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Rabbit Angstrom #1-4
Rabbit Angstrom: The Four Novels
When we first met him in Rabbit, Run (1960), the book that established John Updike as a major novelist, Harry (Rabbit) Angstrom is playing basketball with some boys in an alley in Pennsylvania during the tail end of the Eisenhower era, reliving for a moment his past as a star high school athlete. Athleticism of a different sort is on display throughout these four magnificent novels—the athleticism of an imagination possessed of the ability to lay bare, with a seemingly effortless animal grace, the enchantments and disenchantments of life.
Updike revisited his hero toward the end of each of the following decades in the second half of this American century; and in each of the subsequent novels, as Rabbit, his wife, Janice, his son, Nelson, and the people around them grow, these characters take on the lineaments of our common existence. In prose that is one of the glories of contemporary literature, Updike has chronicled the frustrations and ambiguous triumphs, the longuers, the loves and frenzies, the betrayals and reconciliations of our era. He has given us our representative American story.
This Rabbit Angstrom volume is composed of the following novels: Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit is Rich; and Rabbit at Rest.
Updike revisited his hero toward the end of each of the following decades in the second half of this American century; and in each of the subsequent novels, as Rabbit, his wife, Janice, his son, Nelson, and the people around them grow, these characters take on the lineaments of our common existence. In prose that is one of the glories of contemporary literature, Updike has chronicled the frustrations and ambiguous triumphs, the longuers, the loves and frenzies, the betrayals and reconciliations of our era. He has given us our representative American story.
This Rabbit Angstrom volume is composed of the following novels: Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit is Rich; and Rabbit at Rest.
1520 pages, Hardcover
First published October 17, 1994
About the author
John Updike
819 books2,330 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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January 12, 2019
This small tome contains books 1 to 4 of the Rabbit series and I spent half a year with John Updike’s characters, reading other novels between each instalment and eventually coming back to Harry Angstrom and his family. With absolute delight, as it turns out.
Other reviewers on Goodreads have complained about Rabbit’s lack of morals. While I can see how the protagonist can rub off people the wrong way, at the same time I can’t imagine how a reader wouldn’t feel privileged to gain so clear and clever an insight into the mind of your average middle-class neighbor in America. Updike uses the anecdotal with rare skill and in fact to such masterful effect that at this point, some 1,500 pages later, many characters populating the four novels feel like I’ve known them personally. No one in there is dramatically evil, and no one is a saint; this is not your run-of-the-mill, clichéd read, which I do my best to avoid. There’s tenderness in here, there’s wit, there’s beautiful writing to render Rabbit’s inner thoughts and there’s a sharp sense of reality. As I closed the book cover a final time, yesterday evening, I got the distinct impression that despite all his flaws, I would miss Harry.
Other reviewers on Goodreads have complained about Rabbit’s lack of morals. While I can see how the protagonist can rub off people the wrong way, at the same time I can’t imagine how a reader wouldn’t feel privileged to gain so clear and clever an insight into the mind of your average middle-class neighbor in America. Updike uses the anecdotal with rare skill and in fact to such masterful effect that at this point, some 1,500 pages later, many characters populating the four novels feel like I’ve known them personally. No one in there is dramatically evil, and no one is a saint; this is not your run-of-the-mill, clichéd read, which I do my best to avoid. There’s tenderness in here, there’s wit, there’s beautiful writing to render Rabbit’s inner thoughts and there’s a sharp sense of reality. As I closed the book cover a final time, yesterday evening, I got the distinct impression that despite all his flaws, I would miss Harry.
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April 2, 2019There are books that have a reputation, that many people seem to enjoy, but with which you can find no connection at all. When I finished reading these Rabbit books I wondered why I had persisted. Looking at it as a whole I have the impression that the author was writing magical realism from a strictly realistic perspective - he appears to be making broad statements about the experience of for example race, or adulthood, as felt by a certain slice of the US population specifically a white, male slice from the North-easterly section of the country. The kinds of statements that in the form of myth we can accept, for example that it rained uninterrupted for decades, yet presented realistically just seem strange. Still, it is a particular type of not quite Everyman illustrating the changing USA and the shifts in its culture from the 1950s through to the 1980s.
When in the first book Rabbit drives away from his home town but eventually turns back, do we say that escape from his life (or himself, in so far as the two can be separated) is possible but he chooses not to, or that because he chooses to turn back, that escape is impossible and that the North-American hero of that time must tread the path from High School sports to divorce via early marriage? Then again is this pure authorlyness - an explicit claim to the guild that this work is intended as a masterpiece because here is a late Twentieth-century Tom Sawyer travelling south to achieve freedom.
Aside from this I did like dribbling the gold coins over his sleeping wife , and later struggling with the sacks of silver coins as a result of his very literal speculation in metal currency.
Anyhow, I thought there were only three volumes to this when I read it - beware, it grows!
When in the first book Rabbit drives away from his home town but eventually turns back, do we say that escape from his life (or himself, in so far as the two can be separated) is possible but he chooses not to, or that because he chooses to turn back, that escape is impossible and that the North-American hero of that time must tread the path from High School sports to divorce via early marriage? Then again is this pure authorlyness - an explicit claim to the guild that this work is intended as a masterpiece because here is a late Twentieth-century Tom Sawyer travelling south to achieve freedom.
Aside from this I did like dribbling the gold coins over his sleeping wife , and later struggling with the sacks of silver coins as a result of his very literal speculation in metal currency.
Anyhow, I thought there were only three volumes to this when I read it - beware, it grows!
January 26, 2009
Updike's Rabbit Angstrom novels really got to me. When I finished the last one, I put it down and burst into tears. I wrote to Updike to tell him that, and he wrote back.
March 7, 2011
Before embarking on the journey through Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom's life, I read a lot of the reviews on the first novel, "Rabbit, Run," and many readers expressed a strong dislike for the main character.
To all of those who disliked or even hated Harry: You don't know good literature when you read it!
Sure, Harry is no hero, but he's not an anti-hero, either. You don't like him throughout the series, but you can't hate him, either. He's just a normal man who makes mistakes, with minimal accomplishments, leading a very average life. And somehow John Updike has you interested throughout the whole saga.
Updike is a real writer who has a unique way with the English language. These books will not go down as my favorites, but I did enjoy the story of Harry's life, told through four novels, spaced about a decade apart in his life. I would recommend these books to anyone who's interested in the story of a normal American man who changes as he ages, reflecting the average times, people, and places in recent American history.
To all of those who disliked or even hated Harry: You don't know good literature when you read it!
Sure, Harry is no hero, but he's not an anti-hero, either. You don't like him throughout the series, but you can't hate him, either. He's just a normal man who makes mistakes, with minimal accomplishments, leading a very average life. And somehow John Updike has you interested throughout the whole saga.
Updike is a real writer who has a unique way with the English language. These books will not go down as my favorites, but I did enjoy the story of Harry's life, told through four novels, spaced about a decade apart in his life. I would recommend these books to anyone who's interested in the story of a normal American man who changes as he ages, reflecting the average times, people, and places in recent American history.
January 16, 2012
After a particularly unengaging two years of study I promised myself an extravagance – a big novel, for no reason. Something that I had been meaning to read for ten years or so, something american now. (Living in a colony, most of my novels have been british.) The last American novels were more than twenty years ago, Moby Dick and Lolita (American?). I picked the Rabbit Tetralogy.
Individually the books are enjoyable, immersionable even. But reading in a continuous uninterrupted sequence amplified and deepened the effect. The cumulative impact of the fourth far more lasting than the preceding three. I don’t know if I have any better appreciation of the american wasp psyche now; but it feels like I do.
I know some people don’t find Rabbit Angstrom or any of the other characters likeable – but I did (Rabbit that is – disliked his son a whole lot). What’s not to like about a someone trying to figure out his life for four of the most interesting american decades I’ve vicariously lived through? I enjoyed watching his early scepticism develop into a pleasant tasting bitterness. I loved the integrity of his inner voice unwavering for forty years. At the end of the experience I mourned for Rabbitt Angstrom and those four, now lost decades.
Here’s the thing with John Updike and the Rabbit series - he doesn’t write a bad word.
Individually the books are enjoyable, immersionable even. But reading in a continuous uninterrupted sequence amplified and deepened the effect. The cumulative impact of the fourth far more lasting than the preceding three. I don’t know if I have any better appreciation of the american wasp psyche now; but it feels like I do.
I know some people don’t find Rabbit Angstrom or any of the other characters likeable – but I did (Rabbit that is – disliked his son a whole lot). What’s not to like about a someone trying to figure out his life for four of the most interesting american decades I’ve vicariously lived through? I enjoyed watching his early scepticism develop into a pleasant tasting bitterness. I loved the integrity of his inner voice unwavering for forty years. At the end of the experience I mourned for Rabbitt Angstrom and those four, now lost decades.
