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Rabbit Angstrom #4
Rabbit at Rest
This is an alternate cover edition for ISBN 0449911942.
It's 1989, and Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom feels anything but restful. In fact he's frozen, incapacitated by his fear of death--and in the final year of the Reagan era, he's right to be afraid. His 55-year-old body, swollen with beer and munchies and racked with chest pains, wears its bulk "like a set of blankets the decades have brought one by one." He suspects that his son Nelson, who's recently taken over the family car dealership, is embezzling money to support a cocaine habit.
It's 1989, and Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom feels anything but restful. In fact he's frozen, incapacitated by his fear of death--and in the final year of the Reagan era, he's right to be afraid. His 55-year-old body, swollen with beer and munchies and racked with chest pains, wears its bulk "like a set of blankets the decades have brought one by one." He suspects that his son Nelson, who's recently taken over the family car dealership, is embezzling money to support a cocaine habit.
Indeed, from Rabbit's vantage point--which alternates between a winter condo in Florida and the ancestral digs in Pennsylvania, not to mention a detour to an intensive care unit--decay is overtaking the entire world. The budget deficit is destroying America, his accountant is dying of AIDS, and a terrorist bomb has just destroyed Pan Am Flight 103 above Lockerbie, Scotland. This last incident, with its rapid transit from life to death, hits Rabbit particularly hard:
Imagine sitting there in your seat being lulled by the hum of the big Rolls-Royce engines and the stewardesses bring the clinking drinks caddy... and then with a roar and giant ripping noise and scattered screams this whole cozy world dropping away and nothing under you but black space and your chest squeezed by the terrible unbreathable cold, that cold you can scarcely believe is there but that you sometimes actually feel still packed into the suitcases, stored in the unpressurized hold, when you unpack your clothes, the dirty underwear and beach towels with the merciless chill of death from outer space still in them.Marching through the decades, John Updike's first three Rabbit novels--Rabbit, Run (1960), Rabbit Redux (1971), and Rabbit Is Rich (1981)--dissect middle-class America in all its dysfunctional glory. Rabbit at Rest (1990), the final installment and winner of the Pulitzer Prize, continues this brilliant dissection. Yet it also develops Rabbit's character more fully as he grapples with an uncertain future and the consequences of his past. At one point, for example, he's taken his granddaughter Judy for a sailing expedition when his first heart attack strikes. Rabbit gamely navigates the tiny craft to shore--and then, lying on the beach, feels a paradoxical relief at having both saved his beloved Judy and meeting his own death. (He doesn't, not yet.) Meanwhile, this all-American dad feels responsible for his son's full-blown drug addiction but incapable of helping him. (Ironically, it's Rabbit's wife Janice, the "poor dumb mutt," who marches Nelson into rehab.)
His misplaced sense of responsibility--plus his crude sexual urges and racial slurs--can make Rabbit seems less than lovable. Still, there's something utterly heroic about his character. When the end comes, after all, it's the Angstrom family that refuses to accept the reality of Rabbit's mortality. Only Updike's irreplaceable mouthpiece rises to the occasion, delivering a stoical, one-word valediction: "Enough." --Rob McDonald
608 pages, Paperback
First published December 18, 1990
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12278 people want to read
About the author
John Updike
858 books2,421 followersJohn Hoyer Updike 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 his careful craftsmanship and prolific writing, having published 22 novels and more than a dozen short story collections as well as poetry, literary criticism and children's books. Hundreds of his stories, reviews, and poems have appeared in The New Yorker since the 1950s. His works often explore sex, faith, and death, and their inter-relationships.
He died of lung cancer at age 76.
He died of lung cancer at age 76.
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October 30, 2023
Harry ‘Rabbit’ Angstrom.
A product of his place and time: white American male, born a few years before WW2, making his way through the four decades following it. The years his country largely left its mark over the better part of the world in all the direct and indirect ways such a thing is possible.
No wonder he keeps acting, throughout his life and the four books that depict it in brilliant (and at times excruciatingly detailed) prose, as a trusting and entitled child, confident that the general scheme of things will protect, provide and find a way to make him happy. If only he keeps playing by the rules he was taught early on.
Harry understands rules; his class, his upbringing, his religion, his brief but memorable career as the star player of his high school basketball team have molded him in doing so. He also feels it’s his prerogative to break them every now and then, as long as he keeps to “his slot in the big picture, his assigned place in the rat race.” Life is a jar full of candy for Harry and he dips his hand into it, confident that even if he grabs the sour one at one time or another, he will somehow be compensated in his next forage. Even if he never comes across the best flavor, he's happy with what he gets, as long as the jar keeps filling itself without too much hassle on his part.
He is not a spectacular character living a spectacular life. He’s simply “trying to live while he’s still alive” – and not always with the best results. He gets his fair share of success and misfortune, good times and bad times, affection and contempt, excitement and staleness. He gives back joy and pain, in equal measures of fairness and unfairness, not always to those who deserve them the most. Human, All Too Human…
He has always wanted to be “every woman’s only man, as he was his mother’s only son.” He doesn't succeed. He is averse to change because “he was reared in a world where war was no strange but change was: the world stood still so you could grow up in it.” He doesn’t take kindly to the “modern” collective practice of “talking through and processing therapists like to do” because it “cheapens the world’s facts; it reduces decisions that were the best people could do at the time to dream moves, to reflexes that have been ‘processed’ in a million previous cases like so much shredded wheat.” That said, he possesses a fairly good critical eye to all that’s going on around him – if only he had more use of it in his real life instead of only in his head…
“There was a time, when he was younger, when the thought of any change, even a disaster, gladdened his heart with the possibility of a shake-up, of his world made new.”
Disasters happened alright, but he never gathered up the courage to make a bold move, to get out of his town, his life, his set ways. All those things that ultimately made him feel secure and moderately content. In this he made a fundamental choice, consciously or not, and who could blame him? He’s no different from millions of people out there who do just the same, provided they have the choice.
It is an attestation to Updike’s incomparable writing skill that he picks up this ordinary guy and uses his plainness as the canvas on which to paint an engaging picture of middle-class American life, complete with all its 20th century’s props and scenery. He wrote a Rabbit book every decade. The first one is in the 1950s with their suffocating adherence to form and order. The second moves on to the 1960s and their subversive air of social unrest that mildly brushes against Harry’s Middletown- USA-existence. The 1970s do offer him an outlet and enough of a payback with their suburban promiscuity and his moving-up on the social ladder, his country club, his Caribbean vacation et all.
But in this last book of the series, taking place in an abundantly materialistic world that changes faster than Harry feels comfortable with, the 1980s don’t find him in good shape. His once-strong body suffers from a weak heart that he stubbornly refuses to mend by abandoning his unhealthy habits that years of mindless consumerism have built up. His spirit suffers from the ordinary affliction of a mid-life crisis that, for all his aversion towards introspection, he doesn’t seem to avoid.
I’m not sure if this one would sufficiently appeal to someone who hasn’t read the other three books. It got the 1991 Pulitzer, as did the previous one, Rabbit Is Rich, in 1982. I liked that one the most but I find Updike’s prose sensational in all four of them. Rabbit grew on me, book after book, and that certainly helped in appreciating the less-exciting parts of the long narration. Sometimes I felt there was too much dragging until the next perfect sentence, scene and dialogue that jolted me and stayed on long after the story was finished.
I liked Rabbit. Both as a character and as a narrative. He exasperated me at times but no more than the people in my life do - or myself, for that matter. At times I looked at him from above, sharing his author’s mocking gaze; at times I felt the same affection Updike has in store for his hero’s childlike need for recognition because, after all “…that’s what we all want from each other.”
I grew a bit tired of him in the end, as I suspect Updike did; maybe that’s why he gave him a premature death in his 50s. No spoiler here, the title speaks for itself. The End brought a pang of sadness, an unsettling awareness of loss. Same as the news of the passing of someone who wasn’t really part of our lives, yet they occupied a place, however small, in it. We take a few minutes to digest it and then move on with the rest of our day, the rest of our books.
With four very American novels, Updike paid tribute to the ordinariness of life. Not only that of his hero but to all the human lives the world is full of, has been from the dawn of time and (hopefully) will be long after we’ve followed in Rabbit’s and its creator’s footsteps.
A product of his place and time: white American male, born a few years before WW2, making his way through the four decades following it. The years his country largely left its mark over the better part of the world in all the direct and indirect ways such a thing is possible.
No wonder he keeps acting, throughout his life and the four books that depict it in brilliant (and at times excruciatingly detailed) prose, as a trusting and entitled child, confident that the general scheme of things will protect, provide and find a way to make him happy. If only he keeps playing by the rules he was taught early on.
Harry understands rules; his class, his upbringing, his religion, his brief but memorable career as the star player of his high school basketball team have molded him in doing so. He also feels it’s his prerogative to break them every now and then, as long as he keeps to “his slot in the big picture, his assigned place in the rat race.” Life is a jar full of candy for Harry and he dips his hand into it, confident that even if he grabs the sour one at one time or another, he will somehow be compensated in his next forage. Even if he never comes across the best flavor, he's happy with what he gets, as long as the jar keeps filling itself without too much hassle on his part.
He is not a spectacular character living a spectacular life. He’s simply “trying to live while he’s still alive” – and not always with the best results. He gets his fair share of success and misfortune, good times and bad times, affection and contempt, excitement and staleness. He gives back joy and pain, in equal measures of fairness and unfairness, not always to those who deserve them the most. Human, All Too Human…
He has always wanted to be “every woman’s only man, as he was his mother’s only son.” He doesn't succeed. He is averse to change because “he was reared in a world where war was no strange but change was: the world stood still so you could grow up in it.” He doesn’t take kindly to the “modern” collective practice of “talking through and processing therapists like to do” because it “cheapens the world’s facts; it reduces decisions that were the best people could do at the time to dream moves, to reflexes that have been ‘processed’ in a million previous cases like so much shredded wheat.” That said, he possesses a fairly good critical eye to all that’s going on around him – if only he had more use of it in his real life instead of only in his head…
“There was a time, when he was younger, when the thought of any change, even a disaster, gladdened his heart with the possibility of a shake-up, of his world made new.”
Disasters happened alright, but he never gathered up the courage to make a bold move, to get out of his town, his life, his set ways. All those things that ultimately made him feel secure and moderately content. In this he made a fundamental choice, consciously or not, and who could blame him? He’s no different from millions of people out there who do just the same, provided they have the choice.
It is an attestation to Updike’s incomparable writing skill that he picks up this ordinary guy and uses his plainness as the canvas on which to paint an engaging picture of middle-class American life, complete with all its 20th century’s props and scenery. He wrote a Rabbit book every decade. The first one is in the 1950s with their suffocating adherence to form and order. The second moves on to the 1960s and their subversive air of social unrest that mildly brushes against Harry’s Middletown- USA-existence. The 1970s do offer him an outlet and enough of a payback with their suburban promiscuity and his moving-up on the social ladder, his country club, his Caribbean vacation et all.
But in this last book of the series, taking place in an abundantly materialistic world that changes faster than Harry feels comfortable with, the 1980s don’t find him in good shape. His once-strong body suffers from a weak heart that he stubbornly refuses to mend by abandoning his unhealthy habits that years of mindless consumerism have built up. His spirit suffers from the ordinary affliction of a mid-life crisis that, for all his aversion towards introspection, he doesn’t seem to avoid.
I’m not sure if this one would sufficiently appeal to someone who hasn’t read the other three books. It got the 1991 Pulitzer, as did the previous one, Rabbit Is Rich, in 1982. I liked that one the most but I find Updike’s prose sensational in all four of them. Rabbit grew on me, book after book, and that certainly helped in appreciating the less-exciting parts of the long narration. Sometimes I felt there was too much dragging until the next perfect sentence, scene and dialogue that jolted me and stayed on long after the story was finished.
I liked Rabbit. Both as a character and as a narrative. He exasperated me at times but no more than the people in my life do - or myself, for that matter. At times I looked at him from above, sharing his author’s mocking gaze; at times I felt the same affection Updike has in store for his hero’s childlike need for recognition because, after all “…that’s what we all want from each other.”
I grew a bit tired of him in the end, as I suspect Updike did; maybe that’s why he gave him a premature death in his 50s. No spoiler here, the title speaks for itself. The End brought a pang of sadness, an unsettling awareness of loss. Same as the news of the passing of someone who wasn’t really part of our lives, yet they occupied a place, however small, in it. We take a few minutes to digest it and then move on with the rest of our day, the rest of our books.
With four very American novels, Updike paid tribute to the ordinariness of life. Not only that of his hero but to all the human lives the world is full of, has been from the dawn of time and (hopefully) will be long after we’ve followed in Rabbit’s and its creator’s footsteps.
December 24, 2017
While the average person may have been conducting online searches for holiday recipes this week, I was doing my own Google search. . .which type of cigarettes did John Updike smoke? (My poor, poor children. No Waldorf salad or candied yams for you).
That query provided me with information that I already knew, that Mr. Updike died from lung cancer, as a result of his nasty smoking habit, but my actual question wasn't answered.
Which kind of cigarettes did he smoke??
Do you know?
I don't. But I want to know. And I think about it. . . an unnatural amount. Almost every photo ever taken of John Updike features a burning cigarette drooping casually from his mouth or held loosely between his two fingers.
And, though I loathe cigarette smoking, I find myself thinking of that mischievous smile and that stupid cigarette hanging from his mouth, and the next thing you know, I'm Olivia Newton-John in Grease, pulling that damn thing slowly from his mouth, throwing it to the ground to crush under my black heel, and whispering (real close like to his face), “Tell me about it, stud.” What follows from there is none of your damn business.
WHAT KIND OF A REVIEW IS THIS???
