but Updike makes it interesting, compelling even. My only knock is the lack of pizzazz, but Updike sure describes the hell out of setting & atmosphere. I can understand why Nicholson Baker (another 2nd-tier favorite of mine) reveres him so much (see U and I).

Anyway, i highly recommend at least the first two Rabbit books, especially my fellow middle-aged relatively well-off honky dudes.(less)

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Dec 25, 2011

Mason rated it

Shelves: holidays-2011

If you disliked Rabbit, Run, you’ll loathe this—it’s got twice the violence, twice the sex, and about ten times the tragedy. But, if you cottoned to the first installment of Harry’s story—if you sensed the motions of celebratory grace in its descent into suburban mania—you’ll fall even more deeply in love with this follow-up. At the heart of the novel is an ingenious switcharoo—this time, Janice goes off in search of her self, while Harry is burdened with domestic responsibility. Where they go a...more

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May 29, 2011

Jennifer Chaffey rated it

Shelves: 1001-bymr, lapl

I love the way John Updike writes. The way he describes a story is like looking at a huge Impressionistic painting. Jumbles and blots of color are all mixed up and never look the same when read again. His sentences blend together in such a stream of consciousness that it gives you a sense that you really are floating in Harry Angstrom’s mind as he plods along through the weird 60’s trying to make sense of a changing world (men on the moon, boys in Vietnam, Kubrick, Kennedys, racism and riots)...moreI love the way John Updike writes. The way he describes a story is like looking at a huge Impressionistic painting. Jumbles and blots of color are all mixed up and never look the same when read again. His sentences blend together in such a stream of consciousness that it gives you a sense that you really are floating in Harry Angstrom’s mind as he plods along through the weird 60’s trying to make sense of a changing world (men on the moon, boys in Vietnam, Kubrick, Kennedys, racism and riots) while the same time stumbling through his own weird microcosm in the recently planted, yet seemingly plastic, suburbs. So, if you look at a painting by Monet and wonder why the guy couldn’t just color within the lines, you’ll probably be annoyed by Harry’s running narrative as he takes in blotted outlines of impressions and memories that are often too difficult and strange for him to put a definite outline on. The result is that it all bleeds together. You are left feeling as though he is ill equipped to deal with the growing pains of the U.S. and his personal life (a cheating wife, a son he doesn’t understand, a house that feels like a cardboard cutout, a dying mother’s guilt, and a job that is just a job). He seems plagued by a jumbled mass of painful memories, and what is shaping up to be, a painfully bland future if he continues to live passively. How will he sort it all out? Simply by letting things happen to his life in the same way they happened in the first Rabbit book. If you complain about the level of blurry, random detail bleeding into the next level of blurry, random detail in Updike’s narrative, you are missing the whole point.

Instead, complain about the third chapter and the fact that every character seems completely and unrealistically unfeeling. With each character running around hurting the other and nobody really caring, it seemed like a fake world where human ego and jealousy don't exist. And the third chapter was absolutely horrible. Throughout much of it, the characters are sitting around reading to each other while trapped in the suburbs. Reading a story about people reading? Blah! This sequel did not have the spark that the first book did. (less)

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About John Updike

John Hoyer Updike (born March 18, 1932 in Shillington, Pennsylvania) was an American writer. Updike's most famous work is his Rabbit series (Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit Is Rich; Rabbit At Rest; and Rabbit Remembered). Rabbit is Rich and Rabbit at Rest both won Pulitzer Prizes for Updike. Describing his subject as "the American small town, Protestant middle class," Updike is well kn...more

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“That's the trouble with caring about anybody, you begin to feel overprotective. Then you begin to feel crowded.” — 15 people liked it

“We were all brought up to want things and maybe the world isn't big enough for all that wanting. I don't know. I don't know anything” — 4 people liked it

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Rabbit Redux (Rabbit Angstrom #2)

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