Here’s the thing with John Updike and the Rabbit series - he doesn’t write a bad word.
November 24, 2008
Fifteen-hundred-and-sixteen pages later and I wish John Updike had written more. This is an amazing achievement of a story and I love every page of it.
Backstory:
In 2005 I was staying in Italy with a recovering professor of mine. I think when you are twenty-three and you're touring Italy with a girlfriend you should have a grand old party. But I ended up staying at Unsworth's house for a week solid. They even insisted that we return the rental car and they would arrange to get us to Assissi and Perugia.
Unsworth was 75 then, northern English and resembled all the tweedish parts of Sean Connery. At night we watched the BBC news at 8 ("What is the world coming to that the BBC stops twice in a half hour for advertisements>") and sat up at night drinking wine while Barry recited Homer in Greek ("Untranslatable.") and his wife lamented how Americans don't have great heros like Achilles.
Barry and his wife both spoke highly of a short story I had written in college. I was surprised that either of them--let alone Aira--had read it at all. He said it reminded him of something. "Updike, John. That American fellow. You might enjoy his Rabbit novels."
Rabbit Run
When I returned to New York I went to the Strand and purchased the Everyman's Library edition, which included all four of the novels. I read the first volume with joy. It was about a twenty-three-year-old male with misgivings about the world in 1959. I described a cute little American rust-belt town which I would have driven through on my way to school the year before.
Rabbit Redux
A year later I was at a loss for something to read and so I hauled out the giant volume and started on the next quarter. This meant enduring the ridicule of others at work (I had a steady job then!). Updike wrote this one in 1969 in the shadow of a changing America. One that needed more parking lots and where leaders were assassinated and black people were louder on the bus (what happened to that old streetcar?). In this novel man walked on the moon and linotypers like Rabbit would soon be out of business.
Rabbit is Rich
But I was not. Last spring when I got back from tour I was thin, hungry and out of work. I didn't have the money to buy a new novel to read and so I pulled the volume out again. This one took place in an oddly familiar world of 1979. Muslims were terrorists. Gas prices went through the roof and Detroit was fucked. People flocked to foreign car dealers, like the one the main character's father-in-law left in his will. Our hero is now the only Toyota Dealership owner in town during the end of the Carter era. He joins a country club and dabbles in wife-swapping. Probably the most fun about reading these novels is watching the town and its people grow old. People who were toddlers in the first book are now trying to be car salesmen. That old, exotic "Chinese" restaurant in town is now something else. The son who was once a prelingual inconvenience has already been a teenage and now he wants to drop out of school and become a car salesmen, like his dad and grandpop. This is because he knocked up his girlfriend.
Rabbit at Rest
Almost twice the size of the earlier books, 500 pages. But what excitement! The year is 1989 and by some wonderful twist of fate Rabbit's son Nelson Angstrom is now the chief salesmen of the 1989 Toyota Corolla--my first car! Rabbit is semi-retired and his son seems jittery. What is it with him? Hopefully he doesn't have that new disease that, that A-I-D-S virus that the gays have. In this story all the other plot lines also mature in fun ways. Rabbit's nurse in the hospital is the daughter of a girl Rabbit used to date (his daughter??). His son is still married to the girl he knocked up in college and they have another son. That chinese restaurant has become a healthy place that serves all kinds of salads. Growing Pains is officially the only show on television where every single character is despicable.
As soon as I turned the final page I missed the characters already. What will happen to the jittery son now that he's admitted he had a problem with blow? Will they lose the Toyota dealership? Luckily, apparently, Updike also wrote a book of short stories called Rabbit Remembered a couple of years later. I guess I'll order that today.
Backstory:
In 2005 I was staying in Italy with a recovering professor of mine. I think when you are twenty-three and you're touring Italy with a girlfriend you should have a grand old party. But I ended up staying at Unsworth's house for a week solid. They even insisted that we return the rental car and they would arrange to get us to Assissi and Perugia.
Unsworth was 75 then, northern English and resembled all the tweedish parts of Sean Connery. At night we watched the BBC news at 8 ("What is the world coming to that the BBC stops twice in a half hour for advertisements>") and sat up at night drinking wine while Barry recited Homer in Greek ("Untranslatable.") and his wife lamented how Americans don't have great heros like Achilles.
Barry and his wife both spoke highly of a short story I had written in college. I was surprised that either of them--let alone Aira--had read it at all. He said it reminded him of something. "Updike, John. That American fellow. You might enjoy his Rabbit novels."
Rabbit Run
When I returned to New York I went to the Strand and purchased the Everyman's Library edition, which included all four of the novels. I read the first volume with joy. It was about a twenty-three-year-old male with misgivings about the world in 1959. I described a cute little American rust-belt town which I would have driven through on my way to school the year before.
Rabbit Redux
A year later I was at a loss for something to read and so I hauled out the giant volume and started on the next quarter. This meant enduring the ridicule of others at work (I had a steady job then!). Updike wrote this one in 1969 in the shadow of a changing America. One that needed more parking lots and where leaders were assassinated and black people were louder on the bus (what happened to that old streetcar?). In this novel man walked on the moon and linotypers like Rabbit would soon be out of business.
Rabbit is Rich
But I was not. Last spring when I got back from tour I was thin, hungry and out of work. I didn't have the money to buy a new novel to read and so I pulled the volume out again. This one took place in an oddly familiar world of 1979. Muslims were terrorists. Gas prices went through the roof and Detroit was fucked. People flocked to foreign car dealers, like the one the main character's father-in-law left in his will. Our hero is now the only Toyota Dealership owner in town during the end of the Carter era. He joins a country club and dabbles in wife-swapping. Probably the most fun about reading these novels is watching the town and its people grow old. People who were toddlers in the first book are now trying to be car salesmen. That old, exotic "Chinese" restaurant in town is now something else. The son who was once a prelingual inconvenience has already been a teenage and now he wants to drop out of school and become a car salesmen, like his dad and grandpop. This is because he knocked up his girlfriend.
Rabbit at Rest
Almost twice the size of the earlier books, 500 pages. But what excitement! The year is 1989 and by some wonderful twist of fate Rabbit's son Nelson Angstrom is now the chief salesmen of the 1989 Toyota Corolla--my first car! Rabbit is semi-retired and his son seems jittery. What is it with him? Hopefully he doesn't have that new disease that, that A-I-D-S virus that the gays have. In this story all the other plot lines also mature in fun ways. Rabbit's nurse in the hospital is the daughter of a girl Rabbit used to date (his daughter??). His son is still married to the girl he knocked up in college and they have another son. That chinese restaurant has become a healthy place that serves all kinds of salads. Growing Pains is officially the only show on television where every single character is despicable.
As soon as I turned the final page I missed the characters already. What will happen to the jittery son now that he's admitted he had a problem with blow? Will they lose the Toyota dealership? Luckily, apparently, Updike also wrote a book of short stories called Rabbit Remembered a couple of years later. I guess I'll order that today.
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" (a Haibun Review)
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" (a Haibun Review)
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
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Read
October 27, 2024I'd only be a fool to rate these magnificent novels but quoting the final line "All I can tell you is, it isn't so bad"
A beautiful lyrical book, have never read such wonderful passages describing little things like sunsets, leaves, shoes, grasses and so on. The protagonist is someone who you might not relate to much but hey people do exist! Read it for the journey across a person's life from his 20s till his 60s spanning across all the major decades in an american life during the 50s to the 90s. I enjoyed the whole journey slowly and tastefully!
Also adding a beautiful quote I kept note of-
"The universe is unsleeping, neither nats nor stars sleep, to die will be to be forever wide awake" - Rabbit Redux
A beautiful lyrical book, have never read such wonderful passages describing little things like sunsets, leaves, shoes, grasses and so on. The protagonist is someone who you might not relate to much but hey people do exist! Read it for the journey across a person's life from his 20s till his 60s spanning across all the major decades in an american life during the 50s to the 90s. I enjoyed the whole journey slowly and tastefully!
Also adding a beautiful quote I kept note of-
"The universe is unsleeping, neither nats nor stars sleep, to die will be to be forever wide awake" - Rabbit Redux
October 12, 2022
Rabbit, Run by John Updike may make you do this http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/u...
10 out of 10
Some years back, the under signed has read this wondrous novel and rated it with just three stars out of five, only to take it up again, about a week ago, and find it enchanting – this proves that ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’, which is paraphrasing Plato, and there is also the truth related by Marcel Proust, in his chef d’oeuvre, the greatest book that I know, A La Recherche du Temps Perdu, that we are a different person with the passing of time, and while there seems that the forty years old me found little to relate with Rabbit aka Harry Angstrom, now that I have added a couple of years, I find him quite like me.