This is my kind of review. My way of informing you that I've read more John Updike than, say, 98% of the population, and, though I am not an “Updike expert,” I've gone so far as to having elaborate couch fantasies with him as well.
And, having inappropriately written all of that, I want you to know that you can trust me when I suggest to you that you ABSOLUTELY SHOULD read the Rabbit series (his most famous work), but just quit at Rabbit #3, Rabbit is Rich and call it a day.
Despite what Rabbit himself advises his grandson, Roy, in this book, when little Roy explains that he left the movie theatre early because the Dumbo movie had upset him: “If you don't stay to the end the sadness sticks with you," I respectfully disagree. It wasn't worth it to stay to the end. The ended sucked. This novel was an overly wordy, overly written, tiresome slog. Rabbit and John should have both quit while they were ahead.
But, don't worry, John. This one may not have worked for me, but I've got a bad case of the feels for you. I've got a hard stack of your work, hovering close to my bed, waiting for my attention.
Was it Pall Malls? Marlboros?
That query provided me with information that I already knew, that Mr. Updike died from lung cancer, as a result of his nasty smoking habit, but my actual question wasn't answered.
Which kind of cigarettes did he smoke??
Do you know?
I don't. But I want to know. And I think about it. . . an unnatural amount. Almost every photo ever taken of John Updike features a burning cigarette drooping casually from his mouth or held loosely between his two fingers.
And, though I loathe cigarette smoking, I find myself thinking of that mischievous smile and that stupid cigarette hanging from his mouth, and the next thing you know, I'm Olivia Newton-John in Grease, pulling that damn thing slowly from his mouth, throwing it to the ground to crush under my black heel, and whispering (real close like to his face), “Tell me about it, stud.” What follows from there is none of your damn business.
WHAT KIND OF A REVIEW IS THIS???
This is my kind of review. My way of informing you that I've read more John Updike than, say, 98% of the population, and, though I am not an “Updike expert,” I've gone so far as to having elaborate couch fantasies with him as well.
And, having inappropriately written all of that, I want you to know that you can trust me when I suggest to you that you ABSOLUTELY SHOULD read the Rabbit series (his most famous work), but just quit at Rabbit #3, Rabbit is Rich and call it a day.
Despite what Rabbit himself advises his grandson, Roy, in this book, when little Roy explains that he left the movie theatre early because the Dumbo movie had upset him: “If you don't stay to the end the sadness sticks with you," I respectfully disagree. It wasn't worth it to stay to the end. The ended sucked. This novel was an overly wordy, overly written, tiresome slog. Rabbit and John should have both quit while they were ahead.
But, don't worry, John. This one may not have worked for me, but I've got a bad case of the feels for you. I've got a hard stack of your work, hovering close to my bed, waiting for my attention.
Was it Pall Malls? Marlboros?
December 23, 2017
According to the Chinese Zodiac, 2017 was year of the Rooster, but for ME, it was year of Rabbit. This year, I discovered with great glee, the brilliance of John Updike, and I've hopped through the four books he wrote about the guy we all love to hate (or hate to love), Rabbit Angstrom.
I'm bidding goodbye to this flawed horndog, with misty eyes. Somehow, from the beginning, despite his reprehensible, often misogynistic ways (and his overuse of the "C" word), I liked the bastard. From his family-fleeing 50's, his communal 60's, his swinging 70's, to now... Rabbit in the 80's.
We're in 1989 - the end of the Reagan era, when Bill Cosby is still a role model to many, Cabbage Patch kids are the rage, Melanie Griffiths stars in Working Girl, women have shoulder pads in every article of clothing, you get the picture. Oh, and there's AIDS and piles of cocaine too.
He's 56 going on 90. He's got a bum ticker, and for the whole book, we are painfully aware of each constriction, each suffocating breath. It's clear this guy's claim on life is tenuous. I for one was begging him to stop, for the love of god, eating dry-roasted cashews, but he wouldn't listen. You wouldn't think that with plaque-filled ventricles he'd be able to misbehave as he has in other books. But, don't worry, he does as never before.
He's spending half the year in Florida with Janice, chasing the perfect golf swing. Meanwhile, Nelson (the most dislikable, annoying character I can remember reading, EVER) is growing his rat-tail and sniffing up the profits at Springer Motors like a good son.
Rabbit is comfortable, but only medium-happy at best. With age, it is hard to say that he has acquired wisdom, though his internal monologues still boast his insightful commentary and observations.
I loved being back in the Angstrom family's world, as dysfunctional as it is. This book, focusing on mortality, has many excellent parts, my favourite being a perilous scene on the ocean with Rabbit and his granddaughter. However, I felt that many parts were really rambling and repetitive. I could have done without much of the roadside commentary every single time he got in a car, or the very, very detailed recollections of Brewer in its hey day.
The other thing that has stuck in my craw is the unbelievability of one of the main plot points in this book, which I'll have to discuss under a spoiler tag for obvious reasons.
The book and series end in a heartbreakingly perfect denouement, our hero coming full circle. I am so sad to witness Rabbit's never-ending human struggle. I want him to succeed; I want him to be happy; I want him to figure it all out; I want him to have great sex. I want him to find the same freedom as he did on the basketball court in high school, so that he doesn't have to look back so far to find a time where he felt optimism. Though, it's through the everyday tragedy of Rabbit's life that we can see our own, and maybe that's where the redemption lies.
We are each of us like our little blue planet, hung in black space, upheld by nothing but our mutual reassurances, our loving lies.
I'm bidding goodbye to this flawed horndog, with misty eyes. Somehow, from the beginning, despite his reprehensible, often misogynistic ways (and his overuse of the "C" word), I liked the bastard. From his family-fleeing 50's, his communal 60's, his swinging 70's, to now... Rabbit in the 80's.
We're in 1989 - the end of the Reagan era, when Bill Cosby is still a role model to many, Cabbage Patch kids are the rage, Melanie Griffiths stars in Working Girl, women have shoulder pads in every article of clothing, you get the picture. Oh, and there's AIDS and piles of cocaine too.
He's 56 going on 90. He's got a bum ticker, and for the whole book, we are painfully aware of each constriction, each suffocating breath. It's clear this guy's claim on life is tenuous. I for one was begging him to stop, for the love of god, eating dry-roasted cashews, but he wouldn't listen. You wouldn't think that with plaque-filled ventricles he'd be able to misbehave as he has in other books. But, don't worry, he does as never before.
He's spending half the year in Florida with Janice, chasing the perfect golf swing. Meanwhile, Nelson (the most dislikable, annoying character I can remember reading, EVER) is growing his rat-tail and sniffing up the profits at Springer Motors like a good son.
Rabbit is comfortable, but only medium-happy at best. With age, it is hard to say that he has acquired wisdom, though his internal monologues still boast his insightful commentary and observations.
I loved being back in the Angstrom family's world, as dysfunctional as it is. This book, focusing on mortality, has many excellent parts, my favourite being a perilous scene on the ocean with Rabbit and his granddaughter. However, I felt that many parts were really rambling and repetitive. I could have done without much of the roadside commentary every single time he got in a car, or the very, very detailed recollections of Brewer in its hey day.
The other thing that has stuck in my craw is the unbelievability of one of the main plot points in this book, which I'll have to discuss under a spoiler tag for obvious reasons.
The book and series end in a heartbreakingly perfect denouement, our hero coming full circle. I am so sad to witness Rabbit's never-ending human struggle. I want him to succeed; I want him to be happy; I want him to figure it all out; I want him to have great sex. I want him to find the same freedom as he did on the basketball court in high school, so that he doesn't have to look back so far to find a time where he felt optimism. Though, it's through the everyday tragedy of Rabbit's life that we can see our own, and maybe that's where the redemption lies.
We are each of us like our little blue planet, hung in black space, upheld by nothing but our mutual reassurances, our loving lies.
October 7, 2019
XXXXXXX
February 9, 2017
This last book in the Harry Angstrom cycle by Updike looks at the end of Rabbit's life and disillusionment at the end of the 80s. It is worthy of the Pulitzer it garnered (Updike's second after the equally superb Rabbit is Rich). Suffice it to say that there is the same set of characters which we know from the previous books and a nice circular return at the very end. An essential read for understanding America on the eve of the 90s.
It is an excellent book which explores the themes of aging and death as well as fatherhood in that intimate prose which only Updike knew how to write.
It is an excellent book which explores the themes of aging and death as well as fatherhood in that intimate prose which only Updike knew how to write.
September 25, 2024
I have finally put Rabbit to rest, and I must admit some relief in doing so. I cannot say these are enjoyable books, and they aren’t even ones from which you learn much that you didn’t already know, but there is something there that pulls you in and keeps you reading. Perhaps it is just that feeling we have of wanting to peek into the secrets of someone else’s life in hopes that it will help us understand our own. Perhaps it is that as much as we don’t want to find anything of ourselves in Rabbit, we do.
This final book (at least for me) brings Rabbit into middle-age and all the health issues and family struggles that often accompany the aging process. He looks around and compares himself to his friends and associates, hoping he is faring at least as well and maybe better, but he knows, as do we all, that the time is shorter and the cliff could loom ahead, just beyond our vision.
Rabbit has always been a self-centered bastard, but he is now forced to confront problems that are not his own. There is the always dissatisfied son, Nelson, to deal with and the sharp-edged Janice, who is no one’s idea of a good wife, and the granddaughter who has his heart whether he wishes that way or not. In looking at Rabbit’s life, I could not help wondering what it was for, and I think Rabbit is asking himself the same question. It is gone by so quickly, and the boy who was the star of the basketball court is gone with it.
The book comes full-cycle. This is a life we have seen. Complete. Messy. Ugly. Sad. I couldn’t help thinking back to the original book and wondering what Harry Angstrom might have been if he had just stayed on that midnight journey away from Brewer and the life he had started, away from the mess it was to become, and perhaps found some better man inside himself–another, better Rabbit.
This final book (at least for me) brings Rabbit into middle-age and all the health issues and family struggles that often accompany the aging process. He looks around and compares himself to his friends and associates, hoping he is faring at least as well and maybe better, but he knows, as do we all, that the time is shorter and the cliff could loom ahead, just beyond our vision.
Rabbit has always been a self-centered bastard, but he is now forced to confront problems that are not his own. There is the always dissatisfied son, Nelson, to deal with and the sharp-edged Janice, who is no one’s idea of a good wife, and the granddaughter who has his heart whether he wishes that way or not. In looking at Rabbit’s life, I could not help wondering what it was for, and I think Rabbit is asking himself the same question. It is gone by so quickly, and the boy who was the star of the basketball court is gone with it.
The book comes full-cycle. This is a life we have seen. Complete. Messy. Ugly. Sad. I couldn’t help thinking back to the original book and wondering what Harry Angstrom might have been if he had just stayed on that midnight journey away from Brewer and the life he had started, away from the mess it was to become, and perhaps found some better man inside himself–another, better Rabbit.
August 5, 2024
Man, this John Updike can really write! The way he expresses himself into the story page after page after page is intoxicating. This book was his second Pulitzer Prize winner of this series.
Rabbit is still on the run from life as he has made it now at the age of 57. Still trying to figure things out with his family and other issues.
I'm so glad that I found this series. And now on to the final book.
Such good writing.
Rabbit is still on the run from life as he has made it now at the age of 57. Still trying to figure things out with his family and other issues.
I'm so glad that I found this series. And now on to the final book.
Such good writing.
July 15, 2022
– Che cosa vedi? – Una specie di vermiciattolo agitato, che non si ferma mai. – È la vita, –
Se hai già letto i primi tre libri della saga di Coniglio (*1), Updike sembra sussurrarti: “rilassati ci penso io”. Tu sai che puoi fidarti, non devi aver fretta, devi invece controllare bene nelle pieghe delle sue frasi più amare, perché lì son nascoste le verità che molti cercano e che poi non son disposti ad accettare.
Updike gode dell’apprezzamento di buona parte dei suoi colleghi scrittori, è in grado di riprodurre il flusso dei pensieri del suo personaggio come se usasse una GoPro mentale. La descrizione giunge ad un livello più elevato e diventa simbolo interiore, associazione di pensieri. Avviene con naturalezza e in modo ricorrente, viene spontaneo pensare a quegli scrittori che per una veronica riuscita si applaudono da soli, qui siamo al cospetto di uno scrittore che non tiene conto del concetto di straordinario.
Il punto del romanzo che ho apprezzato maggiormente è stato intorno a pag. 250, dopo una tornitura magistrale ho immaginato Updike alzarsi soddisfatto dalla sedia come se l’esperienza descritta l’avesse vissuta davvero. Lui non racconta di un uomo che invecchia, lui è quell’uomo è dentro quel personaggio e ormai, alla fine della saga, vi ha trascinato anche me. Il finale della seconda parte del libro è un po’ strascicato, la terza ha il torto di avere un titolo che è uno spoiler inammissibile (il titolo corretto sarebbe stato Pennsylvania/Florida), nonostante ciò, conduce ad un punto di svolta inaspettato.
(Così nei miei appunti)
Sono all’80% c’è stata una svolta, purtroppo il titolo della terza parte è troppo esplicativo, è un’anticipazione imperdonabile; non mi lasciare vecchio bastardo, tienimi compagnia almeno fin quando non tornerò a lavoro, ma anche i giorni successivi, quando mi sveglierò presto, o andrò a letto senza riuscire a prendere sonno. Coniglio sei un irresponsabile, un traditore, un sessuomane, hai fallito come genitore, come marito, come amante.. ma cazzo, chi ti ha inventato era un grande scrittore.
Questo e il libro precedente sono i migliori della saga, non posso garantire che vi piaceranno, posso solo dirvi che sarei felice di non averli ancora letti, di poterli leggere io al posto di chiunque non li apprezzerà.
