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Rabbit is Rich (Rabbit Angstrom #3)

3.84 of 5 stars 3.84 · rating details · 6,971 ratings · 281 reviews

Winner of the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Ten years after RABBIT REDUX, Harry Angstrom has come to enjoy prosperity as the Chief Sales Representative of Springer Motors. The rest of the world may be falling to pieces, but Harrry's doing all right. That is, until his son returns from the West, and the image of an old love pays a visit to his lot....

Paperback, 480 pages

Published October 30th 1997 by Penguin Books Ltd (first published July 1981)

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Pulitzer Winners: Fiction & Novels

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Dec 12, 2008 brian rated it 4 of 5 stars

having finished the third Rabbit book I can tell you that john updike thinks a lot about blowjobs. a lot. and i don’t think it’s just that he’s a horny bastard obsessed with facefucking bookish young gals (which he is, of course) -- it's also that the blowjob mirrors other currents in society. i remember when the first of our friends (i’m pretty sure it was paul passarelli) got a blowjob it was a big deal and quite some time until we’d all had the pleasure. and then, a few years later, talking w...more having finished the third Rabbit book I can tell you that john updike thinks a lot about blowjobs. a lot. and i don’t think it’s just that he’s a horny bastard obsessed with facefucking bookish young gals (which he is, of course) -- it's also that the blowjob mirrors other currents in society. i remember when the first of our friends (i’m pretty sure it was paul passarelli) got a blowjob it was a big deal and quite some time until we’d all had the pleasure. and then, a few years later, talking with the kids in my younger sister’s grade, they were all doing it. and now? well, shit – when you have the president telling the country that a blowjob isn’t sex it gives every kid a free pass to open up and/or stick it in. (still, shit of a lot better than the president telling us that torture isn’t torture, eh?)

in the first Rabbit book (set in 1960), our guy goes nuts that his wife won’t do it – he wonders, actually, if she even knows what it is. and in one of the book’s set pieces, the hateful, self-loathing bastard has his mistress disrobe, get on her knees, receive his member and swallow. and he never talks to her again! in the second book (set in 1969), updike’s exploration of the changing face of race in america during the generational shift of the 60s is microcosmized (good word, eh?) as a speechless and frightened Rabbit watches his pale skinny strawberry-blonde 17 year old mistress suck off a dark-skinned militant black guy. and in the volume i just finished (set in 1979), Rabbit wonders time and again about how much great head his 22 year old son has gotta be getting.

was my generation the last to think of the blowjob as a big deal? and we do, don’t we? i mean, i honestly feel that it’s more intimate, in a way, than fucking. given the choice i’d rather my girlfriend bang some guy behind my back (make him wear a condom, honey) then suck him off. and if i was gay, i think i’d be pretty serious about what went into my mouth. and i think a lot about that actually, about what it’d be like to suck a dick. i can imagine it, but only somewhat -- it definitely seems to be more than the sum of its parts. it’s difficult to imagine it physically, like, would it fill my mouth or kind of flail around in there? and how would it feel battering against the back of my throat? and it’s even more difficult to imagine the psychological experience, particularly if it wasn't someone i knew so well. i mean, i wonder how it’d feel if the dude started forcefully pushing my head down, or stuck a few fingers in my ass, or if he pulled out without warning and let go all over my face, etc… i could see digging the degradation of it all, but i could also see getting seriously fucking pissed. well, back to my point -- are there really girls sucking off older guys at the mall for shoes or is this a mid-western rumor designed to scare the hell out of puritanical fucktards? were blowjobs a big deal 200 years ago? was sally hemmings slobbering all over jefferson’s cock? was abe lincoln getting head? kennedy definitely was, right? has the blowjob followed the progress of say, black people in america -- that is, from slavery to civil rights to the presidency? (from no blowjobs to blowjobs for the slutty/adventurous to blowjobs for everyone!) or is it cyclical and perpetually going in and out of style?

well, as they say, you can’t unring a bell. i’ve gotta believe that though the pendulum may swing back a bit, cocksucking in america is no fad that’ll go the way of the pet rock or coonskin cap. the blowjob – as defined by bill clinton -- is here to stay.

okay. now on to #4.