This master work does not have a hero, in that he could also be seen as an antihero (after all, he is in large part responsible for a tragedy, the decline of his wife is her responsibility, but he did not stop it, arguably contributed to that, and however likeable he is, there is a sense that he is superficial, selfish, ready to…well, Run) and we see him Running from the very first chapters, after he plays basketball with some youngsters (he is twenty-six), he takes the car and drives through Pennsylvania, heading south.
There is no definite aim (this in itself could be a shortcoming, he is a father and husband, but appears to be undecided, confused over the duties he has and thinks he is free to just take off and disappear into the sunset) in his driving, but he contemplates a long, long trip to the beach, in the south, perhaps to Florida, Texas, one of those red states that are associated with the cult of personality these days, and what a monster that personality is, orange and idiot, in ignorance of the Happiness Myths exposed in the psychology classic Stumbling on Happiness by Harvard Professor Daniel Gilbert http://realini.blogspot.com/2013/06/s... wherefrom we learn that we think we would be happy if only we were to live in California or a Pacific, maybe Caribbean island, and once we move over there, we discover that happiness is elusive because of Hedonic Adaptation…
Nonetheless, Harry Angstrom does not travel all the way to Mexico or Florida (devastated by hurricane Ian these days, and more generally, by a governor who acts as a mini-Trump), he returns from his initial escape trip and looks for his former basketball coach, Marthy Tothero, the latter speaking of the days when Rabbit was a star, scoring record points and promising an outstanding future – this also shows the complexity of our main character, who combines extraordinary qualities with equally remarkable shortcomings and flaws, at one stage, he thinks about what he can do, and he does not have many, or any skills, except for putting the ball through the net, he sales a magic kitchen instrument when we meet him, and though his standing will improve, for we know that Rabbit Is Rich is the name of a title in the trilogy, in the first part, we see him as pretty much a lost soul, doing a rather less than rewarding job, facing unhappiness at home, where his wife is almost, or already an alcoholic.
In Harry’s defense, the guilt is not completely his to carry, because if both spouses have clear responsibility when one is in decline – the tendency is to blame the partner, as we learn from another magic psychology classic, Games People Play by Magister Ludi Eric Berne, where one of the most common interactions is called If It Weren’t For You http://realini.blogspot.com/2013/09/g... only it appears that we select the other, better half to blame him/her/they for the things we do not think we can do anyway, but a scapegoat comes in handy – then Janice Angstrom is an adult who should not indulge in drink to this point.
Harry finds some solace in the arms of Ruth Leonard, who used to be a prostitute (or sex worker in the parlance of our age) and though Rabbit declares himself ready to marry her (supposedly in a harem) his superficiality, lack of involvement, seriousness make him hesitate between staying in this affair and returning to Janice – incidentally, let us quote yet another psychology classic (they help us understand human interactions) and say that the affair is not the cause of the breakup in marriages, but the symptom, the marital troubles have reached the point where an affair is investigated to resolve the solitude felt within a ‘stable relationship’ but ne suffering because of one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, as named by John Gottman in his quintessential The Seven Principles of Making Marriage Work http://realini.blogspot.com/2015/07/t...
When Janice is giving birth – they have already a son, Nelson, and she is expecting another child when Rabbit drives south and then settles for some weeks with Ruth – they call him to go to the hospital, and this is the occasion when the bond between Harry and Ruth is broken, and the modern day Ulysses returns to his awaiting Penelope, but it is a rather unstable situation, though some folks try to help, one of them is the clergy Jack Eccles, who becomes a sort of friend – in spite of these efforts however, our anti-hero slaps Jack’s wife on her ‘fanny’ and envisages erotic games with her, imagines that she winks at him (maybe she did, but with just humor in mind) with the intention to have coitus
Ruth may give birth to a daughter – I am now already reading Rabbit is Rich, which is the third part in the trilogy, having finished Rabbit Redux, thus a note will be coming in the next few days on the latter, an announcement which presumed with infatuation that somebody might be interested in the notion, and Harry is already well, rich, as the title puts it clearly and when a young woman enters the Toyota dealership where he is boss now (a spoiler alert might be missing) he thinks this might be the daughter he had not met, given that she mentions that her mother owns a farm, and then Rabbit had met Ruth in Redux and she mentioned that, just as she made it clear that she does not want Harry to come anywhere near – but the tragedies in the life of the hero, or perhaps antihero of this narrative, mix with the happy events
Rabbit Run and some of the other volumes in the tetralogy have been well received (‘a masterpiece’ is one comment) and two went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Literature…as a personal comment, they make for a very entertaining reading, and this is the second time that I meet with Harry Angstrom and the characters that people his saga…
http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/r...
10 out of 10
Some years back, the under signed has read this wondrous novel and rated it with just three stars out of five, only to take it up again, about a week ago, and find it enchanting – this proves that ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’, which is paraphrasing Plato, and there is also the truth related by Marcel Proust, in his chef d’oeuvre, the greatest book that I know, A La Recherche du Temps Perdu, that we are a different person with the passing of time, and while there seems that the forty years old me found little to relate with Rabbit aka Harry Angstrom, now that I have added a couple of years, I find him quite like me.
This master work does not have a hero, in that he could also be seen as an antihero (after all, he is in large part responsible for a tragedy, the decline of his wife is her responsibility, but he did not stop it, arguably contributed to that, and however likeable he is, there is a sense that he is superficial, selfish, ready to…well, Run) and we see him Running from the very first chapters, after he plays basketball with some youngsters (he is twenty-six), he takes the car and drives through Pennsylvania, heading south.
There is no definite aim (this in itself could be a shortcoming, he is a father and husband, but appears to be undecided, confused over the duties he has and thinks he is free to just take off and disappear into the sunset) in his driving, but he contemplates a long, long trip to the beach, in the south, perhaps to Florida, Texas, one of those red states that are associated with the cult of personality these days, and what a monster that personality is, orange and idiot, in ignorance of the Happiness Myths exposed in the psychology classic Stumbling on Happiness by Harvard Professor Daniel Gilbert http://realini.blogspot.com/2013/06/s... wherefrom we learn that we think we would be happy if only we were to live in California or a Pacific, maybe Caribbean island, and once we move over there, we discover that happiness is elusive because of Hedonic Adaptation…
Nonetheless, Harry Angstrom does not travel all the way to Mexico or Florida (devastated by hurricane Ian these days, and more generally, by a governor who acts as a mini-Trump), he returns from his initial escape trip and looks for his former basketball coach, Marthy Tothero, the latter speaking of the days when Rabbit was a star, scoring record points and promising an outstanding future – this also shows the complexity of our main character, who combines extraordinary qualities with equally remarkable shortcomings and flaws, at one stage, he thinks about what he can do, and he does not have many, or any skills, except for putting the ball through the net, he sales a magic kitchen instrument when we meet him, and though his standing will improve, for we know that Rabbit Is Rich is the name of a title in the trilogy, in the first part, we see him as pretty much a lost soul, doing a rather less than rewarding job, facing unhappiness at home, where his wife is almost, or already an alcoholic.
In Harry’s defense, the guilt is not completely his to carry, because if both spouses have clear responsibility when one is in decline – the tendency is to blame the partner, as we learn from another magic psychology classic, Games People Play by Magister Ludi Eric Berne, where one of the most common interactions is called If It Weren’t For You http://realini.blogspot.com/2013/09/g... only it appears that we select the other, better half to blame him/her/they for the things we do not think we can do anyway, but a scapegoat comes in handy – then Janice Angstrom is an adult who should not indulge in drink to this point.
Harry finds some solace in the arms of Ruth Leonard, who used to be a prostitute (or sex worker in the parlance of our age) and though Rabbit declares himself ready to marry her (supposedly in a harem) his superficiality, lack of involvement, seriousness make him hesitate between staying in this affair and returning to Janice – incidentally, let us quote yet another psychology classic (they help us understand human interactions) and say that the affair is not the cause of the breakup in marriages, but the symptom, the marital troubles have reached the point where an affair is investigated to resolve the solitude felt within a ‘stable relationship’ but ne suffering because of one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, as named by John Gottman in his quintessential The Seven Principles of Making Marriage Work http://realini.blogspot.com/2015/07/t...