Per quanti non temono lo spoiler, qui ci sono le impressioni di Julian Barnes
http://ricerca.repubblica.it/repubbli...
Colonna sonora:
Vaya Con Dios - (1952 cover) - Les Paul and Mary Ford
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJkMV...
Louis Prima Just A Gigolo I Ain't Got Nobody
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kkrb4...
(*1)
Rabbit, Run (Corri, Coniglio, 1960)
Rabbit Redux (Il ritorno di Coniglio, 1971)
Rabbit is Rich (Sei ricco, Coniglio, 1981)
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Rabbit At Rest (Riposa Coniglio, 1990)
Se hai già letto i primi tre libri della saga di Coniglio (*1), Updike sembra sussurrarti: “rilassati ci penso io”. Tu sai che puoi fidarti, non devi aver fretta, devi invece controllare bene nelle pieghe delle sue frasi più amare, perché lì son nascoste le verità che molti cercano e che poi non son disposti ad accettare.
Updike gode dell’apprezzamento di buona parte dei suoi colleghi scrittori, è in grado di riprodurre il flusso dei pensieri del suo personaggio come se usasse una GoPro mentale. La descrizione giunge ad un livello più elevato e diventa simbolo interiore, associazione di pensieri. Avviene con naturalezza e in modo ricorrente, viene spontaneo pensare a quegli scrittori che per una veronica riuscita si applaudono da soli, qui siamo al cospetto di uno scrittore che non tiene conto del concetto di straordinario.
Il punto del romanzo che ho apprezzato maggiormente è stato intorno a pag. 250, dopo una tornitura magistrale ho immaginato Updike alzarsi soddisfatto dalla sedia come se l’esperienza descritta l’avesse vissuta davvero. Lui non racconta di un uomo che invecchia, lui è quell’uomo è dentro quel personaggio e ormai, alla fine della saga, vi ha trascinato anche me. Il finale della seconda parte del libro è un po’ strascicato, la terza ha il torto di avere un titolo che è uno spoiler inammissibile (il titolo corretto sarebbe stato Pennsylvania/Florida), nonostante ciò, conduce ad un punto di svolta inaspettato.
(Così nei miei appunti)
Sono all’80% c’è stata una svolta, purtroppo il titolo della terza parte è troppo esplicativo, è un’anticipazione imperdonabile; non mi lasciare vecchio bastardo, tienimi compagnia almeno fin quando non tornerò a lavoro, ma anche i giorni successivi, quando mi sveglierò presto, o andrò a letto senza riuscire a prendere sonno. Coniglio sei un irresponsabile, un traditore, un sessuomane, hai fallito come genitore, come marito, come amante.. ma cazzo, chi ti ha inventato era un grande scrittore.
Questo e il libro precedente sono i migliori della saga, non posso garantire che vi piaceranno, posso solo dirvi che sarei felice di non averli ancora letti, di poterli leggere io al posto di chiunque non li apprezzerà.
Per quanti non temono lo spoiler, qui ci sono le impressioni di Julian Barnes
http://ricerca.repubblica.it/repubbli...
Colonna sonora:
Vaya Con Dios - (1952 cover) - Les Paul and Mary Ford
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJkMV...
Louis Prima Just A Gigolo I Ain't Got Nobody
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kkrb4...
(*1)
Rabbit, Run (Corri, Coniglio, 1960)
Rabbit Redux (Il ritorno di Coniglio, 1971)
Rabbit is Rich (Sei ricco, Coniglio, 1981)
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Rabbit At Rest (Riposa Coniglio, 1990)
September 18, 2010
Eat a balanced diet. Exercise regularly. Avoid excessive drinking. Don't fuck your daughter-in-law. Lot of good life-style advice in this book...
August 2, 2012
I dreaded reading this book and I have to admit that it took me two weeks to get through the last 50 pages. I miss Harry Angstrom not as if a dear friend has died, but as if I have died myself and yet somehow remain around to mourn my own loss. What's odd is that I didn't really like Rabbit. I did understand him though, in a way that I've never understood anyone aside from myself. That, to me, is Updike's true gift: chipping away to an unvarnished life to expose the raw emotion and thought upon which we pile layer after layer of the every day. I'm having a difficult time not going back and re-reading the Rabbit series again. Right now. the only thing that stops me is the hope that I'll find another book that will touch me as deeply.
July 28, 2017
Q: Where oh where will Rabbit go to rest? Where will it all--all four decades worth of this, an all American life--culminate-- and how?
A: In Florida; and boringly.
This is a tremendously slow trek through Harry Angstrom’s last year and we see the guy eat himself to death and burn bridges with family and friends. (Eh… what’s new?) The sick sad life of the American Male: the fourth novel is overkill; while it's perfectly nice to revisit some of Rabbit’s highlights and (mostly) low-lights, how o how can a life be reduced to American history merged so neatly with a deep and personal human experience? It doesn’t work, this attempt to encapsulate life, to show how America is as much a part of it as family is…
I have only one idea as to why the tetralogy is so lauded today (and when each individual novel was first published): DAMN GOOD prose.
A: In Florida; and boringly.
This is a tremendously slow trek through Harry Angstrom’s last year and we see the guy eat himself to death and burn bridges with family and friends. (Eh… what’s new?) The sick sad life of the American Male: the fourth novel is overkill; while it's perfectly nice to revisit some of Rabbit’s highlights and (mostly) low-lights, how o how can a life be reduced to American history merged so neatly with a deep and personal human experience? It doesn’t work, this attempt to encapsulate life, to show how America is as much a part of it as family is…
I have only one idea as to why the tetralogy is so lauded today (and when each individual novel was first published): DAMN GOOD prose.
May 3, 2009
Updike's Rabbit series is, quite simply, some of the best literature I have ever read, and this last book in the series is the best yet.
Throughout, Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom has been a pretty reprehensible character and he still maintains those chops in this book. He is the unchallenged all-time champion of jerks, but here, even Rabbit sinks to new lows. The things he does are enough to make the reader thoroughly despise him. And yet...
He is so completely and utterly human. It wasn't his ambition to be a jerk. He wanted to be the hero of his life story, but his selfish and needy personality wouldn't let him. He was a user from beginning to end. He used others - especially women - to prop up his self esteem. To ease his pain.
And yet, what is the source of all this pain? A dead daughter? A truly awful mother? The loss of the only thing he truly loved - basketball? It is hard to be specific. Throughout the books, the losses mount up as the people in his life tend to die early or else find a way to escape the maelstrom that is Harry. Meantime, Harry sinks further and further into despair, dragging all those around him with him.
The latter parts of this book where Harry is alone and in interior conversation with himself remind me of nothing so much as the last luminous chapter of "Ulysses," Molly's soliloquoy. Rabbit's soliloquoy is more rambling, but no less heart-felt. "Heart, felt" being the operative words here.
I feel that I've spent all this time with a character that I didn't really like and yet, at the end, I felt empathy for him. I thought of all the mistakes I have made in my life, all the people I've hurt and disappointed, and I thought, "Who am I to judge Rabbit? For in so many ways, I am Rabbit."
Throughout, Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom has been a pretty reprehensible character and he still maintains those chops in this book. He is the unchallenged all-time champion of jerks, but here, even Rabbit sinks to new lows. The things he does are enough to make the reader thoroughly despise him. And yet...
He is so completely and utterly human. It wasn't his ambition to be a jerk. He wanted to be the hero of his life story, but his selfish and needy personality wouldn't let him. He was a user from beginning to end. He used others - especially women - to prop up his self esteem. To ease his pain.
And yet, what is the source of all this pain? A dead daughter? A truly awful mother? The loss of the only thing he truly loved - basketball? It is hard to be specific. Throughout the books, the losses mount up as the people in his life tend to die early or else find a way to escape the maelstrom that is Harry. Meantime, Harry sinks further and further into despair, dragging all those around him with him.
The latter parts of this book where Harry is alone and in interior conversation with himself remind me of nothing so much as the last luminous chapter of "Ulysses," Molly's soliloquoy. Rabbit's soliloquoy is more rambling, but no less heart-felt. "Heart, felt" being the operative words here.
I feel that I've spent all this time with a character that I didn't really like and yet, at the end, I felt empathy for him. I thought of all the mistakes I have made in my life, all the people I've hurt and disappointed, and I thought, "Who am I to judge Rabbit? For in so many ways, I am Rabbit."
March 3, 2020
Pulitzer Prize winner 1991. Oh my gosh! I can't believe I'm saying goodbye to Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom and Janice and the whole family! This was the fourth and final book in the Rabbit series. I seriously hated to see it end. It was so good - I just zoomed through 500+ pages.
There's not much to say here that hasn't already been said. Updike had an incredible gift for observing life and portraying it in a way that we can all relate to. This particular novel was following Harry at age 55, but not in as good of shape (physically & mentally) as the average 55 year old male. Lots of moments of reflection on life, just like the other 3 novels, but with a bittersweet feeling now that most of life is behind him.
The only reason I gave 4 instead of 5 stars is because there is one scene toward the end that is so implausible and out of place in this otherwise authentic story. I won't give it away, but I will say that it is maddening because it's something I've maybe only experienced from other authors a few other times (thank goodness!). What happened? Updike inserted himself and created a scene that was a fantasy for himself personally and not the character or even following the plot. I thought it was a cheap move, for a cheap personal thrill.
But all in all I absolutely LOVED this story and found myself immediately involved and absorbed in Harry's life again. And Updike's outstanding and skillful writing. I will always be looking for more Updike to read. Always.
There's not much to say here that hasn't already been said. Updike had an incredible gift for observing life and portraying it in a way that we can all relate to. This particular novel was following Harry at age 55, but not in as good of shape (physically & mentally) as the average 55 year old male. Lots of moments of reflection on life, just like the other 3 novels, but with a bittersweet feeling now that most of life is behind him.
The only reason I gave 4 instead of 5 stars is because there is one scene toward the end that is so implausible and out of place in this otherwise authentic story. I won't give it away, but I will say that it is maddening because it's something I've maybe only experienced from other authors a few other times (thank goodness!). What happened? Updike inserted himself and created a scene that was a fantasy for himself personally and not the character or even following the plot. I thought it was a cheap move, for a cheap personal thrill.
But all in all I absolutely LOVED this story and found myself immediately involved and absorbed in Harry's life again. And Updike's outstanding and skillful writing. I will always be looking for more Updike to read. Always.
November 20, 2020
This is probably my favorite of the four books. It sums up Rabbit's life, as he recalls all he and his family have been through, and he finally comes to an acceptance of his being. I liked how Janice comes into her own and is able to raise her self-esteem and confidence. And, hopefully, their son Nelson has also learned a few lessons and has started to grow up.
It is a very interesting series, especially since each of the four books was written ten years apart. It is fascinating to look back through time and see the current events of each era through the author's eyes (especially if you lived through those eras!).
This series may not be for everyone, and I even (at times) questioned if I wanted to continue. But, in the end, I'm glad that I did.
It is a very interesting series, especially since each of the four books was written ten years apart. It is fascinating to look back through time and see the current events of each era through the author's eyes (especially if you lived through those eras!).
This series may not be for everyone, and I even (at times) questioned if I wanted to continue. But, in the end, I'm glad that I did.
September 19, 2012
My favorite of the tetralogy. Probably because this asshole finally dies.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 17, 2022
Pe Rabbit începi să-l iubești pe neștiute, mai mult din obișnuința de a tot citi despre el preț de sute de pagini, 4 volume, iar nu fiindcă ar merita-o (e greu de iubit, dar mai lesne de iubit decât nevastă-sa).
Până la urmă, ajungi de-l simpatizezi în secret, totuși, și pentru că-i situat mereu în răspăr cu tot restul lumii (cum ai vrea să crezi că ești și tu).
Rabbit ar fi avut ritmul său propriu (de a-și trăi viața), însă ceilalți l-au zorit și scormonit mereu, grăbindu-l către locul în care, în cele din urmă, a ajuns.
Tur de forță, capodoperă, maraton literar - toate clișeele astea răsuflate! Dar ce bine se potrivesc ele și aici, la Updike!
Posibil ca eu să-l fi admirat pe Roth mai mult doar fiindcă n-am dat de Updike mai devreme.
Până la urmă, ajungi de-l simpatizezi în secret, totuși, și pentru că-i situat mereu în răspăr cu tot restul lumii (cum ai vrea să crezi că ești și tu).
Rabbit ar fi avut ritmul său propriu (de a-și trăi viața), însă ceilalți l-au zorit și scormonit mereu, grăbindu-l către locul în care, în cele din urmă, a ajuns.
Tur de forță, capodoperă, maraton literar - toate clișeele astea răsuflate! Dar ce bine se potrivesc ele și aici, la Updike!
Posibil ca eu să-l fi admirat pe Roth mai mult doar fiindcă n-am dat de Updike mai devreme.
October 30, 2017
"What's a life supposed to be?" asks Rabbit's daughter-in-law. "They don't give you another for comparison." But at its best, that's what Updike has done with the Rabbit books. He's given us another, and it's this terrific shambling asshat of an everyman, a former athlete who goes exactly to seed right before our eyes.
Updike's ability to inhabit such a normal person with sympathy and honesty puts these books, taken together, in the Great American Novel pantheon. He's now covered Rabbit from his awful youth through his midlife crisis and into retirement. Rabbit has gained some wisdom along the way, but not a lot of it. He remains 'til the end self-absorbed, self-pitying, selfish. It feels as much like a real life as anything I've ever read does.