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Apr 23, 2012 MJ Nicholls rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novels, merkins, penguin-classics

Glib Capsule Review:

Rabbit cracks wise. Rabbit talks about cars. Rabbit scrutinises female anatomy. Rabbit bawls out no-good lowlife son. Rabbit’s actions receive entirely undeserved Harvard-strength descriptive torrent. Rabbit screws his wife. Rabbit fantasises about screwing his friend’s young wife. Rabbit makes racist or sexist remark. Rabbit thinks about daughter or dead Skeeter. Rabbit goes into four/five-page thought-stream with no paragraph breaks. Rabbit wants very much to have sexual in...more Glib Capsule Review:

Rabbit cracks wise. Rabbit talks about cars. Rabbit scrutinises female anatomy. Rabbit bawls out no-good lowlife son. Rabbit’s actions receive entirely undeserved Harvard-strength descriptive torrent. Rabbit screws his wife. Rabbit fantasises about screwing his friend’s young wife. Rabbit makes racist or sexist remark. Rabbit thinks about daughter or dead Skeeter. Rabbit goes into four/five-page thought-stream with no paragraph breaks. Rabbit wants very much to have sexual intercourse with another lady. Rabbit isn’t really rich. Randomise these sentences for 423pp, that’s Rabbit is Rich.

Additional:

The third number in Updike’s tetralogy is a deliberately overweight, exhausting mess, centred almost entirely on Rabbit’s misadventures in opulence. For me, this is the novel’s greatest flaw: in Rabbit, Run, Updike wrote so eloquently from several POVs, notably from Janice’s, but here, aside from one or two swings to Nelson’s (Rabbit’s son) perspective, we’re trapped in Rabbit’s head for the long haul. Updike’s prose has gotten saggier and baggier since the 1950s—no writer but Nabokov can really sustain hyper-stylised prose over a 423pp novel (Ada being a bad example), so the marshy swamps of description tend to blur into one big OH THAT’S NICE, BUT SO WHAT? As for this comment that Rabbit is Rich is where Updike expanded upon the technical innovations in Ulysses—balls! Updike wrote breathtaking stream-of-consciousness prose in the first book, using Joycean borrowings to devastating effect. This book contains one clumsy attempt at thought-stream prose early on, replacing this with comma-drenched clumps of dullness for the duration. If Updike’s only intention was to write a supersize novel to reflect Rabbit’s distending gut and bank account, this is disappointing. His reluctance to abandon his hero’s relentless sexual musings to explore the family in greater depth is also disappointing. I wasn’t expecting change in the characters—we know they’ll remain appalling wretches until the final breath—but I needed more originality in the telling. Apart from these gripes, I lapped up the story OK.
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Aug 10, 2009 Katherine rated it 4 of 5 stars

At this point in the saga, the economy is collapsing, and Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom is... doing quite well for himself, actually. He's worked himself into the chief sales representative of his father-in-law's Toyota dealership, and business is good. He's grown to an age with a presence that attracts respect, a subtle but sharp difference from the earlier novels.

But he knows it can't last. There are gas riots in Philadelphia. Now that he has come into his own, he has an acute sense of the fleeting...more At this point in the saga, the economy is collapsing, and Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom is... doing quite well for himself, actually. He's worked himself into the chief sales representative of his father-in-law's Toyota dealership, and business is good. He's grown to an age with a presence that attracts respect, a subtle but sharp difference from the earlier novels.

But he knows it can't last. There are gas riots in Philadelphia. Now that he has come into his own, he has an acute sense of the fleeting nature of money, as well as luck, happiness, and life. He realizes that the thirty-year-old woman at the country club he's crushing on is now considered too young for him; whereas the other fuckable woman his age is living with a degenerative condition that serves as a reminder of the path Harry will one day walk. His son Nelson, formerly a sensitive and intelligent adolescent, has turned into an exasperating little bastard, destined to put both Harry and the reader through the kind of emotional wringer Harry has wrought on people all along. (You know what it's called when you want to deck someone who doesn't exist? Good writing.)