When Janice is giving birth – they have already a son, Nelson, and she is expecting another child when Rabbit drives south and then settles for some weeks with Ruth – they call him to go to the hospital, and this is the occasion when the bond between Harry and Ruth is broken, and the modern day Ulysses returns to his awaiting Penelope, but it is a rather unstable situation, though some folks try to help, one of them is the clergy Jack Eccles, who becomes a sort of friend – in spite of these efforts however, our anti-hero slaps Jack’s wife on her ‘fanny’ and envisages erotic games with her, imagines that she winks at him (maybe she did, but with just humor in mind) with the intention to have coitus
Ruth may give birth to a daughter – I am now already reading Rabbit is Rich, which is the third part in the trilogy, having finished Rabbit Redux, thus a note will be coming in the next few days on the latter, an announcement which presumed with infatuation that somebody might be interested in the notion, and Harry is already well, rich, as the title puts it clearly and when a young woman enters the Toyota dealership where he is boss now (a spoiler alert might be missing) he thinks this might be the daughter he had not met, given that she mentions that her mother owns a farm, and then Rabbit had met Ruth in Redux and she mentioned that, just as she made it clear that she does not want Harry to come anywhere near – but the tragedies in the life of the hero, or perhaps antihero of this narrative, mix with the happy events
Rabbit Run and some of the other volumes in the tetralogy have been well received (‘a masterpiece’ is one comment) and two went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Literature…as a personal comment, they make for a very entertaining reading, and this is the second time that I meet with Harry Angstrom and the characters that people his saga…
http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/r...
November 16, 2010
Although it took me five months to complete, I've enjoyed every minute of it. Following the life of Rabbit Angstrom has become one of my favorite literary experiences. The themes of sex, ego, race, religion, family, and drugs influence the character through every part of this four-book series. Updike's writing is best displayed in these works; his descriptions of suburban life in Pennsylvania are easy to picture and relate to, especially as someone who grew up in the area as I did. Yet there are just as many surprises as there are familiar settings and reflections.
Rabbit isn't a particularly likable character, but his inner dialog makes him human, real, relatable. Updike also brilliantly incorporates the fads and stereotypes of each decade to the point where the reader is unsure whether he's poking fun or just offering a sliver of history from one man's perspective. Either way, they help define the different stages of the character's life and his place in this crazy world.
The tension created by family dynamics, the constant questioning and quest to define one's self make this an enduring classic.
Rabbit isn't a particularly likable character, but his inner dialog makes him human, real, relatable. Updike also brilliantly incorporates the fads and stereotypes of each decade to the point where the reader is unsure whether he's poking fun or just offering a sliver of history from one man's perspective. Either way, they help define the different stages of the character's life and his place in this crazy world.
The tension created by family dynamics, the constant questioning and quest to define one's self make this an enduring classic.
February 11, 2016
I read these four novels in July and August of this year. Of the four, I think "Rabbit Run" is the best with the final "Rabbit at Rest" a close second. I could feel outside influences at work with the middle two; therefore they seemed more reactive in nature than original visions. Originally, the publishers refused Updike's first "Rabbit Run" submission as too graphic: readers apparently were deemed too sensitive in 1960. But by the mid-60s, Updike was allowed to publish his original vision. Perhaps profits from "Valley of the Dolls" indicated to the publishers that readers could indeed handle Updike's edgy, raw, brutal, disturbing vision of a man who, like millions of other people, were trapped into the "1950s-Happy-Days-Dream-World" that never existed. 1970's "Rabbit Redux" takes "Run" to extremes: I could feel Updike typing away whatever came to mind, just because he could. "Redux" was almost unreadable for me, not because "Redux" approaches porn, it's just that there was no need for the "c" word to appear relentlessly, over and over, just cause. Then, ten years later, Updike gives us "Rabbit is Rich" which isn't the sledgehammer of "Redux", but Rabbit oddly gives us endless descriptions of what he thinks guy's genitals might look like. Is Updike now responding to criticism of his use of the "c" word in the previous book? "Didn't like it, readers, well, on the other hand..." Then at last we get "Rabbit is Rich" which to me seems like an original vision outside of the thoughts of critics or readers. These four books together do constitute a great read, it's just that only the first and last seem to be the writer's true, singular vision of Rabbit Angstrom. I've read Anthony Powell's "A Dance to the Music of Time" from the 1950s, I've read two books of Knausgard's "My Struggle" and I'm now reading Proust's "Swann's Way". These are huge, brilliant one-of-a-kind works, separated by about 25 years or so. Arguably, "Rabbit Angstrom" is among the best fiction of the past century. And let's not forget that the final two, "Rich" and "Rest" won Pulitzers. Sometimes painful, relentlessly raw, this is "can't miss" writing, a vision like no other.
November 12, 2014
Absolutely worth the re-read thirty years after the original read.
Language is a vivid second time around, and what was new then is history now. Misogyny even creepier now, no female imperfection misses the gimlet eye. Occasioned a re-read of his bio and a driving trip through Updike-land to see his house, school, graveyard and the dreaded farm - all still there and a lot of familiar secondary character names on tombstones - no RIP there.
Language is a vivid second time around, and what was new then is history now. Misogyny even creepier now, no female imperfection misses the gimlet eye. Occasioned a re-read of his bio and a driving trip through Updike-land to see his house, school, graveyard and the dreaded farm - all still there and a lot of familiar secondary character names on tombstones - no RIP there.
October 21, 2007
If I met Rabbit Angstrom, I'd probably want to punch him in the face, and I hated every minute of reading about his internal life. But I loved all the details of his changing America, his crumbling family, and his slow dissolution. As frustrating as these books were emotionally, I put every one down praising Updike as a writer.
May 6, 2010
Good writing is not enough.
April 4, 2012
Probably four of the very best modern novels i have ever read.
January 15, 2011
I read books 1 and 2 in a different volume, but picked this one up because it was used and it ended up being $10 cheaper to buy this used volume than to just pick up the paperback versions of 3 and 4. Since finishing, I've switched to reading on my new Kindle. The juxtaposition of this 1500 page mammoth and the Kindle makes reading on a Kindle feel almost like cheating.
But perhaps the weight of this novel is a good thing. Makes you work for closure on Rabbit's life, rather than breezing through it. I will say, however, that I spent a great deal longer reading this book than I should have considering its excellent contents. If anyone has any tips on comfortable positions for reading a giant hardbound book, I'm all ears.
Parts 3 and 4 of Rabbit's life were not as captivating to me as parts 1 and 2. My theory for this is that I can more easily relate to the younger Rabbit, so in the earlier books I was constantly anxious about what came next, as if our fates as lost young people were somehow intertwined. In these novels, Rabbit is older. He is stable, and happy. Well, not that happy, but the kind of happy that comes from stability. Updike's excellence is that he captures the voice of Rabbit so well while still letting it grow older. The Rabbit I read about retired in Florida is still the Rabbit who runs away from his wife at the beginning of book 1, but different in so many ways.
What this book(s) does is slam the notion that there is any kind of certainty in life. Some things become more certain, but each "step" of life opens up new areas for uncertainty. Early on, you start a family and a career, In mid-life, you must come to terms with the fact that this is what your life has become and there isn't much room for change, etc. Reading this series was the closest I've ever come to watching a person grow up, and it was fascinating/horrifying to realize that the early adult years are just the beginning of confusion and uncertainty.
Overall, this book is much too long and interesting to do it justice in a short little goodreads review. This is also one of those books that I imagine will take on more meaning later on in life. Perhaps I will save this hardbound copy, and return to it in 15 years to find that books 1 and 2 no longer excite me, but will find it impossible to put down books 3 and 4. The changing life philosophy of Rabbit is evident in the quotes, (and that's what most interests me) so without further ado...