What's worked less well is Updike's insistence on sending Rabbit, Forrest Gump-style, stumbling through the headlines of each decade. In the 60s Rabbit encountered free love and civil rights, which utterly sank Rabbit Redux. In Rabbit is Rich's 70s he explored wife swapping, which worked out surprisingly well even though I'm 100% sure key parties are made up. (But if you'd like to play Literary Key Party, here are the rules.) Here in the 80s, Rabbit deals with - what else? - coke and AIDS. It feels forced and superficial. Updike gets the details right - a kindly comedian named Cosby, a flamboyant loudmouth named Trump - but Rabbit shoehorns in awkwardly.
Rabbit at Rest isn't a puzzling disaster like Rabbit Redux, but it's not great. The coke-and-AIDS bits are dumb. A parade where Rabbit is dressed as Uncle Sam is too on-the-nose. And there's a fucking lot of talk about golf, which is literally the least interesting thing in the world.
And Updike's sex can be brilliant, a way to actually move the plot forward, but he can also just type one-handed while masturbating, and that's what happens here: I found the major sex scene unbelievable no matter how desperate his partner was. () Updike is trying to wind the clock backwards: the series ends as it begins. Rabbit runs; Rabbit plays ball. He needs one last betrayal as well. But it feels dubious.
But we're also dealing with mortality, and when Updike just relaxes and gets into Rabbit's head, it's insightful. Rabbit has reached the phase of life where friends start to die. His own suffocating heart makes him all too aware of his own fragility - "the terror of being trapped inside his perishing body, like being in a prison cell with a madman who might decide to kill him at any moment."
As a describer of America, Updike is flawed. As a describer of the human soul, he's magnificent. "For one flash," after Rabbit in full grandpa mode accidentally eats parrot food, "he sees his life as a silly thing it will be a relief to discard." It is a silly thing, Rabbit's life, and Updike's gotten it all on paper. My life is also fairly silly, all things considered, and it makes me feel more human to have this one to compare it to.
Updike's ability to inhabit such a normal person with sympathy and honesty puts these books, taken together, in the Great American Novel pantheon. He's now covered Rabbit from his awful youth through his midlife crisis and into retirement. Rabbit has gained some wisdom along the way, but not a lot of it. He remains 'til the end self-absorbed, self-pitying, selfish. It feels as much like a real life as anything I've ever read does.
What's worked less well is Updike's insistence on sending Rabbit, Forrest Gump-style, stumbling through the headlines of each decade. In the 60s Rabbit encountered free love and civil rights, which utterly sank Rabbit Redux. In Rabbit is Rich's 70s he explored wife swapping, which worked out surprisingly well even though I'm 100% sure key parties are made up. (But if you'd like to play Literary Key Party, here are the rules.) Here in the 80s, Rabbit deals with - what else? - coke and AIDS. It feels forced and superficial. Updike gets the details right - a kindly comedian named Cosby, a flamboyant loudmouth named Trump - but Rabbit shoehorns in awkwardly.
Rabbit at Rest isn't a puzzling disaster like Rabbit Redux, but it's not great. The coke-and-AIDS bits are dumb. A parade where Rabbit is dressed as Uncle Sam is too on-the-nose. And there's a fucking lot of talk about golf, which is literally the least interesting thing in the world.
And Updike's sex can be brilliant, a way to actually move the plot forward, but he can also just type one-handed while masturbating, and that's what happens here: I found the major sex scene unbelievable no matter how desperate his partner was. () Updike is trying to wind the clock backwards: the series ends as it begins. Rabbit runs; Rabbit plays ball. He needs one last betrayal as well. But it feels dubious.
But we're also dealing with mortality, and when Updike just relaxes and gets into Rabbit's head, it's insightful. Rabbit has reached the phase of life where friends start to die. His own suffocating heart makes him all too aware of his own fragility - "the terror of being trapped inside his perishing body, like being in a prison cell with a madman who might decide to kill him at any moment."
As a describer of America, Updike is flawed. As a describer of the human soul, he's magnificent. "For one flash," after Rabbit in full grandpa mode accidentally eats parrot food, "he sees his life as a silly thing it will be a relief to discard." It is a silly thing, Rabbit's life, and Updike's gotten it all on paper. My life is also fairly silly, all things considered, and it makes me feel more human to have this one to compare it to.
January 7, 2012
I didn't expect to be sad at the end of this. But after four novels, each gradually getting deeper into the character, moving from about 300 pages in the first to almost 500 by the last, I've logged in a lot of time with Harry Angstrom. And so when this one brought his story around to the end, I got a little sad.
It's an accomplishment to write a character essentially from birth to death. And so much of Rabbit's story involves all of the mundane details of small-town life -- watching TV, knowing the same people your whole life, never really venturing outside of your circuit. So, I mean, Rabbit was kind of a jerk to the very end. And that's what got me. Updike does a beautiful job in this one, slowly closing the book on this guy.
In this one he finally runs and almost gets away. But like in the first book, he never really knew where to go.
There were so many emotions in this one. Some parts really made me laugh out loud, while others made me anxious. Rabbit is still difficult to empathize with, but at least a lot of that is put into context. There are also plenty of the usual cringe-worthy moments -- seriously, the Japanese character has to speak like a Krusty the Clown bit -- but I feel like there was a lot of wisdom imparted by these books.
And that is -- don't be like these people.
It's an accomplishment to write a character essentially from birth to death. And so much of Rabbit's story involves all of the mundane details of small-town life -- watching TV, knowing the same people your whole life, never really venturing outside of your circuit. So, I mean, Rabbit was kind of a jerk to the very end. And that's what got me. Updike does a beautiful job in this one, slowly closing the book on this guy.
In this one he finally runs and almost gets away. But like in the first book, he never really knew where to go.
There were so many emotions in this one. Some parts really made me laugh out loud, while others made me anxious. Rabbit is still difficult to empathize with, but at least a lot of that is put into context. There are also plenty of the usual cringe-worthy moments -- seriously, the Japanese character has to speak like a Krusty the Clown bit -- but I feel like there was a lot of wisdom imparted by these books.
And that is -- don't be like these people.
October 12, 2011
Just as the first hundred pages of RABBIT, RUN were written in a breathless pace to match their manic tone, the last hundred pages of RABBIT AT REST, which mirror the beginning moments of the series, linger on in a depressingly meaningless manner. Highway billboards, trite pop tunes from past decades, and trivial news headlines about baseball players blur with the names and minutiae of a history book, the snapshot memories of Harry's somewhat uneventful life, and the chronic ups and downs of his erratic family life. Insipid, self-destructive meal follows unhealthy meal, and the sitcoms in getaway Florida are the same idiotic mindlessness that shows on the televisions in Pennsylvania. Rabbit tries, in the last moments of his life, to find a reason for all that living, and it's not so easy to say that he does. As he staggers through bland smalltalk with a Holocaust survivor who's been reduced to a decrepit buffet patron and tries to pack a punch in awkward conversations with his distant grandchildren, one realizes that if life does have some driving purpose, Rabbit Angstrom has never tapped into it. Even the most cherished moment of his last year on earth, a spontaneous and rather scandalous sexual encounter, is reduced to psychological rationalization and neurotic impulses by his frustratingly forgiving family, who whittle even his sex drive down to a few taboo missteps.
RABBIT AT REST is a bleakly beautiful book, with razor-sharp prose that begs to be reread and read out loud. One might expect a novel about an intimately familiar protagonist to contain some epiphanies, some poetic truths, or at least some tender moments, yet throughout the series Updike never surrendered to cliches or melodrama and nor does he here. RABBIT AT REST is a slice of reality, and sometimes reality ends in unresolved regrets and pitiful, self-defeating attempts at impossible reconciliations.
Updike is also an American historian, an ethnographer of the middle American malaise, and in RABBIT AT REST, just as with previous decades in the previous books, he captures life in the late eighties as though from some well-informed future vantage point. Debt, computers, racism, the wasteland of American industry--Updike envisions and eviscerates all of society's ills with an acuteness that leaves me wishing I could pick up something like RABBIT IN RECESSION, a 2010 novel that could maybe help us all figure out where our troublesome future might lie.
RABBIT AT REST is a splendid novel, maybe not quite as powerful and moving as RABBIT, RUN, but then again--to paraphrase Harry--when you get older it gets harder to muster the same enthusiasm you once held for everything.
RABBIT AT REST is a bleakly beautiful book, with razor-sharp prose that begs to be reread and read out loud. One might expect a novel about an intimately familiar protagonist to contain some epiphanies, some poetic truths, or at least some tender moments, yet throughout the series Updike never surrendered to cliches or melodrama and nor does he here. RABBIT AT REST is a slice of reality, and sometimes reality ends in unresolved regrets and pitiful, self-defeating attempts at impossible reconciliations.
Updike is also an American historian, an ethnographer of the middle American malaise, and in RABBIT AT REST, just as with previous decades in the previous books, he captures life in the late eighties as though from some well-informed future vantage point. Debt, computers, racism, the wasteland of American industry--Updike envisions and eviscerates all of society's ills with an acuteness that leaves me wishing I could pick up something like RABBIT IN RECESSION, a 2010 novel that could maybe help us all figure out where our troublesome future might lie.
RABBIT AT REST is a splendid novel, maybe not quite as powerful and moving as RABBIT, RUN, but then again--to paraphrase Harry--when you get older it gets harder to muster the same enthusiasm you once held for everything.
July 23, 2021
I was not warned about John Updike until ten years after I first read his work. As a contrarian, the very warning I received (“Don’t go near him”) in 2018 had the effect of making me want to further explore his magnum opus.
The complaints about Updike, who died in 2009 (shortly before I was required to read his youthful short story “A&P”), were pervasive enough that it is understandable why most readers would shy away from his body of works completely. “A penis with a thesaurus,” David Foster Wallace penned in the 90s; “Your books are just boring,” a caller on C-SPAN told the aged author during a live broadcast. But only a select few writers I admire have ever gone so far as to make an anti-Updike value judgment — even David Foster Wallace’s comment need not be solely interpreted as negative critique. Joyce Carol Oates has long been a vocal proponent of Updike’s Rabbit series, saying that Updike is “a master, like Flaubert, of mesmerizing us with his narrative voice.”
A couple of years ago, I was browsing a section of shelves at Wisconsin’s largest used book sale, a biannual event that attracted used bookstore owners from the tri-city (Madison, Chicago, Milwaukee) region. The sale was held in a long, rectangular room with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lining each wall. Rows of wide tables limited movement in the space but provided ample places to stack books or boxes. Maps, depicting what type of book would be found where, hung every four or five feet on the walls — Cookbooks: table 14; Biography: tables 2 and 3; Hardback Fiction: northwest-corner shelves. It was there within a vertical sea of glossy book jackets of Stephen King and James Patterson that I found a first edition of Rabbit, Run. Its cover bore a pattern of thin, light blue, yellow, and green lines that switch color toward the middle of the image to form an optical illusion of a sphere. The reader surmises by the first page of the novel that the cover image is likely a minimalist, pop-art rendering of a basketball.
Rabbit, Run was published in the 1960s, but its plot is firmly grounded in the mid-50s. Updike would release a new Rabbit novel at the start of each subsequent decade as a way of charting the previous nine-to-ten years of American history. So, as the Rabbit novels progress through American history, the reader sees just how much the residents of this Rust Belt town are steadfast products of their time, an era with fierce racial tensions (Rabbit Redux charts the 60s and the rise of Nixonites) and dwindling local economies. Today, we would likely see Rabbit and those around him in red MAGA hats — a conclusion that is apparent after the opening of Rabbit Redux when Rabbit goes on a diatribe in the middle of a restaurant about the merits of Richard Nixon, the destruction of society at the hands of radical anti-America ideologues, and the strain of minorities on American culture.
Rabbit Redux is arguably the weakest of all the Rabbit books, but it happens to be my favorite, mostly because I did not know what to make of its explosively racist, homophobic, and misogynist rhetoric — elements that actually made it the most memorable, uncomfortable, yet exciting. Not only is the reader confronted with frequent use of the n-word and violence toward African Americans, but also Rabbit’s neglect of his child(ren) and physical abuse of his wife.
No matter how slowly I read, tried to empathize with Rabbit, and sought to understand what exactly the work’s raison d’être may be, it seemed that I lacked any tool to help interpret the broader text. To make the situation more difficult, all of the reviews written at the time of Rabbit Redux’s publication (and additionally all reviews of every novel in the series at their respective times of publication) were not only glowing, but seemed to be describing a different book from what I had read. The New York Times Book Review quoted Thomas Mann in its review, writing that his (Mann’s) words describe perfectly Rabbit Redux: “Great in love, in art, boldness, freedom, wisdom, kindness, exceedingly rich in intelligence, wit, imagination, and feeling — a great a beautiful thing.” Similar reviews only resulted in my wondering whether or not audiences in the 60s, 70s, and 80s read the book differently, with different lenses. If so, is the ambivalence I felt a fault of my own? It is as if our contemporary frameworks for interpreting art are somehow deficient when it comes to Updike, for perhaps we no longer use terms of the sublime to describe the sordid, or perhaps the era of being ethralled by or laughing along with Updike ended at the turn of the millennium.
In his personal life, Updike was an avid supporter of minorities and the poor, and frequently marched for racial progress alongside civil rights leaders. His daughter married a Kenyan and had a mixed-race child, who Updike had a hand in raising. Thus, I should add that I find it not only intellectually lazy, but also to be a sign of academic herd mentality to simply label Updike’s text “problematic,” or slander him a misogynist or racist. The question is: what is a reader to do with the text? Or rather, how is a reader to react to or understand the text? And why hasn’t this reaction been consistent since the 60s and 70s? Has our understanding of prose itself changed?
