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1,684 ratings,
3.72
average rating, 117 reviews
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published
August 27th 1996
(first published 1971)
by Ballantine Books
binding
Paperback, 368 pages
isbn
0449911934
(isbn13: 9780449911938)
description
"A triumph."
NEWSDAY
The assumptions and obsessions that control our daily lives are explored in tantalizing detail by master novelist John Up...more
NEWSDAY
The assumptions and obsessions that control our daily lives are explored in tantalizing detail by master novelist John Up...more
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| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Glens Falls (NY) ...: RIP - John Updike (1932 – 2009) | 3 | 25 | 01/31/2009 05:17AM |
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avg 3.72
editions: all | this edition
editions: all | this edition
Read in April, 2009
Having heard the persistent rumors (circa the late 1960s) that there were in fact Negroes in America doing drugs and being fellated by stupid white women, John Updike was apparently itchin' to stage an encounter between one of these undomesticated specimens and his middle class schlub Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom. The goal, no doubt, was to commentate on the changing face of race relations in America. Ergo, here in Rabbit Redux, we discover the altered geographies (literal and figurative) o...more
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Read in May, 2003
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 responsibili...more
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 responsibili...more
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Read in July, 2007
recommends it for:
people who HAVE to read things through in order
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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Read in April, 2009
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Read in March, 2009
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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Read in January, 2009
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
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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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...more
This book is also an o...more
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Read in April, 2009
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 cop...more
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Read in March, 2009
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
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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Read in April, 2009
recommends it for:
Anyone who hasn't seen it in 20+ years
I read this about the time it was published, and a recent mention of Updike prompted me to pick it up again.
When I first read it, Rabbit was older than I was, and frankly it was difficult for me to relate to anything in his life (except maybe the disputes about Vietnam). I could still appreciate Updike's prose, though. His imagery was/is often surprising.
This time -- what a difference 35 years makes. I have a new appreciation of Harry Angstrom's situation and attitudes, a...more
When I first read it, Rabbit was older than I was, and frankly it was difficult for me to relate to anything in his life (except maybe the disputes about Vietnam). I could still appreciate Updike's prose, though. His imagery was/is often surprising.
This time -- what a difference 35 years makes. I have a new appreciation of Harry Angstrom's situation and attitudes, a...more
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Read in March, 2009
What makes Rabbit one of the most compelling characters in American literature? By all objective accounts he is scum of the earth, a man who ought to be jailed for spousal abuse and child neglect, not to mention his serial adultery, drug abuse, racial epithets and harboring of a fugitive. Yet Rabbit remains a sympathetic figure, because through him Updike creates a mirror; Rabbit's considerable flaws do not sink inward, as part of his character, but bounce outward back at the society he chafes...more
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I began this book almost immediately after reading "Rabbit, Run" and was disappointed with the obvious change in Updike's writing style. He really turns commercial from the first book to this one, and I am currently reading the third book in the series "Rabbit is Rich" and Updike has gone completely insane. The reader loses sight of the action/plot development because Updike goes off on tangents describing the most insignificant of things. It's sad because you do get attached...more
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Read in March, 2009
The second book in the rabbit series and probably the last one I read. Updike's books are kind of depressing.
In the first book, Rabbit, Run you read as the main character Rabbit, deals with his faultering marriage and dead end life. So, he runs. In this book it's his wifes turn to run.
I had heard that John Updike was a world class author and he recently passed away, so I wanted to read some of his works. I've read two, so now I'm done.
Does he venture into ot...more
In the first book, Rabbit, Run you read as the main character Rabbit, deals with his faultering marriage and dead end life. So, he runs. In this book it's his wifes turn to run.
I had heard that John Updike was a world class author and he recently passed away, so I wanted to read some of his works. I've read two, so now I'm done.
Does he venture into ot...more
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Read in November, 2008
So this is what people raved about.
I wasn't blown away by Rabbit, Run. It seemed like a product of the times with a character that wasn't that likable. Woulda been better as a short story.
Rabbit's character and his choices are more interesting, his interactions with others are far more compelling and the story as a whole seems far more complete. Maybe it's that Updike became better as a writer or maybe he had a new editor.
Or maybe I'm just more interested in p...more
I wasn't blown away by Rabbit, Run. It seemed like a product of the times with a character that wasn't that likable. Woulda been better as a short story.
Rabbit's character and his choices are more interesting, his interactions with others are far more compelling and the story as a whole seems far more complete. Maybe it's that Updike became better as a writer or maybe he had a new editor.
Or maybe I'm just more interested in p...more
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My parents always loved these books. The first thing they'll say is how well it reflects America "at that time." However, not having lived (consciously) at least through these periods, what strikes me most about the Rabbit books so far is how much they get under my skin. I don't know if that's because the writing is so good or because the characterizations seem so real, familiar even. It's also the kind of funny where you read a bit of it, put the book down, go get a glass of water, an...more
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Read in November, 2008
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
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Read in November, 2008
There are parts of this book that make you want to jump off a bridge and maybe even slit your wrists on the way down--but in a good way. I think.
Rabbit Redux is an intense, microscopic view of the disintegration of marriage and other institutions and values in 1969 as white men go to the moon, black men riot in the cities, and both die by the thousands in Vietnam. The main character, a blue-collar worker in a dying industrial Pennsylvania town, tries like hell to understand the chaos...more
Rabbit Redux is an intense, microscopic view of the disintegration of marriage and other institutions and values in 1969 as white men go to the moon, black men riot in the cities, and both die by the thousands in Vietnam. The main character, a blue-collar worker in a dying industrial Pennsylvania town, tries like hell to understand the chaos...more
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Read in September, 2008
Compared to the beginning of Rabbit, Run, Rabbit Redux starts off with a bleaker tone. I don't know if I can really add anything else to the earlier reviewers except that it really leaves a bad taste in your mouth. I think the reason for that is because Harry is hard to sympathize with. He really treats a lot of people in his life pretty badly. What's interesting, though, is that he doesn't totally start that way in the novel. In the beginning, he's trying to conform to society by holding a regu...more
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Read in March, 2009
Second in the series of the life of Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, this entry is fully as mesmerizing as the first. After the first few pages, I found it very hard to put down. Updike was just such an incredible writer. Here, he takes us deeper still into the life and psyche of Rabbit.
Much of what we see there is pretty ugly. Rabbit is racist. Rabbit is misogynist. He sees women as having only one purpose really. But then he is a man of his times - a man of the '50s. We f...more
Much of what we see there is pretty ugly. Rabbit is racist. Rabbit is misogynist. He sees women as having only one purpose really. But then he is a man of his times - a man of the '50s. We f...more
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