Favorite bits:
"But a lot of topics, he has noticed lately, in private conversation and even on television where they're paid to talk it up, run dry, exhaust themselves, as if everything's been said in this hemisphere." -pg.631
"But one of their bonds has always been that her confusion keeps pace with is. As the wind pours past he feels a scared swift love for something that has no name. Her? His life? The world?" -pg.684
"I pretty much like what I have. The trouble with that is, then you get afraid somebody will take it away from you." -pg.685
"The world keeps ending but new people too dumb to know it keep showing up as if the fun's just started." -pg.700
"Then he remembers, descending into the molecules, what love feels like: huge, skin on skin, planets impinging." -pg.705
"Freedom, that he always thought was outward motion, turns out to be this inner dwindling." -pg.708
"He does not know if he loved her or not, but with her he had known love, had experienced that cloudy, inflation of self which makes us infants again and tips each moment with a plain excited purpose, as these wands of grass about his knees are tipped with packets of their own fine seeds." -pg.722
"Town after town numbingly demonstrated to him that his life was a paltry thing, roughly duplicated by the millions." -pg.743
"You never return to the same place." -pg.764
"Funny about feelings, they seem to come and go in a flash yet outlast metal." -pg.768
"From a certain angle the most terrifying thing in the world is your own life, the fact that it's yours and nobody else's." -pg.785
"'I must say,' Janice says, 'it does seem extravagant, to build such a thing you're only going to use once.' 'That's life.' Harry says." -pg.845
"What more can you ask of a wife in a way than that she stick around and see with you what happens next?" -pg.856
"You don't stop caring, champ. You still care about that little girl whose underpants you saw in kindergarten. Once you care, you always care. That's how stupid we are." -pg.866
"..his own life close in to a size his soul had not yet shrunk to fit." -pg.879
"Pru had none of that false savvy, she knew none of the names to drop, the fancy dead, and could talk only about what was alive now." -pg.906
"...families, doing everything for each other out of imagined obligation and always getting in each other's way, what a tangle." -pg.914
"Life. Too much of it, and not enough. THe fear that it will end some day, and the fear that tomorrow will be the same as yesterday." -pg.942
"The great sad lie told to children that is Christmas stains Weiser end to end, and through the murk he glimpses the truth that to be rich is to be robbed, to be rich is to be poor." -pg.961
"People are always a little sicker than you know." -pg.995
"Harry suddenly hates people who seem to know; they would keep us blind to the fact that there is nothing to know. We are each of us filled with a perfect blackness." -pg.1007
"Both know, what people should never know, that they will not meet again." -pg.1029
"What you lose as you age is witnesses, the ones that watched from early on and cared, like your own little grandstand." -pg.1041
"The more dead you know it seems the more living there are you don't know." -pg.1041
"He knows her so well that making conversation with her is like having a struggle with himself." -pg.1072
"'Driving is boring,' Rabbit pontificates, 'but it's what we do. Most of American life is driving somewhere and then driving back wondering why the hell you went.'" -pg.1074
"Funny how your wife reading the newspaper makes every item in it look fascinating, and then when you look yourself it all turns dull." -pg.1096
"All this family closeness is almost like an African hut where everybody sleeps and screws un full view of everybody else. But, then, Harry asks himself, what has Western man done with all his precious privacy, anyway? To judge from his history books, nothing much except invent the gun and psychoanalysis." -pg.1096
"...the things he loos at all seem tired; he's seen them too many times before. A kind of drought has settled over the world, a bleaching such as overtakes old color prints, even the ones kept in drawer." -pg.1099
"I you could ever get the poor to vote in this country, you'd have socialism. But people want to think rich. That's the genius of the capitalist system: either you're rich, or you want to be, or you think you ought to be." -pg.1104
"The solider in Harry, the masochistic Christian, respects men like this. It's total uncritical love, such as women provide, that makes you soft and does you in." -pg.1106
"...perhaps that is the saddest loss time brings, the lessening of excitement about anything." -pg.1153
"What's a life supposed to be? They don't give you another for comparison." -pg.1207
"In crises there is something in our instincts which whittles, which tries to reduce the unignorable event back to the ignorable normal." -pg.1280
"We are each of us like our little blue planet, hung in black space, upheld by nothing but our mutual reassurances, our loving lies." -pg.1290
"Innocence is just an early age of stupidity." -pg.1313
"You're a man, you're free, you can do what you want in life, until you're sixty at least you're a buyer. A woman's a seller. She has to be. And she better not haggle too long." -pg.1362
But perhaps the weight of this novel is a good thing. Makes you work for closure on Rabbit's life, rather than breezing through it. I will say, however, that I spent a great deal longer reading this book than I should have considering its excellent contents. If anyone has any tips on comfortable positions for reading a giant hardbound book, I'm all ears.
Parts 3 and 4 of Rabbit's life were not as captivating to me as parts 1 and 2. My theory for this is that I can more easily relate to the younger Rabbit, so in the earlier books I was constantly anxious about what came next, as if our fates as lost young people were somehow intertwined. In these novels, Rabbit is older. He is stable, and happy. Well, not that happy, but the kind of happy that comes from stability. Updike's excellence is that he captures the voice of Rabbit so well while still letting it grow older. The Rabbit I read about retired in Florida is still the Rabbit who runs away from his wife at the beginning of book 1, but different in so many ways.
What this book(s) does is slam the notion that there is any kind of certainty in life. Some things become more certain, but each "step" of life opens up new areas for uncertainty. Early on, you start a family and a career, In mid-life, you must come to terms with the fact that this is what your life has become and there isn't much room for change, etc. Reading this series was the closest I've ever come to watching a person grow up, and it was fascinating/horrifying to realize that the early adult years are just the beginning of confusion and uncertainty.
Overall, this book is much too long and interesting to do it justice in a short little goodreads review. This is also one of those books that I imagine will take on more meaning later on in life. Perhaps I will save this hardbound copy, and return to it in 15 years to find that books 1 and 2 no longer excite me, but will find it impossible to put down books 3 and 4. The changing life philosophy of Rabbit is evident in the quotes, (and that's what most interests me) so without further ado...
Favorite bits:
"But a lot of topics, he has noticed lately, in private conversation and even on television where they're paid to talk it up, run dry, exhaust themselves, as if everything's been said in this hemisphere." -pg.631
"But one of their bonds has always been that her confusion keeps pace with is. As the wind pours past he feels a scared swift love for something that has no name. Her? His life? The world?" -pg.684
"I pretty much like what I have. The trouble with that is, then you get afraid somebody will take it away from you." -pg.685
"The world keeps ending but new people too dumb to know it keep showing up as if the fun's just started." -pg.700
"Then he remembers, descending into the molecules, what love feels like: huge, skin on skin, planets impinging." -pg.705
"Freedom, that he always thought was outward motion, turns out to be this inner dwindling." -pg.708
"He does not know if he loved her or not, but with her he had known love, had experienced that cloudy, inflation of self which makes us infants again and tips each moment with a plain excited purpose, as these wands of grass about his knees are tipped with packets of their own fine seeds." -pg.722
"Town after town numbingly demonstrated to him that his life was a paltry thing, roughly duplicated by the millions." -pg.743
"You never return to the same place." -pg.764
"Funny about feelings, they seem to come and go in a flash yet outlast metal." -pg.768
"From a certain angle the most terrifying thing in the world is your own life, the fact that it's yours and nobody else's." -pg.785
"'I must say,' Janice says, 'it does seem extravagant, to build such a thing you're only going to use once.' 'That's life.' Harry says." -pg.845
"What more can you ask of a wife in a way than that she stick around and see with you what happens next?" -pg.856
"You don't stop caring, champ. You still care about that little girl whose underpants you saw in kindergarten. Once you care, you always care. That's how stupid we are." -pg.866
"..his own life close in to a size his soul had not yet shrunk to fit." -pg.879
"Pru had none of that false savvy, she knew none of the names to drop, the fancy dead, and could talk only about what was alive now." -pg.906
"...families, doing everything for each other out of imagined obligation and always getting in each other's way, what a tangle." -pg.914
"Life. Too much of it, and not enough. THe fear that it will end some day, and the fear that tomorrow will be the same as yesterday." -pg.942
"The great sad lie told to children that is Christmas stains Weiser end to end, and through the murk he glimpses the truth that to be rich is to be robbed, to be rich is to be poor." -pg.961
"People are always a little sicker than you know." -pg.995
"Harry suddenly hates people who seem to know; they would keep us blind to the fact that there is nothing to know. We are each of us filled with a perfect blackness." -pg.1007
"Both know, what people should never know, that they will not meet again." -pg.1029
"What you lose as you age is witnesses, the ones that watched from early on and cared, like your own little grandstand." -pg.1041
"The more dead you know it seems the more living there are you don't know." -pg.1041
"He knows her so well that making conversation with her is like having a struggle with himself." -pg.1072
"'Driving is boring,' Rabbit pontificates, 'but it's what we do. Most of American life is driving somewhere and then driving back wondering why the hell you went.'" -pg.1074
"Funny how your wife reading the newspaper makes every item in it look fascinating, and then when you look yourself it all turns dull." -pg.1096
"All this family closeness is almost like an African hut where everybody sleeps and screws un full view of everybody else. But, then, Harry asks himself, what has Western man done with all his precious privacy, anyway? To judge from his history books, nothing much except invent the gun and psychoanalysis." -pg.1096
"...the things he loos at all seem tired; he's seen them too many times before. A kind of drought has settled over the world, a bleaching such as overtakes old color prints, even the ones kept in drawer." -pg.1099
"I you could ever get the poor to vote in this country, you'd have socialism. But people want to think rich. That's the genius of the capitalist system: either you're rich, or you want to be, or you think you ought to be." -pg.1104
"The solider in Harry, the masochistic Christian, respects men like this. It's total uncritical love, such as women provide, that makes you soft and does you in." -pg.1106
"...perhaps that is the saddest loss time brings, the lessening of excitement about anything." -pg.1153
"What's a life supposed to be? They don't give you another for comparison." -pg.1207
"In crises there is something in our instincts which whittles, which tries to reduce the unignorable event back to the ignorable normal." -pg.1280
"We are each of us like our little blue planet, hung in black space, upheld by nothing but our mutual reassurances, our loving lies." -pg.1290
"Innocence is just an early age of stupidity." -pg.1313
"You're a man, you're free, you can do what you want in life, until you're sixty at least you're a buyer. A woman's a seller. She has to be. And she better not haggle too long." -pg.1362
October 30, 2024
It really grew on me. Every book got better. I really couldn’t stand any of the characters except for Eccles, the minister in the first book, and maybe Campbell, the minister in the third, and yet somehow it was enjoyable. The first book Harry Angstrom was not a clearly defined person, I just kind of assumed he was me, then all this crazy shit happens and I couldn’t believe what he was doing. It’s been a while since the end of a book made me so angry.