While the Rabbit series’s female characters have more agency than many of the women in the works of Updike’s contemporaries (Philip Roth or Saul Bellow, for instance), their realized sexual agency increases with each successive book. However, an interpretation of these characters could go in one direction or its opposite. By voicing their own sexual demands (such as in Rabbit Is Rich when Rabbit and Janice’s female friends come up with the idea of swapping spouses for the night. The woman “assigned” to Rabbit ends up demanding she do two sexual acts for him that no other woman in his life has done before. Surprisingly, Rabbit protests at first: “Let me do something for you. I mean, equal rights and all that”), the female characters can be seen as either unhinged fetishizers of the taboo, or simply fulfilling the trajectory of female self-actualization, fully embracing of their own sexuality and power.
While this shift to females calling the shots during sex scenes in the later Rabbit books serves to put the fictional men and women on equal footing, Rabbit’s imagination and fantasies in his mid-/older-age counteract these intimate scenes. For example, at the start of Rabbit is Rich, the protagonist is the manager of Springer Motors, a car lot inherited by Janice upon her father’s death. A teenage couple enters the shop and Rabbit convinces them to take a test drive with him in a 1970s Corolla. In his mind, Rabbit notes and analyzes every physical feature of the girl, whose age he places at “nineteen or twenty.”
His first question to his (male) co-worker, after the three return from the drive and the couple leaves, is “Whajja think of the girl?” Throughout the book, his mind frequently returns to the unnamed girl either in infatuation with the fantasy of bedding her, or, strangely, because he believes her to be his daughter. (Continuity between the books becomes important here, as it was about twenty years prior in Rabbit, Run that Rabbit’s mistress revealed she was pregnant with his child.)
Thus, whether or not Updike sought to feature in his Rabbit series the rise of female empowerment and revolution in post-war American history, there is plenty in the book that lives up to Updike’s “mid-century misogynist” reputation: women who think things no woman would likely think (“She had wanted to bear him a child, to brew his excellence in her warmth”); strange mixes of violence and metaphor (“He fought against her as a raped woman might struggle, to intensify the deed”). However, similar to other artists deemed “problematic” — Richard Wagner, Woody Allen, or Mel Gibson, for instance — it is difficult not to cherry-pick a series of lines (more so than I have already done), for fear that my thoughts could devolve into a somewhat tired discussion of the separation and/or union of a man and his art.
In my reading of the Rabbit novels, I was struck by the level of doom and disappointment — often the result of Rabbit’s avoidance of pursuing commitment, or the Good Life. While the very image of his running (away) at the start and close of Rabbit, Run suggests that he is fleeing an existential burden, just as the characters of Charlie Kaufmann’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind are seen running from the permanent removal of their memories (a kind of death), Rabbit at Rest concludes with the same attempt at fleeing the burdens of one's life. Might his lifelong commitments simply remind him of his inevitable demise? Indeed, nearly everything Rabbit has built or helped to create ends in destruction — his newborn daughter dies of manslaughter at the end of Rabbit, Run; his home is burned down at the end of Rabbit Redux; his son (in the pattern of his father) flees to Ohio after he may or may not have tried to push his pregnant wife down a set of stairs, thus missing the child’s birth and snuffing out any hope that he can actively correct the mistakes of his father. At the end of the final novel, Rabbit has potentially destroyed not only his own marriage, but also his son's, as he flees to Florida for one final hurrah to demonstrate a masculine desire to escape commitment in all its realized (marriage, fatherhood) and unrealized (social pressure, tradition, honor) forms. When new life is brought into the world at the close of the penultimate Rabbit is Rich, Rabbit does not react with a sustained sense of wonder or humility. Rather, in the final lines he sees the child as a sign of his own mortality.
To conclude, I would like to take up Updike’s own opinion of himself, as expressed in the book Conversations and on The Charlie Rose Show toward the end of his life.
Charlie Rose: How have you changed over the years?
Updike: I was a fairly harsh and abrasive and hungry young man. Driven. The fact that I produced all these books…
Rose: It indicates something about energy and desire and–
Updike: Neurosis. So, I would like to think I became more gentle and more understanding. I’ve been in more shoes, myself. Now I can see what people feel like in other pairs of shoes.
Rose: I think to be driven and ambitious and to want to accomplish and make something, we shouldn’t look back, even if we mellow and even if we smell the roses more, let’s not scorn the fact that we had drive and that capacity.
Updike: I did have, from a child on, the wish to make something. I’m glad you said “make.” The fact that this heavy book may be unreadable — I made it, and that is some source of satisfaction and pride to me.
There is no doubt Updike was imbued with and developed poetic gifts that remain unmatched. His mastery of portraying the sensual world requires patience of readers and, when put alongside more shocking elements of his plots, tends to be overlooked. But more often than not, I was struck by the sublime quality of his descriptions — the magnifications of place and persons through the use of adjectives, disguised metaphors, and keen observation. Especially in Rabbit is Rich and Rabbit at Rest, the writing often reaches for nostalgia to parallel the aging character’s perspective of his community and the greater United States.
Like my first reading of “A&P” in 2009, I find Updike’s thematic ideas compelling, his sentences a perfect balance of improvisation, restraint, and formalization — whether they be found in his poetry, fiction, reviews of other writers, or spoken interviews. His view of himself as a craftsman (rather than an artist) resembles self-reflective remarks made by the Russian-American composer Igor Stravinsky — comments that suggest a taking for granted of poetic sensibilities that are now somewhat absent, or economized, in the contemporary world of arts and letters.
In his plan for the Rabbit series — to follow a single set of characters throughout four decades in small-town Pennsylvania — it is easy to imagine that Updike understood the full bearing that American history, as mirrored through art, would have on his own legacy. Philip Roth is remembered for much of the same charting of America’s most notable political and cultural events. I believe Rabbit’s story relies upon these upheavals in society, and the characters mount their own upheavals toward one another through infidelity and negligence.
Most striking is the portrait of Rabbit’s self-upheaval — the notion that any trace of a sense of foreboding symbolizes a universal fear of dying, if not death itself. Through conflict, nostalgia, description, and exploration of the mundane in the Rabbit novels, Updike fulfills the famous proclamation of Saul Bellow that all great works are really only about one central idea: what happens when you die.
The complaints about Updike, who died in 2009 (shortly before I was required to read his youthful short story “A&P”), were pervasive enough that it is understandable why most readers would shy away from his body of works completely. “A penis with a thesaurus,” David Foster Wallace penned in the 90s; “Your books are just boring,” a caller on C-SPAN told the aged author during a live broadcast. But only a select few writers I admire have ever gone so far as to make an anti-Updike value judgment — even David Foster Wallace’s comment need not be solely interpreted as negative critique. Joyce Carol Oates has long been a vocal proponent of Updike’s Rabbit series, saying that Updike is “a master, like Flaubert, of mesmerizing us with his narrative voice.”
A couple of years ago, I was browsing a section of shelves at Wisconsin’s largest used book sale, a biannual event that attracted used bookstore owners from the tri-city (Madison, Chicago, Milwaukee) region. The sale was held in a long, rectangular room with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lining each wall. Rows of wide tables limited movement in the space but provided ample places to stack books or boxes. Maps, depicting what type of book would be found where, hung every four or five feet on the walls — Cookbooks: table 14; Biography: tables 2 and 3; Hardback Fiction: northwest-corner shelves. It was there within a vertical sea of glossy book jackets of Stephen King and James Patterson that I found a first edition of Rabbit, Run. Its cover bore a pattern of thin, light blue, yellow, and green lines that switch color toward the middle of the image to form an optical illusion of a sphere. The reader surmises by the first page of the novel that the cover image is likely a minimalist, pop-art rendering of a basketball.
Rabbit, Run was published in the 1960s, but its plot is firmly grounded in the mid-50s. Updike would release a new Rabbit novel at the start of each subsequent decade as a way of charting the previous nine-to-ten years of American history. So, as the Rabbit novels progress through American history, the reader sees just how much the residents of this Rust Belt town are steadfast products of their time, an era with fierce racial tensions (Rabbit Redux charts the 60s and the rise of Nixonites) and dwindling local economies. Today, we would likely see Rabbit and those around him in red MAGA hats — a conclusion that is apparent after the opening of Rabbit Redux when Rabbit goes on a diatribe in the middle of a restaurant about the merits of Richard Nixon, the destruction of society at the hands of radical anti-America ideologues, and the strain of minorities on American culture.
Rabbit Redux is arguably the weakest of all the Rabbit books, but it happens to be my favorite, mostly because I did not know what to make of its explosively racist, homophobic, and misogynist rhetoric — elements that actually made it the most memorable, uncomfortable, yet exciting. Not only is the reader confronted with frequent use of the n-word and violence toward African Americans, but also Rabbit’s neglect of his child(ren) and physical abuse of his wife.
“You dumb bitch,” he says. He hits her not in the face but on the shoulder, like a man trying to knock open a stuck door. Harry feels a flash of pleasure: sunlight in a tunnel. He hits her three, four, five times, unable to stop, boring his way to that sunlight, not as hard as he can hit, but hard enough for her to whimper; she doubles over so that his last punches are thrown hammerwise down into her neck and back, an angle he doesn’t see her from that much — the chalk-white parting, the candle-white nape, the bra strap showing through the fabric of the back of the blouse. Her sobbing arises muffled and, astonished by a beauty in her abasement, by a face that shines through her reduction to this craven faceless posture…he half-pummels her sides…
No matter how slowly I read, tried to empathize with Rabbit, and sought to understand what exactly the work’s raison d’être may be, it seemed that I lacked any tool to help interpret the broader text. To make the situation more difficult, all of the reviews written at the time of Rabbit Redux’s publication (and additionally all reviews of every novel in the series at their respective times of publication) were not only glowing, but seemed to be describing a different book from what I had read. The New York Times Book Review quoted Thomas Mann in its review, writing that his (Mann’s) words describe perfectly Rabbit Redux: “Great in love, in art, boldness, freedom, wisdom, kindness, exceedingly rich in intelligence, wit, imagination, and feeling — a great a beautiful thing.” Similar reviews only resulted in my wondering whether or not audiences in the 60s, 70s, and 80s read the book differently, with different lenses. If so, is the ambivalence I felt a fault of my own? It is as if our contemporary frameworks for interpreting art are somehow deficient when it comes to Updike, for perhaps we no longer use terms of the sublime to describe the sordid, or perhaps the era of being ethralled by or laughing along with Updike ended at the turn of the millennium.
In his personal life, Updike was an avid supporter of minorities and the poor, and frequently marched for racial progress alongside civil rights leaders. His daughter married a Kenyan and had a mixed-race child, who Updike had a hand in raising. Thus, I should add that I find it not only intellectually lazy, but also to be a sign of academic herd mentality to simply label Updike’s text “problematic,” or slander him a misogynist or racist. The question is: what is a reader to do with the text? Or rather, how is a reader to react to or understand the text? And why hasn’t this reaction been consistent since the 60s and 70s? Has our understanding of prose itself changed?
While the Rabbit series’s female characters have more agency than many of the women in the works of Updike’s contemporaries (Philip Roth or Saul Bellow, for instance), their realized sexual agency increases with each successive book. However, an interpretation of these characters could go in one direction or its opposite. By voicing their own sexual demands (such as in Rabbit Is Rich when Rabbit and Janice’s female friends come up with the idea of swapping spouses for the night. The woman “assigned” to Rabbit ends up demanding she do two sexual acts for him that no other woman in his life has done before. Surprisingly, Rabbit protests at first: “Let me do something for you. I mean, equal rights and all that”), the female characters can be seen as either unhinged fetishizers of the taboo, or simply fulfilling the trajectory of female self-actualization, fully embracing of their own sexuality and power.
While this shift to females calling the shots during sex scenes in the later Rabbit books serves to put the fictional men and women on equal footing, Rabbit’s imagination and fantasies in his mid-/older-age counteract these intimate scenes. For example, at the start of Rabbit is Rich, the protagonist is the manager of Springer Motors, a car lot inherited by Janice upon her father’s death. A teenage couple enters the shop and Rabbit convinces them to take a test drive with him in a 1970s Corolla. In his mind, Rabbit notes and analyzes every physical feature of the girl, whose age he places at “nineteen or twenty.”
The inside of the Corolla is warming with a mingled human smell. Harry thinks of the girl’s long thigh as she stretched her way into the back seat and imagines he smells vanilla. Cunt would be a good flavor of ice cream, Sealtest ought to work on it.
His first question to his (male) co-worker, after the three return from the drive and the couple leaves, is “Whajja think of the girl?” Throughout the book, his mind frequently returns to the unnamed girl either in infatuation with the fantasy of bedding her, or, strangely, because he believes her to be his daughter. (Continuity between the books becomes important here, as it was about twenty years prior in Rabbit, Run that Rabbit’s mistress revealed she was pregnant with his child.)
Thus, whether or not Updike sought to feature in his Rabbit series the rise of female empowerment and revolution in post-war American history, there is plenty in the book that lives up to Updike’s “mid-century misogynist” reputation: women who think things no woman would likely think (“She had wanted to bear him a child, to brew his excellence in her warmth”); strange mixes of violence and metaphor (“He fought against her as a raped woman might struggle, to intensify the deed”). However, similar to other artists deemed “problematic” — Richard Wagner, Woody Allen, or Mel Gibson, for instance — it is difficult not to cherry-pick a series of lines (more so than I have already done), for fear that my thoughts could devolve into a somewhat tired discussion of the separation and/or union of a man and his art.