I've started recognizing things in the Rabbit novels. Harry and Janice have joined a country club and go almost every day. I grew up in a pretty wealthy area in the Midwest in the 1980s and my indifferent parents and I have been dragged to a handful of country clubs by classmates' birthday parties. I remember, vividly, being shocked at the crass conversations our social betters were having: the subject matter an amorphous blob of basketball/money/pussy/cars (thanks to this reader), any mention of politics or international relations or the world outside the club dismissed with flip remarks about the irrational things Those People Do, everyone half in the bag by 2 PM, schizophrenic conversations caused by everyone scrambling to talk over each other and aggrandize themselves, spouses trading barbs that straddled a line between affectionate banter and open loathing.

(Believe me, the social atmosphere tends to have a lot more in common with a locker room than with The Great Gatsby.) And this is the first book I've yet read that hits all the right notes.

I have a few things to say about the women in the Rabbit novels. The oft-referenced "feminist critics" in Updike's obituaries led me to prepare to encounter a legion of dim-witted, cowish characters who are incidental to the real story. While there is a fair bit of that in the Rabbit novels, there's a lot more going on. For example, I'm seeing a disdain for the series' superstitious, dependent middle-class wives, but an extreme madonna-ish respect for the series' sexually outlawish working-class women, like Nelson's fiancee Pru and Rabbit's sister Mim, for whom his worry increases as she stubbornly refuses to fulfill the second half of the fallen woman story. I'm also still wondering what it means that in both prior Rabbit novels, paternal absence due to adultery inadvertently causes the death of a daughter, whereas this time, Rabbit's barely-in-wedlock granddaughter represents "another nail in his coffin." I would love to know what feminist and gendered readings of the Rabbit novels have addressed.

The strange thing is, this supposed mountain of feminist outrage doesn't appear to exist. I swear I went through ten pages of Google looking for feminist criticism of the Rabbit novels, and all I found was legions of references to all-anonymous feminist detractors, a passing reference to the short story "A&P," and some bullshit $5.95 "homework help" essay whose first sentence is "I do not like Harry 'Rabbit' Angstrom." (Honestly I'm starting to get the vibe of the "edgy" male writer who REALLY wants feminists to dislike him.) Dear internet, any links, names, titles or full texts you can link me to are appreciated.

Oh yeah, and there's a sex scene in here that made me laugh so hard I had to leave the cafe in which I was reading and go home. It involves gold coins and... oh, I just can't describe it. Go read.(less)

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Jun 29, 2007 Ashley rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: people who like good, round characters

Shelves: mybasicbookshelf

i love updike---i started reading the rabbit books and then got so fully into rabbit that i went through the series pretty quickly.

i liked updike's first in the series, "rabbit run," but it took me a while to really love him as much as i did by the time i got to "rabbit is rich". i love the roundness of his stories and his patience in letting his characters develop slowly. updike pays attention to the details of everyday life without making them of monumental importance. but after a while you s...more

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Mar 09, 2009 Stefani rated it 4 of 5 stars

I had no idea what to expect from John Updike. I picked up this book on a whim at the library after hearing about his death, hoping that there was a shred of something in this story that I could relate to. Turns out there wasn't, but John Updike is a gifted writer, in my opinion, and manages to infuse an unremarkable industrial town in Pennsylvania with the light of a thousand ships, illuminating every detail in eye-popping color. I guess the 70's were supposed to be the decade of sexual experim...more

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Jan 07, 2009 Pa rated it 4 of 5 stars

This exquisitely written novel, the second of the Rabbit books by Updike and a 1981 Putlitzer Prize winner for Fiction, is a seductive ode to Pennsylvania, Updike's hometown or more precisely, to Middle America of the 70s. Updike's hero, Rabit Angstrom, is now enjoying the fruits of middle-aged wealth though he cannot avoid the decay of old age and the disgust of marital infidelity. Updike brilliantly captures the mood of the period--the moral decay and disgust in spite of economic prosperity--i...more

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Dec 29, 2008 Stephanie rated it 4 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. After a brief hiatus, I have returned to John Updike's Rabbit books, finishing the third book in the series, Rabbit is Rich. I approached this book dreading the death that I was sure -- based on the first two books -- was coming. With every female character to whom Rabbit turned his attention, I thought, "Oh, no. Is she going to be the one whose death is caused by Rabbit's selfishness/negligence/willingness to let events buffet him/inability to act?" And Updike surprised me. There was a death, b...more After a brief hiatus, I have returned to John Updike's Rabbit books, finishing the third book in the series, Rabbit is Rich. I approached this book dreading the death that I was sure -- based on the first two books -- was coming. With every female character to whom Rabbit turned his attention, I thought, "Oh, no. Is she going to be the one whose death is caused by Rabbit's selfishness/negligence/willingness to let events buffet him/inability to act?" And Updike surprised me. There was a death, but a death that took place twenty years earlier -- at the time of Rabbit, Run, and about which Rabbit was ignorant until the end of this book. And it was indeed the death of a girl about whom Rabbit had been obsessing, but whom he had not considered until he reached this prosperous burgher-like middle age of his life.