And then book two he’s kind of taking some punches and I enjoyed that because he deserves it and still he is such a pig. And as I’m moving along there are things about this guy that are endearing, despite the letdowns. I think he is moving towards something, some enlightenment. And then there is the crash just like book one. The anger grows but I continue because book three and four won the Big Awards. And also because obviously I’m not going to stop midway, I bought the tetralogy as a single hardcover at an Oakland used bookstore for $16.50.
By book three I started to find him familiar. A certain type of jackass. And despite this still found myself rooting for him for much of it. His wife and kid are so painful from his perspective and yet there are little glimpses where you see their perspective of how awful he is.
In book four I decided that this character was written to be a piece of shit as a comment on certain types of people in the world. I don’t know if it is true or not. In the intro Updike says social commentary is not a skill he possesses, and that there is no moral. I struggle to believe this. The first book I couldn’t even tell if the author knew his hero was such a despicable person. By book four there was no questioning this fact. It seems to me the reader is supposed to cringe through these scenes and put together that Harry represents arrogant, stupid, selfish, self-destructive, self-righteous America. Or maybe, that he is a manifestation of our basest, most animalistic tendencies as humans and the point is to show what a person’s life would be like if they just failed every moral test or refused to grow up or something like that.
The best parts of all four books were the details of time and place that run through them, more so than in any book I’ve read. The Phillies, music on the radio, the lunar landing, the civil rights movement, Vietnam war protests, inflation, gas shortages, the challenger explosion, HIV, voyager 2, movies that were out in theater. Really gives a sense of what it was like to live in those times. And writing a book once a decade for four decades is pretty cool.
And then book two he’s kind of taking some punches and I enjoyed that because he deserves it and still he is such a pig. And as I’m moving along there are things about this guy that are endearing, despite the letdowns. I think he is moving towards something, some enlightenment. And then there is the crash just like book one. The anger grows but I continue because book three and four won the Big Awards. And also because obviously I’m not going to stop midway, I bought the tetralogy as a single hardcover at an Oakland used bookstore for $16.50.
By book three I started to find him familiar. A certain type of jackass. And despite this still found myself rooting for him for much of it. His wife and kid are so painful from his perspective and yet there are little glimpses where you see their perspective of how awful he is.
In book four I decided that this character was written to be a piece of shit as a comment on certain types of people in the world. I don’t know if it is true or not. In the intro Updike says social commentary is not a skill he possesses, and that there is no moral. I struggle to believe this. The first book I couldn’t even tell if the author knew his hero was such a despicable person. By book four there was no questioning this fact. It seems to me the reader is supposed to cringe through these scenes and put together that Harry represents arrogant, stupid, selfish, self-destructive, self-righteous America. Or maybe, that he is a manifestation of our basest, most animalistic tendencies as humans and the point is to show what a person’s life would be like if they just failed every moral test or refused to grow up or something like that.
The best parts of all four books were the details of time and place that run through them, more so than in any book I’ve read. The Phillies, music on the radio, the lunar landing, the civil rights movement, Vietnam war protests, inflation, gas shortages, the challenger explosion, HIV, voyager 2, movies that were out in theater. Really gives a sense of what it was like to live in those times. And writing a book once a decade for four decades is pretty cool.
August 22, 2024
Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom is a sarcastic brute, but we love him. In fact, he’s one of the “realist” characters I’ve ever encountered. Four books, written ten years apart, following his life from the 1950s to the 1980s, charts nearly forty years of living in America, specifically Pennsylvania. Chock full of cultural references, news, and mind-sets of the time this series becomes something of a time capsule of how life was lived during these decades.
As I said, Rabbit is kind of a brute, but it’s intentional. There are no characters Updike allows to be “heroic” or “preferred,” and the only reason we tolerate Harry is because his realism and sarcasm keeps us giggling. He tolerates just as much as he dishes out. His most amazing trait, however, is Updike’s relatability to just some guy. A once semi-famous basketball player in his high school turned family man. We discover him building his family and not being too pleased with it, and that theme continues over four books.
Updike has a fantastic vocabulary and way of keeping the reader engaged with his language and variation. Although there are many repetitious elements to remind us that these are the same characters over the decades, I can’t help but marvel at his flexibility of the written word. I, perhaps, didn’t appreciate his writing before, but I do now. He doesn’t shy away from shocking us and flirting with the line of social acceptance. Although this was a long ride that took me over three months to accomplish at over 1500 pages I’m also glad I jumped onto the bandwagon.
As I said, Rabbit is kind of a brute, but it’s intentional. There are no characters Updike allows to be “heroic” or “preferred,” and the only reason we tolerate Harry is because his realism and sarcasm keeps us giggling. He tolerates just as much as he dishes out. His most amazing trait, however, is Updike’s relatability to just some guy. A once semi-famous basketball player in his high school turned family man. We discover him building his family and not being too pleased with it, and that theme continues over four books.
Updike has a fantastic vocabulary and way of keeping the reader engaged with his language and variation. Although there are many repetitious elements to remind us that these are the same characters over the decades, I can’t help but marvel at his flexibility of the written word. I, perhaps, didn’t appreciate his writing before, but I do now. He doesn’t shy away from shocking us and flirting with the line of social acceptance. Although this was a long ride that took me over three months to accomplish at over 1500 pages I’m also glad I jumped onto the bandwagon.
September 17, 2024
A work without equal. Pound for pound, sentence by sentence, the best prose writer I've ever encountered. Rabbit might not be to everyone's taste, coarse and awkwardly human as he is, but the reality of his life as evoked through this masterful fiction of an hypnotic prose style, littered with late twentieth century detritus, is hard to ignore. Glad to have obtained a copy of all four novels in one big book, it has accompanied me, as both brick and would-be Bible this past month, and I have returned to it faithfully, and always entertained.
August 28, 2011
Rabbit, Run (read 10/2/09) - 3
This is a dense but concise story that's at best mediocre and cast in lavishly beautiful prose. As a writer, I cannot help but appreciate the beauty of Updike's descriptions. The story, though, isn't all that and it takes some hard slogging in the beginning to get through, but overall it's a fairly entertaining read.
Rabbit Redux (read 11/19/09) - 2.5
Rabbit Angstrom grows on you. The first hundred or two hundred pages are just meh, but once Rabbit lets in Jill and Skeeter into his house, things get strangely compelling. Nothing really happens for a long time, but for some reason it's not hard to continue reading about Rabbit getting high with Skeeter night after night. The climax is a fast read, followed by a tapering ending.
I thought the prose in this book was not at a par with the previous Rabbit book and the story was more or less as slow and dense as the previous one.
I'm not sure if I'll continue reading the rest of the tetralogy since I'm frankly not completely drawn to Rabbit and his world, although I did live in a middle-class suburb when I was in elementary and middle schools.
Rabbit is Rich and Rabbit at Rest (7/27-8/27)
Finally! DONE.
I enjoyed these last two novels more than the previous two, probably because I was specifically looking for gorgeous descriptive prose.
One thing you need to keep in mind when reading the Rabbit series is that Updike is trying to paint each decade, and that means a lot of descriptions and expositions unnecessary to the story. Once you allow that and sit back and let his ethereal prose wash over you, then I think you can enjoy it. In other words, you need to adjust your expectations going into these novels—Updike isn't interested so much in telling a gripping story, but illustrating and responding to each decade he portrays from the 50s up to the 80s.
Overall, I liked it, though the protagonist, Rabbit Angstrom, is a reprehensible character to say the least (and especially in the end of Rabbit at Rest) and some people might have a problem identifying with him. But remember: it's not about the MC or the plot. It's about the scenes and atmosphere and other characters surrounding Rabbit that make this a good read. And of course, Updike's prose.
Good stuff.
This is a dense but concise story that's at best mediocre and cast in lavishly beautiful prose. As a writer, I cannot help but appreciate the beauty of Updike's descriptions. The story, though, isn't all that and it takes some hard slogging in the beginning to get through, but overall it's a fairly entertaining read.
Rabbit Redux (read 11/19/09) - 2.5
Rabbit Angstrom grows on you. The first hundred or two hundred pages are just meh, but once Rabbit lets in Jill and Skeeter into his house, things get strangely compelling. Nothing really happens for a long time, but for some reason it's not hard to continue reading about Rabbit getting high with Skeeter night after night. The climax is a fast read, followed by a tapering ending.
I thought the prose in this book was not at a par with the previous Rabbit book and the story was more or less as slow and dense as the previous one.