In my reading of the Rabbit novels, I was struck by the level of doom and disappointment — often the result of Rabbit’s avoidance of pursuing commitment, or the Good Life. While the very image of his running (away) at the start and close of Rabbit, Run suggests that he is fleeing an existential burden, just as the characters of Charlie Kaufmann’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind are seen running from the permanent removal of their memories (a kind of death), Rabbit at Rest concludes with the same attempt at fleeing the burdens of one's life. Might his lifelong commitments simply remind him of his inevitable demise? Indeed, nearly everything Rabbit has built or helped to create ends in destruction — his newborn daughter dies of manslaughter at the end of Rabbit, Run; his home is burned down at the end of Rabbit Redux; his son (in the pattern of his father) flees to Ohio after he may or may not have tried to push his pregnant wife down a set of stairs, thus missing the child’s birth and snuffing out any hope that he can actively correct the mistakes of his father. At the end of the final novel, Rabbit has potentially destroyed not only his own marriage, but also his son's, as he flees to Florida for one final hurrah to demonstrate a masculine desire to escape commitment in all its realized (marriage, fatherhood) and unrealized (social pressure, tradition, honor) forms. When new life is brought into the world at the close of the penultimate Rabbit is Rich, Rabbit does not react with a sustained sense of wonder or humility. Rather, in the final lines he sees the child as a sign of his own mortality.
Oblong cocooned little visitor, the baby shows her profile blindly in the shuddering flashes of color jerking from the Sony, the tiny stitchless seam of the closed eyelid aslant, lips bubbled forward beneath the whorled nose as if in delicate disdain, she knows she’s good. You can feel the curve of the cranium she’s feminine, that shows from the first day. Through all this, she has pushed to be here in his lap, his hands a real presence hardly weighing anything but alive. Fortune’s hostage, heart’s desire, a granddaughter. His. Another nail in his coffin. His.
To conclude, I would like to take up Updike’s own opinion of himself, as expressed in the book Conversations and on The Charlie Rose Show toward the end of his life.
I cannot greatly care what critics say of my work; if it is good, it will come to the surface in a generation or two and float, and, if not, it will sink, having in the meantime provided me with a living, the opportunities of leisure, and a craftsman’s intimate satisfactions.
–Conversations
Charlie Rose: How have you changed over the years?
Updike: I was a fairly harsh and abrasive and hungry young man. Driven. The fact that I produced all these books…
Rose: It indicates something about energy and desire and–
Updike: Neurosis. So, I would like to think I became more gentle and more understanding. I’ve been in more shoes, myself. Now I can see what people feel like in other pairs of shoes.
Rose: I think to be driven and ambitious and to want to accomplish and make something, we shouldn’t look back, even if we mellow and even if we smell the roses more, let’s not scorn the fact that we had drive and that capacity.
Updike: I did have, from a child on, the wish to make something. I’m glad you said “make.” The fact that this heavy book may be unreadable — I made it, and that is some source of satisfaction and pride to me.
There is no doubt Updike was imbued with and developed poetic gifts that remain unmatched. His mastery of portraying the sensual world requires patience of readers and, when put alongside more shocking elements of his plots, tends to be overlooked. But more often than not, I was struck by the sublime quality of his descriptions — the magnifications of place and persons through the use of adjectives, disguised metaphors, and keen observation. Especially in Rabbit is Rich and Rabbit at Rest, the writing often reaches for nostalgia to parallel the aging character’s perspective of his community and the greater United States.
The day is still golden outside, old gold now in Harry’s lengthening life. He has seen summer come and go until its fading is one in his heart with its coming, though he cannot yet name the weeds that flower each in its turn through the season, or the insects that also in ordained sequence appear, eat, and perish.
Like my first reading of “A&P” in 2009, I find Updike’s thematic ideas compelling, his sentences a perfect balance of improvisation, restraint, and formalization — whether they be found in his poetry, fiction, reviews of other writers, or spoken interviews. His view of himself as a craftsman (rather than an artist) resembles self-reflective remarks made by the Russian-American composer Igor Stravinsky — comments that suggest a taking for granted of poetic sensibilities that are now somewhat absent, or economized, in the contemporary world of arts and letters.
In his plan for the Rabbit series — to follow a single set of characters throughout four decades in small-town Pennsylvania — it is easy to imagine that Updike understood the full bearing that American history, as mirrored through art, would have on his own legacy. Philip Roth is remembered for much of the same charting of America’s most notable political and cultural events. I believe Rabbit’s story relies upon these upheavals in society, and the characters mount their own upheavals toward one another through infidelity and negligence.
Most striking is the portrait of Rabbit’s self-upheaval — the notion that any trace of a sense of foreboding symbolizes a universal fear of dying, if not death itself. Through conflict, nostalgia, description, and exploration of the mundane in the Rabbit novels, Updike fulfills the famous proclamation of Saul Bellow that all great works are really only about one central idea: what happens when you die.
October 21, 2024
Harry Angstrom comes to rest in the final novel of the four part series of books. Does he ever really achieve peace and contentment? I don’t think so. He continues to make mistakes as he reacts with animal instincts and makes a final sprint away. He is a character who is hard to love, but one we hope for through to the end. 4.5 stars. Updike is a fantastic writer whose books deftly capture culture.
February 16, 2009
I read this at a suggestion from a book group. I had earlier in my life been unable to get through RABBIT, RUN, but thought maybe added maturity would help me appreciate Updike's writing more. I was wrong. Even his gift with words (the reason for the second star in the rating) wasn't enough to make up for the thoroughly unlikable characters and depressing picture of several wasted lives. Even the style of writing I often found difficult, making the reading of this novel a slow and painful experience.
I did, however, mark a few phrases I liked:
..."the Dalai Lama can no more resign godhood than Harry (the protagonist) can resign selfhood."
..."a body eating enough at one meal to feed three Ethiopians for a day, a shameless consumer of gasoline, electricity, newspapers, hydrocarbons, carbohydrates." (the protagonist)
"He even turns off the radio, he feels so battered by pellets of experience." ("Rabbit, again.)
Rabbit invoked in me no sympathy at all--only aversion. And I don't think the author showed any reason for the evolution of this selfish character. I wonder what Updike could have done if he'd chosen to portray any positives, either in characters or in society in general?
I did, however, mark a few phrases I liked:
..."the Dalai Lama can no more resign godhood than Harry (the protagonist) can resign selfhood."
..."a body eating enough at one meal to feed three Ethiopians for a day, a shameless consumer of gasoline, electricity, newspapers, hydrocarbons, carbohydrates." (the protagonist)
"He even turns off the radio, he feels so battered by pellets of experience." ("Rabbit, again.)
Rabbit invoked in me no sympathy at all--only aversion. And I don't think the author showed any reason for the evolution of this selfish character. I wonder what Updike could have done if he'd chosen to portray any positives, either in characters or in society in general?
January 30, 2017
Perfect ending. I got choked up and I loved it.
After 1500+ pages of Rabbit, even with all his flaws I'm going to miss him. Living through four decades along with all his unfiltered thoughts was a roller coaster ride.
Rabbit, Run was a good introduction to this, at many times, unlikable character.
Rabbit Redux was the least enjoyable of the four books and, frankly, hard to stomach in a lot of parts.
Finally, Rabbit Is Rich a Rabbit at Rest were the best of the four books and ended the tetralogy nicely.
After 1500+ pages of Rabbit, even with all his flaws I'm going to miss him. Living through four decades along with all his unfiltered thoughts was a roller coaster ride.
Rabbit, Run was a good introduction to this, at many times, unlikable character.
Rabbit Redux was the least enjoyable of the four books and, frankly, hard to stomach in a lot of parts.
Finally, Rabbit Is Rich a Rabbit at Rest were the best of the four books and ended the tetralogy nicely.
December 22, 2022
I can’t tell if Updike screwed the pooch with this one, the usual Angstrom banality is turned way the fuck up and Updike’s at times awkward prose (he’s one of those writers I have to read for a few pages to really get in tune with, it’s not a particularly smooth transition) stuck out. I’d say there are about two really great events that occur in Rabbit at Rest with the rest slogging along in a quotidian stupor. I suppose someone could probably make a compelling argument that that’s the whole point (a similar, perhaps warranted, response others make to me when I speak of my enervation when reading Kafka) but I don’t know — hasn’t the masochistic-neoliberal-modernity angle been done to death at this point? Nothing is written in here, no insight, that couldn’t be gleaned from the other three novels - maybe that’s a positive in that it shows the constancy of Rabbit’s whining, self obsessed character? Eh. Not coming back to this one again, Pru is hot af though.
March 8, 2011
John Updike closes out his quartet of Rabbit novels with what can only be described as a masterpiece. He won his second Pulitzer for "Rabbit at Rest." Only Booth Tarkington and William Faulkner had previously won the Pulitzer more than once.
Rabbit is semi-retired. He has a condo on the Gulf side of Florida. He maintains his historic Pennsylvania home. But things are falling apart, literally and figuratively. HIV has become an epidemic. A jet disintegrates over Lockerbie, Scotland. Cocaine is a pervasive substance striking Rabbit close to home. Nelson, Rabbit's son, now in charge of Springer Motors, has the habit. The sales statistics just don't look quite right.
And Rabbit, at only 56, is feeling his age. That tingling in the chest is worrisome. Sometimes it burns right down to his fingertips. However, Rabbit loves his salty snacks. What's a few more macadamias? And those cashews are dry roasted--his favorite.
"Rabbit at Rest" can end in only one way. Don't consider this a spoiler. Updike has taken us through three decades of Rabbit's life. This is a book about mortality, the nagging sensation of it, the fond remembrances of life when the body was leaner, the hair thicker, and the inevitable recognition of the loss of youthful invincibility.
Cashews--sounds good. Ah, yes, plenty of salt. Just the way I like them.
Rabbit is semi-retired. He has a condo on the Gulf side of Florida. He maintains his historic Pennsylvania home. But things are falling apart, literally and figuratively. HIV has become an epidemic. A jet disintegrates over Lockerbie, Scotland. Cocaine is a pervasive substance striking Rabbit close to home. Nelson, Rabbit's son, now in charge of Springer Motors, has the habit. The sales statistics just don't look quite right.
And Rabbit, at only 56, is feeling his age. That tingling in the chest is worrisome. Sometimes it burns right down to his fingertips. However, Rabbit loves his salty snacks. What's a few more macadamias? And those cashews are dry roasted--his favorite.
"Rabbit at Rest" can end in only one way. Don't consider this a spoiler. Updike has taken us through three decades of Rabbit's life. This is a book about mortality, the nagging sensation of it, the fond remembrances of life when the body was leaner, the hair thicker, and the inevitable recognition of the loss of youthful invincibility.
Cashews--sounds good. Ah, yes, plenty of salt. Just the way I like them.
January 12, 2013
Self indulgent garbage. The dying gasp of white male privilege.
October 7, 2012
Reading this book when it first emerged, I was relieved that finally Updike had written a book as good as Saul Bellow's, which
always enriched one's thought about life. Granted, some of Bellow's success lay in the European culture behind so many of his
characters, like Mr Sammler, or Ravelstein. Updike has always written stunningly, with a facile and facetious prose, at its best. But often the books added up to little; they were a smattering of decadent bourgeoise capitalist suburban culture, where neighbors did not know each other, though they might bed each other.
Updike's great subject, the cultural displacement and meaningless of suburban life, culminates in this novel of Florida,
where culturally displaced persons get it in their heads to retire from where no-one has dwelt until the recent decades, from where no-one knows you well to where no-one has ever lived, where everybody has just arrived. The effect is a brilliant summation of displaced persons who arrive at the summit of displacement, in vast new hallways which are empty at predictable times, but also unpredictable.
In a witty reduction of his lifetime subject of sexuality among the Northeastern puritans, Rabbit crosses the universal taboo--but the writing is so good he seems destined to cross it, with predictable (and unpredictable) results. This is only the second or third Updike novel--of maybe a dozen I've read--where I felt I really learned something. (The Centaur and A Month of Sundays are the other two--both cited by the author himself as his best books. I agree.) What I learned I leave to you as a reader to find out.
always enriched one's thought about life. Granted, some of Bellow's success lay in the European culture behind so many of his
characters, like Mr Sammler, or Ravelstein. Updike has always written stunningly, with a facile and facetious prose, at its best. But often the books added up to little; they were a smattering of decadent bourgeoise capitalist suburban culture, where neighbors did not know each other, though they might bed each other.
Updike's great subject, the cultural displacement and meaningless of suburban life, culminates in this novel of Florida,
where culturally displaced persons get it in their heads to retire from where no-one has dwelt until the recent decades, from where no-one knows you well to where no-one has ever lived, where everybody has just arrived. The effect is a brilliant summation of displaced persons who arrive at the summit of displacement, in vast new hallways which are empty at predictable times, but also unpredictable.
In a witty reduction of his lifetime subject of sexuality among the Northeastern puritans, Rabbit crosses the universal taboo--but the writing is so good he seems destined to cross it, with predictable (and unpredictable) results. This is only the second or third Updike novel--of maybe a dozen I've read--where I felt I really learned something. (The Centaur and A Month of Sundays are the other two--both cited by the author himself as his best books. I agree.) What I learned I leave to you as a reader to find out.
January 3, 2016
As this is the book I'm reading at the moment I thought I'd use this space to underline how ridiculous I find the idea of the Reading challenge. Books aren't like chilies and I can't see the point in trying to consume as many as possible within the year, as if this was some kind of idiotic competition. In fact it seems to trivialise and undermine the whole point of reading, especially the kind of deep reading that is only possible in books as opposed to the surface skimming which we dedicate to the Internet or other types of screen-based reading.
Take Rabbit at Rest as an example. It's actually the weakest of the Rabbit books it seems to me, a coda that sings the sad hymn of decline, and witnesses the collapse of tough man America from the perspective of the skittish, jumpy Harry. despite that, it's an absorbing read and I intend to keep going at it as slowly and for as long as possible, savouring each plodding scene on the golf course, each devastatingly honest examination of Janice's shortcomings, each deeply offensive rumination on anything from AIDS to women to homosexuality or the particular abilities of Mediterranean immigrants. instead of reading challenges we need more of the mindset that inspired the slow food movement.