My distaste for Rabbit Angstrom continues unabated. While he didn't actually cause anyone's death this go-around, he remains a vulgar, unpleasant person. I hate being privy to his misogynistic inner monologues. Interestingly, at the end of this book, Updike engineers a sexual encounter between Rabbit and a woman who, it turns out, has loved Rabbit for quite a long time. Rabbit asks her why she has loved him, and she answers. She enumerates all the goodness and sweetness in Rabbit that she sees and almost succeeds in changing my opinion of Rabbit. It's good that Updike is forcing me to consider Rabbit from another perspective.

Updike also forces me to consider things from Rabbit's viewpoint. I have always viewed the start of autumn as refreshing. The eternal cycle of the school year starting up again, the crispness in the air, the moving on from the lethargy of summer: all of these are invigorating and inspiring. Rabbit, however, sees things differently. "There always comes in September a parched brightness to the air that hits Rabbit two ways, smelling of apples and blackboard dust and marking the return to school and work in earnest, but then again reminding him he's suffered another promotion, taken another step up the stairs that has darkness at the head." In ten years, will I, too, view autumn this way, or is this one more instance of the "Rabbit is death" theme that the supporting characters continue to articulate ( a view not shared by Rabbit) throughout these three books?

I love, love, love many of Updike's other books. Centaur is one of my all-time favorites. These Rabbit books challenge me. They are not pleasant to read, but they are well-written and they are thought-provoking. I am mystified, however, by the blurbs on the back of this particular book Rabbit is Rich is described as "unquestionably Updike's finest novel....Funny and sharp and damnably intelligent." I must be missing my funny bone. I found precious little to laugh at. (less)

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Mar 02, 2013 Dan rated it 5 of 5 stars

I loved-loved-loved this book. In my mind it's a masterpiece, and the only question is whether it's excellence rises enough to compare to Gatsby and The Sun Also Rises. I'll say it's not quite there, but it's close. Harry Angstrom has always been a great character, but in this book Nelson and Janice finally find their voice. What elevates this book is the battle between Rabbit and Nelson, backed up by his mom and grandmother. The kid is coddled and spoiled, and annoying as hell, but Updike gives...more

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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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Jul 21, 2012 Robyn rated it 5 of 5 stars

50 Shades of Grey should move over. The third in Updike's Rabbit serious is about sex, sex, and more sex. At age 47, Rabbit is still clearly going strong - good for Rabbit!

This Updike portrait of middle age is raw, human, and most importantly, rings true. As I read about Rabbit's attempt to enjoy the benefits of middle age as Rabbit is now "rich", I heard in the background the lyrics of "Once in a Lifetime" in which Talking Heads' David Byrne posits, "You may ask yourself, well how did I get he...more

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Jul 25, 2011 Diane16 rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I read this book as the third in the Rabbit series (Rabbit, Run, Rabbit Redux, and then Rabbit is Rich). My book group chose Rabbit, Run out of curiosity about books by the recently-deceased John Updike. I was inspired enough to continue with the series. By far, I enjoyed this book the most of the three. Rabbit has finally become a sympathetic character, taking control of his life and making decisions. The previous two books showed Rabbit as a self-consumed ass, indirectly contributing to the de...more I read this book as the third in the Rabbit series (Rabbit, Run, Rabbit Redux, and then Rabbit is Rich). My book group chose Rabbit, Run out of curiosity about books by the recently-deceased John Updike. I was inspired enough to continue with the series. By far, I enjoyed this book the most of the three. Rabbit has finally become a sympathetic character, taking control of his life and making decisions. The previous two books showed Rabbit as a self-consumed ass, indirectly contributing to the deaths of two innocent people. He just let the world wash over him, stuck reliving his glory high school days as a basketball star and behaving indecisively. In this book, it was a relief to see him taking actions, even if they were stupid or risky, such as buying gold or going on vacation when his new daughter-in-law was due to go into labor.