I'm not sure if I'll continue reading the rest of the tetralogy since I'm frankly not completely drawn to Rabbit and his world, although I did live in a middle-class suburb when I was in elementary and middle schools.
Rabbit is Rich and Rabbit at Rest (7/27-8/27)
Finally! DONE.
I enjoyed these last two novels more than the previous two, probably because I was specifically looking for gorgeous descriptive prose.
One thing you need to keep in mind when reading the Rabbit series is that Updike is trying to paint each decade, and that means a lot of descriptions and expositions unnecessary to the story. Once you allow that and sit back and let his ethereal prose wash over you, then I think you can enjoy it. In other words, you need to adjust your expectations going into these novels—Updike isn't interested so much in telling a gripping story, but illustrating and responding to each decade he portrays from the 50s up to the 80s.
Overall, I liked it, though the protagonist, Rabbit Angstrom, is a reprehensible character to say the least (and especially in the end of Rabbit at Rest) and some people might have a problem identifying with him. But remember: it's not about the MC or the plot. It's about the scenes and atmosphere and other characters surrounding Rabbit that make this a good read. And of course, Updike's prose.
Good stuff.
August 8, 2009
Rabbit Run
The technical style of the book is hard to beat. There is a clear plot, minor characters that come to life, settings that are at once natural and resonant, and a deeper meaning to the story that comes out without long philosophical expositions. In short, this is as good as the realistic novel gets.
Reading the reviews on Goodreads, I am amazed at the number of people who see Updike as a misogynist. I suppose it must be because Rabbit treats women so badly and Updike tries to understand him and the women rather than dismissing them as villain and victim. Worse yet, there is no Dr. Phil to step in and resolve the situation so that everyone behaves well in the future. To me the great thing is that Updike takes this easily stereotyped situation and makes it specific to a certain group of real people with real flaws that don't go away.
The technical style of the book is hard to beat. There is a clear plot, minor characters that come to life, settings that are at once natural and resonant, and a deeper meaning to the story that comes out without long philosophical expositions. In short, this is as good as the realistic novel gets.
Reading the reviews on Goodreads, I am amazed at the number of people who see Updike as a misogynist. I suppose it must be because Rabbit treats women so badly and Updike tries to understand him and the women rather than dismissing them as villain and victim. Worse yet, there is no Dr. Phil to step in and resolve the situation so that everyone behaves well in the future. To me the great thing is that Updike takes this easily stereotyped situation and makes it specific to a certain group of real people with real flaws that don't go away.
May 14, 2014
Having read these 4 novels one after another, I couldn't have even considered picking up another novel until I had finished. I don't believe it matters whether you like or dislike Rabbit; the writing is what it is all about.
Personally I liked Rabbit and all his failings. Updike is possibly the most honest author I have ever come across - especially when dealing with the male experience. Rabbit thinks as many men think, whether poor, rust belt American or not. Male readers who claim they haven't thought along similar lines at one time or another are probably lying to themselves. I'm not suggesting that we are all exactly like Rabbit, just that there are elements of him in all of us men.
Personally I liked Rabbit and all his failings. Updike is possibly the most honest author I have ever come across - especially when dealing with the male experience. Rabbit thinks as many men think, whether poor, rust belt American or not. Male readers who claim they haven't thought along similar lines at one time or another are probably lying to themselves. I'm not suggesting that we are all exactly like Rabbit, just that there are elements of him in all of us men.
February 23, 2016
Wonderful warts-and-all chronicle of middle class suburban life: one man's dyspeptic pilgrim's progress through the last decades of the 20th century. The Rabbit Angstrom novels are Updike's greatest legacy.
February 4, 2018
My favourite novel series.
October 4, 2011
Last week I was reading an article by John Updike and was struck (as usual) by the simplicity and lucidness of his prose. That got me thinking about his works that I have read and the result is this post on the Rabbit series of novels. The Rabbit tetralogy is a series of 4 novels written by John Updike, tracing the life of 'Harry Rabbit Angstrom', from his mid 20's to the next 4 decades. The novels were also written over a period of 4 decades with one novel being published in one decade starting from 1960. Updike has been one of the foremost exponents in describing the small town American middle class and his concerns are those of the average middle class American, his marital life, affairs, moving into middle age and coping with it, the final descent into old age. Though there would be disagreements on what his best work was, the Rabbit series consist of, by far his most famous books. Rather than referring one book, it would be better to give information on the whole series so that it offers a clearer view to a prospective reader. So it's going to be a big post.
Rabbit Run (1960) - This is the first novel in the series. As the novel starts, we encounter Harry (Rabbit), who is in his mid twenties, married with a pregnant wife (Janice). He already has a son Nelson. He has been a high school basket ball star, but that is all in the past and his 15 minutes of fame has been used up. Now he is a normal, one among many person trying to make ends meet. He sees a some kids playing basket ball and something snaps in him. He leaves his family and town and start driving aimlessly. He changes his mind and meets his old coach. While with him, he meets 'Ruth' a hooker and starts living with her. Janice meanwhile goes to her parents place. A church minister tries to reconcile Harry to live with his family, but has no success. Later Harry returns home, after his wife gives birth to a girl child. He pressurizes Janice to have sex with her, but she refuses. Harry leaves again to see Ruth. Meanwhile Janice gets drunk due to the fight and their new born daughter drowns. Rabbit returns for the funeral and again loses control and runs into the woods. Returns (again) to Ruth, learns that she is pregnant by him. But he does not take the step to leave Janice, nor is he willing to live with Ruth. Rabbit runs again for the last time (in this novel) and the novel ends here.
As can be seen from the above lines, Rabbit is always on the run from thing or the other. He seems to be basically a loser, a wimp one who cannot face situations and runs aways from it not thinking about the consequences. So what makes this character and the whole series compelling to continue with the other novels. For once the prose, the exquisite prose of Updike. Updike is referred to as America's man of letters and deservedly so. His preoccupation is with the mundane and everyday life is so rich in its prose and imagery that you cannot help be sucked into it. (He can be too flowery at times). And as the series proceeds, the reader can see the characters evolving so that what you finally see are 3 dimensional characters who have their own smooth and rough edges. The first few pages of this novel where Updike describes a small American town is incredible, there is no description of the people, just the landscapes, buildings, the woods are so evocative that you feel a connect with the story immediately.
Rabbit Redux (1971)- This is the second novel in the series. Harry is his 30's now, approaching middle age and stuck in staid matrimony and job. Janice who was pretty much a minor character in the first part is much evolved here. She is now working in her father's office. She has an affair with her co-worker and leaves him. Rabbit, true to form indulges in his own way of coping with it, but shacking with a afro-american veteran of the Vietnam war (Skeeter) and Jill a runaway white girl. They stay together, with Nelson who is now a young boy. Harry does not seem to care for the impact his lifestyle could have on Nelson (comes in the next novels). They live a decadent sort of life style, debating about race (60's were the period of Martin Luther King, race riots in America), doing drugs without a care. During one such orgy a fire breaks out killing Jill. There is no news of Skeeter. Finally at the end, Harry starts to live with Janice again. The novel ends here.
One could ask again what is so good about this part of the novel too. Adultery, a decadent life style, so what's there for the reader. Rabbit too does not seem to be a much better person, so why continue with the series. Well, for one, well defined morally right characters is not a pre-requisite for good literature (where would Madame Bovary be if this rule is applied). The other thing is, the detailing that Updike invests in these characters, in their actions which show another light to them. Lets consider what happens when Rabbit comes to know of his wife's affair. There has been some rumors, but he has not thought much of it. When Janice accepts it, what happens? No angry arguments, tears or blame game. He slaps her and they have sex. Nothing erotic in it, just 2 persons probably for whom the tension they have been under the past weeks or months is now over, since the truth is out and sex is just an outlet for the emotions coming out due to it. It is moments like these that elevate the novel.
The first 2 parts in the series are probably the best in my personal opinion. But the next 2 were the ones that were awarded the Pulitzer prize. Well, there is no accounting for taste right :). BTW, I think Updike is the only person to have got 2 Pulitzers for fiction. (Not 100% sure)
Rabbit is Rich (1981) - Rabbit is rich, well not quite so. Janice has inherited her father's Automobile dealer ship and is now a more mature and confident person. She has also got into drinking habit which worries Harry. Nelson is now grown up and is having his own problems. (It is implied these could be due to what he saw and experienced as a kid, as mentioned in the first a parts). Harry is becoming conscious of middle age and of losing his libido. Rabbit and Janice go to a resort with 3 other couples and indulge in wife swapping. Here too, Updike does not do anything for titillation, but mirrors the sexual freedom that came into being in the 60's and 70's overriding the moral pores of the previous decades. It also serves as attempts by Rabbit to reassert his libido and his desirability to women. We see a man who has come to a position where is well to do (thought it is his wife who owns the dealership), but still not satisfied with what he has, worrying about falling into the morass of middle age. He starts thinking about Ruth (from the first part) and wonders about what happened to her and the kid. Nothing actually gets resolved in this part and personally seems to be the set up for the final part. Updike's prose though is as good as ever and incisive in decoding the mind of the various characters. Rabbit's relation with Ronnie, a former school basket ball classmate comes into focus here. Ronnie is a minor character in the first part, but here he has also done well in life and is part of the circle the Harry moves in. Harry has always been the star the basket team and Ronnie resents him for that and that is understandable. But Harry too seems to have a grouse against him, no more than a grouse, it could be a sneaky feeling that maybe Ronnie was the better player. Harry has an affair with Ronnie's wife, though it is not something he actually wants. (He desires a much younger wife of a person, who is also his club member and is unhappy when he does not get her during the wife swapping).