Take Rabbit at Rest as an example. It's actually the weakest of the Rabbit books it seems to me, a coda that sings the sad hymn of decline, and witnesses the collapse of tough man America from the perspective of the skittish, jumpy Harry. despite that, it's an absorbing read and I intend to keep going at it as slowly and for as long as possible, savouring each plodding scene on the golf course, each devastatingly honest examination of Janice's shortcomings, each deeply offensive rumination on anything from AIDS to women to homosexuality or the particular abilities of Mediterranean immigrants. instead of reading challenges we need more of the mindset that inspired the slow food movement.
June 9, 2015
Dated, racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, repetitive, not as good as Franzen, just generally socially conservative. But I've got a lasting affection for Rabbit Armstrong, whose claustrophobic little life comes to a kind of resolution, satisfying if only because we don't have to spend any more time with his awful family, his disintegrating community, the decline of the culture that reared him and killed him.
December 6, 2020
Rabbit, Run (1960)/Rabbit, Redux (1971)/Rabbit is Rich (1981)/Rabbit At Rest (1990)/ Rabbit Remembered (2001)
Author: John Updike
Read: July-August 2020
Rating: 2.5/5 stars; 2/5 stars; 3/5 stars; 3.5/5 stars; 4/5 stars
**** Spoilers ****
"Rabbit is Read"
So it begins. We are unceremoniously introduced to Harry Angstrom, nicknamed "Rabbit" because he vaguely resembled the animal as a child. Right away, he isn't exactly likable. And as the book continues, this doesn't get any better. More familiar, used to, and maybe accepting of his ways, yes. We are also introduced to the fictional universe in which Rabbit resides. He lives in Mt. Judge, a suburb of Brewer, Pennsylvania. Other locations mentioned are real, including Lancaster, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh. We begin Rabbits story with him impulsively abandoning his pregnant wife Janice and 2-year-old son Nelson; he drives around, intending to maybe go cross-country, loses his confidence and returns; instead of actually returning home, however, he meets up with his high school basketball coach-cum-mentor Marty, then shacks up with a part-time prostitute named Ruth. He has a couple conversations with a local priest, Eccles, who finally convinced him to return to his wife when she is in the hospital- in labor. Supposedly this is enough for him to suddenly feel guilty enough to re-establish his wedding vows and find it in his heart to move back home. Yet. In the following mere days to weeks after giving birth to their daughter Rebecca June Armstrong, he very nearly cheats on her twice with two different women! Tragedy strikes when- following their first argument post-reconciliation- a drunken Janice drowns baby Rebecca. At his daughter's funeral, the turmoil in his head reaches an apex. And surprise, surprise- Rabbit does what is easiest- he runs. His feet carry him to Ruth's place, where he is greeted with the news of her pregnancy- immediately followed by her proclamation that she is determined to keep it. Alas, this first volume of Rabbit's sorry ends with him no better than it began.
With an unlikable protagonist, a good novel must compensate. And Updike does. Mostly. Typically banal scenarios are made interesting with his eye for detail and description. Insight into the human psyche is obvious. But, sometimes this goes overboard. Details including the ingredients on a television dinner. Descriptions of multiple rooms requiring pages of text that do not necessarily contribute to the story. Long run on sentences; general negligence of proper punctuation. And when one might already have trouble caring about what happens to our main character, these things become much more difficult to overlook.
"Rabbit, Run" up first,
Introducing Updike's world
and writing style.
Began recalling "The Confederacy of Dunces" while reading "Run", but now fully formed conviction that there are many similarities. Both peculiar, selfish, and not entirely likable young-ish American men getting into a series of misadventures. Not a straightforward designated plot; more domestic and possibly mundane scenarios made interesting through their experience. There's a scattered cast of characters, a few main ones and various minor roles. Long harangues and blocks of detailed text can be vexsome- especially those of a religious or political nature. Oh, both Pulitzer winners. But- to finish the perhaps unfair comparison- "Dunces" was funnier and one could at least feel sorry for Ignatius, while Rabbit struggles to come across as anything but the selfish misanthrope he is almost proud to be.
Overall, not impressed with the second book. It's the 60s; Updike uses a fair amount of the text for social commentary. Cannot be denied that Updike has a keen eye for detail and that he knows how to write. But complaints from the first book are only aggravated in book two. It is ten years later, Rabbit is no longer selling the MagiPeeler- he's a senior Linotype operator at the local printing plant. Back with his wife, but now it's Janice's turn to cheat. The beau she chooses is Charlie Stavros, her coworker at her father's car dealership. When she is caught, rather than repent, she decides to move out. Perhaps in retaliation, Rabbit allows Jill, a pretty young runaway from Connecticut, and Skeeter, an African American drug dealer on the run, to stay with him. Thirteen year old Nelson and his thirty-six old father both quickly find themselves attached to Jill- the former out of an innocent first love, the latter as a sexual conquest. Conservative neighbors take issue with this and it results in someone setting fire to the Armstrong house, burning a drug-laden Jill alive before she can escape. Skeeter, sadly, had run out without a second thought to saving her; Nelson and Rabbit were both elsewhere. Unlike the first book, "Redux" ends with Janice and Rabbit back together again, Charlie having never been "the marrying type". Most obtrusive flaws? Excessive soapbox harangues of political and religious natures; substantial excerpts on civil rights and racism texts that serve no real purpose other than filling up space.
"Rabbit Redux" next,
the characters familiar,
shenanigans new.
Three out of four. Here we find the eponymous man- like the time he is living in, America in 1979- "running out of gas". Hand in hand with Updike's social commentary on the country's economic and political situation, Rabbit is conspicuously fed up with things. This includes his marriage, his son, his career, his social life, his sex life. He still clings onto his life's highlight- a high school basketball hero. Rabbit's discriminative, crude, offensive, and racist actions, thoughts, and words have accumulated and continue to do so. It seems even to have gotten worse in this installment, as his (at least ostensible) hatred for his now grown son Nelson shines in full. Not only to his wife and in his actions, but by proclaiming to his face that he is a good for nothing and he wants him gone. Admittedly, part of the problem might be that up to now, he has been living with his wife and mother-in-law under the same roof ever since they reconciled. Thankfully, that is one of the few notable events that occurs in "Rich"- the purchase of the couple's first house, after a successful investment in gold and silver. In his middle age of 46, life consists of reading "Consumer Reports", frequenting the country club where he feels compelled to keep up appearances, and finding new women to pine after, new ways to cheat on his wife. Although, facilitated by repeated forgiveness or naiveté from Janice, he always returns to her.
Most of the book takes place in good old Mt. Judge, where Nelson has returned after his short stint at Kent State University in Ohio. He is adamant about working at the Toyota Dealership, ruffling his father's feathers for months, who is strongly against his son running everything at the lot. It is also eventually revealed that he had knocked up a girl and this was the real reason for his escape. Theresa, who goes by "Pru" (a nickname given by friends that saw her as prudish), arrives by the end of the summer and moves in. Not the most attentive fiancé, Nelson is drunk at a party with her- right behind her in fact- when she falls down some flights of stairs. Luckily it is only her arm that that suffers, and she gives birth to a healthy baby girl soon after. Alas, following the example of his cowardly father, Nelson runs away back to Ohio for a while. Encouraging him to run- going so far as to insist that Nelson is marrying out of obligation, not love- Rabbit finally gives his son some good advice- to not grow up to be like him- something he appears to be disproportionately worried about. Meanwhile, as all this is going on in his family life, after a girl named Annabelle visits the Toyota dealership that he is convinced is his daughter, Rabbit makes a few trips to where he last knew Ruth resided (Ruth from "Run", the prostitute he lived and had an affair with for a few months). He eventually confronts her regarding Annabelle, but Ruth adamantly denies it. Although she admits that even if it were true, she would never admit it. Likely not really wanting the truth, Rabbit declines her highly suspect offer to let him see the birth certificate. The third installment ends anticlimactically with Nelson still gone and Pru having taken his place in the Angstrom residence.
Updike continues to take his eye for detail maybe a little too far into banality- long multiple-page chunks of text with no pause for dialogue, almost stream of consciousness style monologues with run-on sentences of characters' thoughts. There were some sections from Nelson's point of view, which was a nice change of pace. Hilariously, at some point Rabbit comments on how he disdains how "coarse" his friends are. This, coming from him, a misogynist or maybe even misanthrope who uses derogatory language all the time and expresses the most discriminative and racist thoughts!
"Rabbit is Rich" third,
his appalling deeds get worse-
but we're stuck with him.
Final (formal) installment for the tetralogy. It is almost 1989. Rabbit is an old man, at least according to him. In reality, he is only in his mid-50s, "semi-retired", and now spends his winters in a Florida condominium he has purchased with his wife. To further the cliche, he does indeed play golf every week with some buddies. Rabbit turns 56, making it three decades since we met him in Book #1. Baby Nelson is now grown and married with his own children, with Rabbit and Janice now grandparents! Both their own parents, sadly, are no longer around. As we have now come to expect, the plot revolves around a series of events and sometimes mundane happenings in Rabbit and his friends and family's lives. Tangents that often do not readily benefit the story. And the more than occasional soapbox harangue on politics, religion, the state of affairs in this country, or what it means to be an American. The minutiae, too often, crosses the line into tedium. The complete ingredients list on various packages, the play by play of a golf game that literally takes 20 plus pages, a likewise play-by-play mentioning each song and accompanying commentary that comes on the radio during several hours of airplay.
A testament to "people never change", Rabbit is still as politically argumentative, still a womanizer, still cheating on his wife, still as discriminative and racist as ever. Surprise, surprise. Yet. Like a childhood friend we can't help but stick with, we somehow read on, interested in this man's life. He does, after all, have some redeeming qualities. These are especially notable in his role as a grandfather (as opposed to father, in which he is far from ideal) to Judy and Roy. Aging is a central theme; coming to terms with morality and keeping the cynical nature of his in check- at least enough to keep misery at bay (turns out he is evidently not very good at this.) In the first third of the book he has a heart attack and becomes dependent- mostly mentally- on the reassuring nitroglycerin pill he begins to keep in his pocket.
Alas, in this final installment of the series, Rabbit finally does something that crosses the line. No, it does not make it better that it was foreshadowed in "Rich". When one predicts such a thing, it is almost a farce. Because, really? Rabbit sleeps with his son's wife? His daughter-in-law. Yes. A question with no answer for dedicated readers: Can a story with an unlikable protagonist still be good? One almost feels guilty for praising a book where our "hero" does something so appallingly offensive. Without this deed, "Rest" is easily the best book in the series. As it is, the decision is not quite as clear-cut. Updike skillfully provides the advantage of comforting familiarity to loyal readers, while making sure not to exclude new readers- one could start reading "Rabbit at Rest" and everything would be perfectly understandable. However, it is this retrospection and various events that hearken back to decades ago; and the intimate feelings it evokes in readers- as if we really know Rabbit- that makes this final installment more praiseworthy than it would have been as a standalone. Like a Sympathy Oscar, it might deserve its praise- in a collective sense.
"Rabbit at Rest" last,
fine writing for shameful man,
bittersweet farewell.
Short sequel, short story, novella, long epilogue- whichever label you wish to use, here we have the final final installment! In the fittingly titled tale that was included in Updike's 2000 collection of thirteen stories, "Remembered" gives us a much awaited update on the supporting characters; life after Rabbit. The year is 1999, asking with its Y2K paranoia and Clinton scandal drama. Nelson, now separated from Pru, has moved back in with his mother. Janice has ended up with Rabbit's childhood nemesis from his basketball days, Ronnie Harrison. The three of them struggle along, the two men barely friendly. Main plot is introduction of Annabelle, half-sister to Nelson. What was only strongly implied in previous novels- that Rabbit did indeed father a daughter during his short affair with Ruth in "Run"- is finally confirmed. Likely because it reminds then of Rabbit's infidelities, neither Janice nor Ronnie have any interest in Annabelle, and are in fact downright rude to her. Nelson, though, has a soft spot for her, meeting with her for lunch on several occasions, inviting her to Thanksgiving, and defends her in the face of his family's animosity. Without much luck with convincing them, however, he finally moves out. As the book- and sadly the Rabbit series (looks like for real this time!)- comes to an end, things are left in a positive note, with Annabelle being generally accepted into the Angstrom family, with a prospective romantic involvement with Fosnacht, a childhood friend of Nelson's, and Nelson and Pru's once defunct marriage looking promising.
Perhaps the ultimate evidence for the theory that it was disagreement with the character of Rabbit rather than Updike's aptitude as a writer that led to my less than stellar assessment of the tetralogy, this was likely my favorite in the series. After being overshadowed by his father in all the other books, Nelson finally comes into his own here and really becomes relatable in his quest to connect with his long lost half sister, and admirable in his counseling work with drug addicts.
A final verdict on the "Rabbit" series ultimately comes down to whether a reader likes Rabbit or not and whether an unlikable protagonist is necessarily exclusory of a great book(s). Love him? You'll love the books. Hate him? Good luck overcoming that. Updike is to be commended on tying up loose ends- something many authors neglect to do, especially in a book series. It feels "special" to remember reading about such and such an event mostly referenced in this final book that initially took place in "Run". As for my final verdict, I quote Rabbit's last words in a Florida hospital bed, his only son Nelson nervously perching over him, "... all I can tell you is, it isn't so bad."
"Rabbit Remembered",
Angstrom updates post-Harry,
comforting finish.