A major theme in the book was the father-son relationship between Rabbit and Nelson. I was surprised at how threatened and annoyed Rabbit was by his now-adult son. Nelson is actually a bit more mature, although spoiled, than his dad was at the same age. I didn’t like Nelson, but found that Updike did a great job in capturing the generational differences. I’m curious to read this book in 15 years, to see how my reaction may differ to this dynamic. In fact, I’m going to hold off reading the next book, Rabbit at Rest, until I can relate, age-wise, with Rabbit a bit more.

Another reason I could have enjoyed this book was because I was alive during the time it took place. I loved the Toyota images (I drove an 80 Toyota Corolla, affectionately referring to it as the “Shit Mobile”), the clothing descriptions, and the country club atmosphere (which I idolized because my family couldn’t afford it). Rabbit, Run seemed to include a lot of slang from the 50’s that I could not pick up; either that, or I just could not relate to what he was trying to say. This book didn’t present that kind of challenge. In Rabbit, Redux, a major theme was the racial tension in America. I think Updike could have used this book to address gender inequality similarly, but I’m glad he only touched on that theme.

If you’re curious what the baby boomer generation may have been going through during the late 70’s/early 80’s, this is a good book to read!
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Mar 22, 2011 Jee Koh rated it 5 of 5 stars

What's extraordinary about Updike's art is how ordinary his materials are. No sensational subjects like pederasty, pandemic or terrorist plot, although Rabbit Is Rich teases with the possibility of incest. There is couple swapping, on a vacation at the Bahamas, its treatment is, however, neither moralistic nor voyeuristic, but sympathetic about human desires and fears. No epiphanic event: Pru, Harry Angstrom's daughter-in-law, falls from the stairs, but keeps her baby. She does not change, and n...more

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Aug 28, 2010 Agnes Mack rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: pulitzer

Rabbit is Rich is the 3rd in a 4 part series centering around Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom.

I did not enjoy the first book in this series at all. The 2nd book, Rabbit Redux, I found myself really enjoying. The main difference between those two was that while the first book left me feeling no empathy towards Rabbit, the second made me really come to appreciate this admitted asshole, and his bizarre life.

The third, Rabbit is Rich, picked up 10 years after the second left off. In it, Rabbit has become a...more

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Apr 26, 2009 Frank rated it 5 of 5 stars

I saw Chip Kidd read from some of Updike's poems recently. Kidd grew up in the same small Pennsylvania town as Updike. And Kidd said that while Updike was a local celebrity, Kidd's grandmother always referred to him as the guy who wrote the "dirty" books.

Somewhere around page 400 this novel takes a turn for the completely unexpected. It involves Rabbit and his friends who are in the Bahamas who decide to "swap." I think what surprises me about Updike is how casually he can write about some real...more

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Mar 05, 2009 Shannon rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: bookclub

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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

GENTLY SIMMERING IN HIS OWN JUICES

We’ve moved on to the late 1970s and Rabbit is middle-aged, reasonably comfortable and reasonably affluent. He’s finally living the true American dream. The dramatic canvass of RABBIT IS RICH is smaller than that of the second in the series, and is a return to the domestic angst of the first. But it’s none the less potent for that. Harry Angstrom has finally settled down. He’s left his sometimes extreme behaviour behind him. Now he’s primarily concerned with the...more

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Jun 21, 2009 Lacy rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: started-and-will-never-finish

I got to page 50 if this book and will not finish it. If any of you that know me know this book you might be wondering how I even got that far. Well...It took me forever to find this 1981 published book for a book challenge I'm doing and I didn't want to waste the pages I had all ready read. Yeah, dumb I know. It would have been a huge waste had I finished it.