#Haibun #ReviewPoem #60s #70s #80s #abortion #alcoholism #arson #baby #bathtub #bookseries #childbirth #deathofoffspring #deathofparent #deathofspouse #divorce #drowning #drugs #dubiousparentage #elderly #epigraph #familysaga #farmlife #fatherson #Florida #funeral #grandparents #hospital #infidelity #inlaws #marriage #mentor #motherhood #motherson #NationalBookAward #NBCCA #novella #pagetoscreen #parenting #Pennsylvania #politics #prostitution #PulitzerPrize #racism #religion #runaway #sequel #sequeled #siblings #sports #tetralogy #uniquechaptertitles #unlikableprotagonist #VietnamWar
Author: John Updike
Read: July-August 2020
Rating: 2.5/5 stars; 2/5 stars; 3/5 stars; 3.5/5 stars; 4/5 stars
**** Spoilers ****
"Rabbit is Read"
So it begins. We are unceremoniously introduced to Harry Angstrom, nicknamed "Rabbit" because he vaguely resembled the animal as a child. Right away, he isn't exactly likable. And as the book continues, this doesn't get any better. More familiar, used to, and maybe accepting of his ways, yes. We are also introduced to the fictional universe in which Rabbit resides. He lives in Mt. Judge, a suburb of Brewer, Pennsylvania. Other locations mentioned are real, including Lancaster, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh. We begin Rabbits story with him impulsively abandoning his pregnant wife Janice and 2-year-old son Nelson; he drives around, intending to maybe go cross-country, loses his confidence and returns; instead of actually returning home, however, he meets up with his high school basketball coach-cum-mentor Marty, then shacks up with a part-time prostitute named Ruth. He has a couple conversations with a local priest, Eccles, who finally convinced him to return to his wife when she is in the hospital- in labor. Supposedly this is enough for him to suddenly feel guilty enough to re-establish his wedding vows and find it in his heart to move back home. Yet. In the following mere days to weeks after giving birth to their daughter Rebecca June Armstrong, he very nearly cheats on her twice with two different women! Tragedy strikes when- following their first argument post-reconciliation- a drunken Janice drowns baby Rebecca. At his daughter's funeral, the turmoil in his head reaches an apex. And surprise, surprise- Rabbit does what is easiest- he runs. His feet carry him to Ruth's place, where he is greeted with the news of her pregnancy- immediately followed by her proclamation that she is determined to keep it. Alas, this first volume of Rabbit's sorry ends with him no better than it began.
With an unlikable protagonist, a good novel must compensate. And Updike does. Mostly. Typically banal scenarios are made interesting with his eye for detail and description. Insight into the human psyche is obvious. But, sometimes this goes overboard. Details including the ingredients on a television dinner. Descriptions of multiple rooms requiring pages of text that do not necessarily contribute to the story. Long run on sentences; general negligence of proper punctuation. And when one might already have trouble caring about what happens to our main character, these things become much more difficult to overlook.
"Rabbit, Run" up first,
Introducing Updike's world
and writing style.
Began recalling "The Confederacy of Dunces" while reading "Run", but now fully formed conviction that there are many similarities. Both peculiar, selfish, and not entirely likable young-ish American men getting into a series of misadventures. Not a straightforward designated plot; more domestic and possibly mundane scenarios made interesting through their experience. There's a scattered cast of characters, a few main ones and various minor roles. Long harangues and blocks of detailed text can be vexsome- especially those of a religious or political nature. Oh, both Pulitzer winners. But- to finish the perhaps unfair comparison- "Dunces" was funnier and one could at least feel sorry for Ignatius, while Rabbit struggles to come across as anything but the selfish misanthrope he is almost proud to be.
Overall, not impressed with the second book. It's the 60s; Updike uses a fair amount of the text for social commentary. Cannot be denied that Updike has a keen eye for detail and that he knows how to write. But complaints from the first book are only aggravated in book two. It is ten years later, Rabbit is no longer selling the MagiPeeler- he's a senior Linotype operator at the local printing plant. Back with his wife, but now it's Janice's turn to cheat. The beau she chooses is Charlie Stavros, her coworker at her father's car dealership. When she is caught, rather than repent, she decides to move out. Perhaps in retaliation, Rabbit allows Jill, a pretty young runaway from Connecticut, and Skeeter, an African American drug dealer on the run, to stay with him. Thirteen year old Nelson and his thirty-six old father both quickly find themselves attached to Jill- the former out of an innocent first love, the latter as a sexual conquest. Conservative neighbors take issue with this and it results in someone setting fire to the Armstrong house, burning a drug-laden Jill alive before she can escape. Skeeter, sadly, had run out without a second thought to saving her; Nelson and Rabbit were both elsewhere. Unlike the first book, "Redux" ends with Janice and Rabbit back together again, Charlie having never been "the marrying type". Most obtrusive flaws? Excessive soapbox harangues of political and religious natures; substantial excerpts on civil rights and racism texts that serve no real purpose other than filling up space.
"Rabbit Redux" next,
the characters familiar,
shenanigans new.
Three out of four. Here we find the eponymous man- like the time he is living in, America in 1979- "running out of gas". Hand in hand with Updike's social commentary on the country's economic and political situation, Rabbit is conspicuously fed up with things. This includes his marriage, his son, his career, his social life, his sex life. He still clings onto his life's highlight- a high school basketball hero. Rabbit's discriminative, crude, offensive, and racist actions, thoughts, and words have accumulated and continue to do so. It seems even to have gotten worse in this installment, as his (at least ostensible) hatred for his now grown son Nelson shines in full. Not only to his wife and in his actions, but by proclaiming to his face that he is a good for nothing and he wants him gone. Admittedly, part of the problem might be that up to now, he has been living with his wife and mother-in-law under the same roof ever since they reconciled. Thankfully, that is one of the few notable events that occurs in "Rich"- the purchase of the couple's first house, after a successful investment in gold and silver. In his middle age of 46, life consists of reading "Consumer Reports", frequenting the country club where he feels compelled to keep up appearances, and finding new women to pine after, new ways to cheat on his wife. Although, facilitated by repeated forgiveness or naiveté from Janice, he always returns to her.
Most of the book takes place in good old Mt. Judge, where Nelson has returned after his short stint at Kent State University in Ohio. He is adamant about working at the Toyota Dealership, ruffling his father's feathers for months, who is strongly against his son running everything at the lot. It is also eventually revealed that he had knocked up a girl and this was the real reason for his escape. Theresa, who goes by "Pru" (a nickname given by friends that saw her as prudish), arrives by the end of the summer and moves in. Not the most attentive fiancé, Nelson is drunk at a party with her- right behind her in fact- when she falls down some flights of stairs. Luckily it is only her arm that that suffers, and she gives birth to a healthy baby girl soon after. Alas, following the example of his cowardly father, Nelson runs away back to Ohio for a while. Encouraging him to run- going so far as to insist that Nelson is marrying out of obligation, not love- Rabbit finally gives his son some good advice- to not grow up to be like him- something he appears to be disproportionately worried about. Meanwhile, as all this is going on in his family life, after a girl named Annabelle visits the Toyota dealership that he is convinced is his daughter, Rabbit makes a few trips to where he last knew Ruth resided (Ruth from "Run", the prostitute he lived and had an affair with for a few months). He eventually confronts her regarding Annabelle, but Ruth adamantly denies it. Although she admits that even if it were true, she would never admit it. Likely not really wanting the truth, Rabbit declines her highly suspect offer to let him see the birth certificate. The third installment ends anticlimactically with Nelson still gone and Pru having taken his place in the Angstrom residence.
Updike continues to take his eye for detail maybe a little too far into banality- long multiple-page chunks of text with no pause for dialogue, almost stream of consciousness style monologues with run-on sentences of characters' thoughts. There were some sections from Nelson's point of view, which was a nice change of pace. Hilariously, at some point Rabbit comments on how he disdains how "coarse" his friends are. This, coming from him, a misogynist or maybe even misanthrope who uses derogatory language all the time and expresses the most discriminative and racist thoughts!
"Rabbit is Rich" third,
his appalling deeds get worse-
but we're stuck with him.
Final (formal) installment for the tetralogy. It is almost 1989. Rabbit is an old man, at least according to him. In reality, he is only in his mid-50s, "semi-retired", and now spends his winters in a Florida condominium he has purchased with his wife. To further the cliche, he does indeed play golf every week with some buddies. Rabbit turns 56, making it three decades since we met him in Book #1. Baby Nelson is now grown and married with his own children, with Rabbit and Janice now grandparents! Both their own parents, sadly, are no longer around. As we have now come to expect, the plot revolves around a series of events and sometimes mundane happenings in Rabbit and his friends and family's lives. Tangents that often do not readily benefit the story. And the more than occasional soapbox harangue on politics, religion, the state of affairs in this country, or what it means to be an American. The minutiae, too often, crosses the line into tedium. The complete ingredients list on various packages, the play by play of a golf game that literally takes 20 plus pages, a likewise play-by-play mentioning each song and accompanying commentary that comes on the radio during several hours of airplay.
A testament to "people never change", Rabbit is still as politically argumentative, still a womanizer, still cheating on his wife, still as discriminative and racist as ever. Surprise, surprise. Yet. Like a childhood friend we can't help but stick with, we somehow read on, interested in this man's life. He does, after all, have some redeeming qualities. These are especially notable in his role as a grandfather (as opposed to father, in which he is far from ideal) to Judy and Roy. Aging is a central theme; coming to terms with morality and keeping the cynical nature of his in check- at least enough to keep misery at bay (turns out he is evidently not very good at this.) In the first third of the book he has a heart attack and becomes dependent- mostly mentally- on the reassuring nitroglycerin pill he begins to keep in his pocket.
Alas, in this final installment of the series, Rabbit finally does something that crosses the line. No, it does not make it better that it was foreshadowed in "Rich". When one predicts such a thing, it is almost a farce. Because, really? Rabbit sleeps with his son's wife? His daughter-in-law. Yes. A question with no answer for dedicated readers: Can a story with an unlikable protagonist still be good? One almost feels guilty for praising a book where our "hero" does something so appallingly offensive. Without this deed, "Rest" is easily the best book in the series. As it is, the decision is not quite as clear-cut. Updike skillfully provides the advantage of comforting familiarity to loyal readers, while making sure not to exclude new readers- one could start reading "Rabbit at Rest" and everything would be perfectly understandable. However, it is this retrospection and various events that hearken back to decades ago; and the intimate feelings it evokes in readers- as if we really know Rabbit- that makes this final installment more praiseworthy than it would have been as a standalone. Like a Sympathy Oscar, it might deserve its praise- in a collective sense.
"Rabbit at Rest" last,
fine writing for shameful man,
bittersweet farewell.
Short sequel, short story, novella, long epilogue- whichever label you wish to use, here we have the final final installment! In the fittingly titled tale that was included in Updike's 2000 collection of thirteen stories, "Remembered" gives us a much awaited update on the supporting characters; life after Rabbit. The year is 1999, asking with its Y2K paranoia and Clinton scandal drama. Nelson, now separated from Pru, has moved back in with his mother. Janice has ended up with Rabbit's childhood nemesis from his basketball days, Ronnie Harrison. The three of them struggle along, the two men barely friendly. Main plot is introduction of Annabelle, half-sister to Nelson. What was only strongly implied in previous novels- that Rabbit did indeed father a daughter during his short affair with Ruth in "Run"- is finally confirmed. Likely because it reminds then of Rabbit's infidelities, neither Janice nor Ronnie have any interest in Annabelle, and are in fact downright rude to her. Nelson, though, has a soft spot for her, meeting with her for lunch on several occasions, inviting her to Thanksgiving, and defends her in the face of his family's animosity. Without much luck with convincing them, however, he finally moves out. As the book- and sadly the Rabbit series (looks like for real this time!)- comes to an end, things are left in a positive note, with Annabelle being generally accepted into the Angstrom family, with a prospective romantic involvement with Fosnacht, a childhood friend of Nelson's, and Nelson and Pru's once defunct marriage looking promising.
Perhaps the ultimate evidence for the theory that it was disagreement with the character of Rabbit rather than Updike's aptitude as a writer that led to my less than stellar assessment of the tetralogy, this was likely my favorite in the series. After being overshadowed by his father in all the other books, Nelson finally comes into his own here and really becomes relatable in his quest to connect with his long lost half sister, and admirable in his counseling work with drug addicts.
A final verdict on the "Rabbit" series ultimately comes down to whether a reader likes Rabbit or not and whether an unlikable protagonist is necessarily exclusory of a great book(s). Love him? You'll love the books. Hate him? Good luck overcoming that. Updike is to be commended on tying up loose ends- something many authors neglect to do, especially in a book series. It feels "special" to remember reading about such and such an event mostly referenced in this final book that initially took place in "Run". As for my final verdict, I quote Rabbit's last words in a Florida hospital bed, his only son Nelson nervously perching over him, "... all I can tell you is, it isn't so bad."
"Rabbit Remembered",
Angstrom updates post-Harry,
comforting finish.
#Haibun #ReviewPoem #60s #70s #80s #abortion #alcoholism #arson #baby #bathtub #bookseries #childbirth #deathofoffspring #deathofparent #deathofspouse #divorce #drowning #drugs #dubiousparentage #elderly #epigraph #familysaga #farmlife #fatherson #Florida #funeral #grandparents #hospital #infidelity #inlaws #marriage #mentor #motherhood #motherson #NationalBookAward #NBCCA #novella #pagetoscreen #parenting #Pennsylvania #politics #prostitution #PulitzerPrize #racism #religion #runaway #sequel #sequeled #siblings #sports #tetralogy #uniquechaptertitles #unlikableprotagonist #VietnamWar
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