So hears the thing. The first 5-10 pages were terribly boring. Then I clicked into updikes writing style a little bit and it wasn't AS bor...more

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Apr 10, 2009 Ed rated it 5 of 5 stars

News of John Updike's death prompted me to re-read this book. I count it as one of my three favorite novels of the later 20th century (along with "A Fine Balance", by Rohinton Mistry and "The Girls of Slender Means" by Muriel Spark). I first read it in the early 1980s, and despite its concern with topical issues from that era, it has lost none of its immediate and compelling interest. Updike's writing is so rich and rewarding that I had to stop every few paragraphs to go back and carefully look...more

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Jul 05, 2009 Hollis rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: literary-fiction

OK, I admit it: I enjoyed a novel by John Updike. I mean...it was good although it certainly had glaring weaknesses. The descriptive prose worked well. On the other hand, there was still a slightly worrying obsession with sex and Rabbit has to be the most unpleasant character I've come across in a while. It amuses me that Rabbit is often described as 'an Everyman for our times': surely that doesn't bode well for our times. After a while, you get used to the terrible things that Rabbit says and s...more

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Oct 21, 2012 Lisa James rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 1001-books-list, owned

Glad to finally finish up this last book in the Rabbit Angstrom series. This one ties up a lot of loose ends, as we find Rabbit comfortable & middle aged, his marriage finally solid again, Rabbit in charge of the dealership his father in law owned after Janice's father passes away. They have a membership to the country club, & at the beginning of the book, Nelson is in college. The problems begin when Nelson quits college & shows up at the family home with a girl, which crowds the ol...more

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Jun 30, 2011 Jogle rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, pulitzer-winners, 1001-2readb4udie

You really must have read the previous two books in this series to understand the characters Updike has woven into small town America. The eponymous Rabbit, is settled into mid-life, and whilst he is still free wheeling forward, he is reflecting more on his past actions. Far better than the preceding "Rabbit Redux", this Pulitzer winner is set at the end of the 1970’s with economic instability making Americans nervous. Updike again uses the familiar descriptions of the changing town, with endles...more

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Nov 20, 2009 Bob rated it 4 of 5 stars

Should have read the Rabbit books in order but Rabbit Is Rich was already on my shelf and Rabbit Redux was not at the excellent Dumbo used bookstore (P.S. Books). Set in Pennsylvania in the dying days of the Carter administration, there are a lot of cultural specifics I remember from my teenage years, including an amusing reference to Julian Jaynes (though not even by name, simply as "a Princeton professor" with a summary of the bicameral theory). However, having immediately upon the heels of th...more

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Jan 11, 2012 Toni rated it 1 of 5 stars

Ok, I am officially done extending John Updike any benefit of the doubt / leniency for, after all, being the product of a different age. Partly because he wasn't writing that long ago and could have, but apparently chose not to, learn something from the various social movements he witnessed while he was still easily young enough to readjust his perspectives accordingly. But also, more simply, because he is an insufferable boor. The way he assumes the authority to write about women, to pin them o...more

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Mar 02, 2011 Mike rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: childbirth, childhood, children, fathers-and-sons, fiction, loss, love, marriage, mothers-and-children, responsibility, sexuality, twentieth-century, pulitzer-prize-winner

Gas lines, Krugerrands, the silver splurge, Iranian hostages, the price of oil. Updike settles Rabbit at the age of 46 in the middle of the Carter administration. Thanks to the convenience of his father in law's death, Rabbit finds himself the chief sales rep for Springer Motors. In the midst of the nation's first oil crisis, it's only natural that Springer Motors has obtained a Toyota distributorship. And "Rabbit is Rich." Son Nelson is now 23, a disaffected college drop out, with one too many...more

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Mar 26, 2010 Lindsey rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: adult

Originally, the name of the author was what had drawn my attention to this book. I had read "A & P" both in high school and in college and had enjoyed that short story by John Updike so I decided to try "Rabbit is Rich." The first few chapters I was disappointed because the story revolved around a selfish, overweight, middle-aged man that I didn't feel like I could connect to in any way; however, as the story progressed I began to like it more and more.
There are several sex scenes in the bo...more

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Aug 12, 2010 Emily rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is book 3 of 4 books and so far my fav. It was a real page turner and after 2 books of not really liking Rabbit, I’m finally starting to warm up to him now. This book is more about his relationship with his son and how it has changed since Nelson has become an adult, they have many issues such as a lack of communication and a fear that Nelson is following Rabbit's path which of which Rabbit is full of regrets so obviously he thinks Nelson's making mistakes.....

Yet again there is a sense of...more

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Feb 12, 2013 Samrat Sen rated it 1 of 5 stars

Picked this book up at the US library after hearing very highly about Mr Updike. Well, after a prolonged struggle to read through the book, I'm disappointed. May be I'm not the reader Mr. Updike had in mind while writing this book. Fact is,I simply couldn't understand the book and found it over-rated.

I kept reading it, all the way giving benefit of doubt to the author by tolerating the convoluted narration (especially in the first half) and the torture of the language in deliberate lack of form...more

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Dec 15, 2012 Kristel rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001-books, audio, us-literature

Rabbit is Rich by John Updike
Published 1981
★★★

The third novel in the Rabbit Angstrum series, Harry is middle aged, his son is away at college and he and Janice live with Janice’s mother. Harry is running Springer Motors and believes he is owner but really, he works for his mother-in-law and his wife. Harry has become obsessed with money. His son can’t make a decision and appears to be irresponsible (a lot like Harry) and he is also obsessed with the daughter he had with Ruth.
Rabbit is Rich was a...more

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Jan 11, 2013 Jordan rated it 2 of 5 stars

I absolutely adored the first two Rabbit books. Updike wrote with passion, clarity and intent, beautiful prose and picked unique, outstanding words like juicy, ripe fruit. This third book in the series, however, was a chore to read.
I have no idea how this book won the Pulitzer Prize and the predecessors were not even runner-ups. Everything I loved about the first two "Rabbits" are not here. I remember reading "Redux" and "Run" and highlighting a beautiful passage on at least every other page....more I absolutely adored the first two Rabbit books. Updike wrote with passion, clarity and intent, beautiful prose and picked unique, outstanding words like juicy, ripe fruit. This third book in the series, however, was a chore to read.
I have no idea how this book won the Pulitzer Prize and the predecessors were not even runner-ups. Everything I loved about the first two "Rabbits" are not here. I remember reading "Redux" and "Run" and highlighting a beautiful passage on at least every other page. If there wasn't an elegantly-articulated passage in the other books, there was at least something engaging transpiring or a character developing in a captivating way. This books has none of what made the others books fantastic.
For all of the text, there are hardly any memorable lines. "Rich" drags like a heavy, middle-aged shell of a once-great man on the basketball court. The allusions are tedious. As a heterosexual male, I ask how many metaphors of the female anatomy a book really needs.
The personas have been played out and are aging as much as their characters are. Their complacence within the story doesn't need more than five hundred pages to express to the reader. Yes, they're content; yes, they're trying to find themselves now that they're at that age; yes, their ideals are falling apart in a post-hippie era. How many times does Updike need to drive that point home? The only interesting character here is Rabbit's Nelson. Yet Nelson is just a parallel to the titular character's disposition from the other books. Haven't we already explored this character enough?
The stream-of-consciousness is boring. If it's not a detailed description of the clitoris, it's cars, 70's politics or "phoniness." The latter is a subject you can ponder talking to a hipster or reading "Catcher in the Rye."
Dialogue is sparse and unnatural. Whatever story there is, it inhabits less than a tenth of the pages. If Updike was striving for something more subtle, then he definitely achieved it; I sure did not pick up on it.
I was shocked that this was even the same author. Aside from a few good passages and some hints of what could have been an intriguing plot, this book has no saving grace. If you do decide to embark on this labor of love, I hope you like urine sex. (less)

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Sep 15, 2012 Robert Gelb rated it 1 of 5 stars

I don't feel like being articulate in this review. I'm so sick of complex prose as a result of reading this book. It's not even a story, but an exposition mostly about sex and phoniness. Ladies and gentlemen: meet Rabbit Angstrom. He is what happens when Holden Caulfield takes heroin and ages thirty years. There are no redeeming qualities, no complexity beyond sexual debasement of everyone (especially his wife). Fuck Lolita. THIS is erotica, as well as pornography, incarnate. Reading through thi...more

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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 known for hi...more

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“How can you respect the world when you see it's being run by a bunch of kids turned old?” — 50 people liked it

“One world: everybody fucks everybody. When he thinks of all the fucking there's been in the world and all the fucking there's going to be, and none of it for him, here he sits in this stuffy car dying, his heart just sinks. He'll never fuck anybody again in his lifetime except poor Janice Springer, he sees this possibility ahead of him straight and grim as the known road.” — 5 people liked it

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Rabbit is Rich (Rabbit Angstrom #3)

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