Rabbit At Rest - 1990
Harry is old, overweight and perennially gloomy. Nelson has married Pru, but has got into drug addiction and substance abuse. Rabbit spends a lot of time with his wife at Florida, with Nelson running the business. But Nelson goofs up due to his addictions and the dealership is lost. This affects Harry more. He has a heart attack. While at hospital, Rabbit meets a woman who he thinks could be his daughter from Ruth. He travels to the place where the woman lives thinking of meeting her and Ruth, but true to his character, leaves the place without facing up to the facts. He never knows if she was indeed her daughter. This is probably the best part of the novel comes, Harry's thoughts on the woman, his indecision on whether to go to her home, and finally running away from the confrontation. Another poignant moment is the funeral of Ronnie's wife, where Ronnie confronts Harry about having an affair with his wife. At the end, both of them form some sort of reconciliation, not out of affection or respect, but maybe due to the fact that death is a great leveler and beyond that there is no worth in recriminations or ages hold misunderstandings. It is a symbol of the old age they are into where most things that seemed important earlier seem trivial now. But then Harry goofs up again. In an act of insanity, he has a one night stand with Nelson's wife Pru. Janice and Nelson come to know about it. Harry runs again (for the last time) to Florida. There, in a cyclical turn of events he plays a one-on-one basket ball game with a young man and suffers a heart attack. He is admitted to the hospital where Janice and Nelson see him. The cycle has come full.
It has always been interesting to me that Updike wrote this novel over 4 decades, so that, while the characters aged, the author too aged. Now, how would the novel have been if it had been say, written as a single volume covering the same period of 40 years. For one, it would need to have been set in the 20s and end in 50s. Updike could not have surely incorporated in each part the essence of the decade that it represents first hand (race relations in the 60's, more sexual freedom in the 70's). Would it have been better it had been written as a single volume or does the changes and evolution in perspective that the author (or anyone for that matter) undergoes enhances what he writes. But whatever the case, this is one heck of a series and best read together. Reading one at a time, would not do justice to its content. However, if you are new to Updike and wary of getting into 4 books of an author upfront, you could start of with this short stories to get an idea of his works, themes and concerns. If you have already some of his works and like them, this series is for you.
P.S - The novels are available as a single omnibus collection (at least the first 3 are), so buying them like that makes sense both monetarily as well as lessens the hassle of having 4 different books, so if you plan to buy this series go for the omnibus edition.
Rabbit Run (1960) - This is the first novel in the series. As the novel starts, we encounter Harry (Rabbit), who is in his mid twenties, married with a pregnant wife (Janice). He already has a son Nelson. He has been a high school basket ball star, but that is all in the past and his 15 minutes of fame has been used up. Now he is a normal, one among many person trying to make ends meet. He sees a some kids playing basket ball and something snaps in him. He leaves his family and town and start driving aimlessly. He changes his mind and meets his old coach. While with him, he meets 'Ruth' a hooker and starts living with her. Janice meanwhile goes to her parents place. A church minister tries to reconcile Harry to live with his family, but has no success. Later Harry returns home, after his wife gives birth to a girl child. He pressurizes Janice to have sex with her, but she refuses. Harry leaves again to see Ruth. Meanwhile Janice gets drunk due to the fight and their new born daughter drowns. Rabbit returns for the funeral and again loses control and runs into the woods. Returns (again) to Ruth, learns that she is pregnant by him. But he does not take the step to leave Janice, nor is he willing to live with Ruth. Rabbit runs again for the last time (in this novel) and the novel ends here.
As can be seen from the above lines, Rabbit is always on the run from thing or the other. He seems to be basically a loser, a wimp one who cannot face situations and runs aways from it not thinking about the consequences. So what makes this character and the whole series compelling to continue with the other novels. For once the prose, the exquisite prose of Updike. Updike is referred to as America's man of letters and deservedly so. His preoccupation is with the mundane and everyday life is so rich in its prose and imagery that you cannot help be sucked into it. (He can be too flowery at times). And as the series proceeds, the reader can see the characters evolving so that what you finally see are 3 dimensional characters who have their own smooth and rough edges. The first few pages of this novel where Updike describes a small American town is incredible, there is no description of the people, just the landscapes, buildings, the woods are so evocative that you feel a connect with the story immediately.
Rabbit Redux (1971)- This is the second novel in the series. Harry is his 30's now, approaching middle age and stuck in staid matrimony and job. Janice who was pretty much a minor character in the first part is much evolved here. She is now working in her father's office. She has an affair with her co-worker and leaves him. Rabbit, true to form indulges in his own way of coping with it, but shacking with a afro-american veteran of the Vietnam war (Skeeter) and Jill a runaway white girl. They stay together, with Nelson who is now a young boy. Harry does not seem to care for the impact his lifestyle could have on Nelson (comes in the next novels). They live a decadent sort of life style, debating about race (60's were the period of Martin Luther King, race riots in America), doing drugs without a care. During one such orgy a fire breaks out killing Jill. There is no news of Skeeter. Finally at the end, Harry starts to live with Janice again. The novel ends here.
One could ask again what is so good about this part of the novel too. Adultery, a decadent life style, so what's there for the reader. Rabbit too does not seem to be a much better person, so why continue with the series. Well, for one, well defined morally right characters is not a pre-requisite for good literature (where would Madame Bovary be if this rule is applied). The other thing is, the detailing that Updike invests in these characters, in their actions which show another light to them. Lets consider what happens when Rabbit comes to know of his wife's affair. There has been some rumors, but he has not thought much of it. When Janice accepts it, what happens? No angry arguments, tears or blame game. He slaps her and they have sex. Nothing erotic in it, just 2 persons probably for whom the tension they have been under the past weeks or months is now over, since the truth is out and sex is just an outlet for the emotions coming out due to it. It is moments like these that elevate the novel.
The first 2 parts in the series are probably the best in my personal opinion. But the next 2 were the ones that were awarded the Pulitzer prize. Well, there is no accounting for taste right :). BTW, I think Updike is the only person to have got 2 Pulitzers for fiction. (Not 100% sure)
Rabbit is Rich (1981) - Rabbit is rich, well not quite so. Janice has inherited her father's Automobile dealer ship and is now a more mature and confident person. She has also got into drinking habit which worries Harry. Nelson is now grown up and is having his own problems. (It is implied these could be due to what he saw and experienced as a kid, as mentioned in the first a parts). Harry is becoming conscious of middle age and of losing his libido. Rabbit and Janice go to a resort with 3 other couples and indulge in wife swapping. Here too, Updike does not do anything for titillation, but mirrors the sexual freedom that came into being in the 60's and 70's overriding the moral pores of the previous decades. It also serves as attempts by Rabbit to reassert his libido and his desirability to women. We see a man who has come to a position where is well to do (thought it is his wife who owns the dealership), but still not satisfied with what he has, worrying about falling into the morass of middle age. He starts thinking about Ruth (from the first part) and wonders about what happened to her and the kid. Nothing actually gets resolved in this part and personally seems to be the set up for the final part. Updike's prose though is as good as ever and incisive in decoding the mind of the various characters. Rabbit's relation with Ronnie, a former school basket ball classmate comes into focus here. Ronnie is a minor character in the first part, but here he has also done well in life and is part of the circle the Harry moves in. Harry has always been the star the basket team and Ronnie resents him for that and that is understandable. But Harry too seems to have a grouse against him, no more than a grouse, it could be a sneaky feeling that maybe Ronnie was the better player. Harry has an affair with Ronnie's wife, though it is not something he actually wants. (He desires a much younger wife of a person, who is also his club member and is unhappy when he does not get her during the wife swapping).
Rabbit At Rest - 1990
Harry is old, overweight and perennially gloomy. Nelson has married Pru, but has got into drug addiction and substance abuse. Rabbit spends a lot of time with his wife at Florida, with Nelson running the business. But Nelson goofs up due to his addictions and the dealership is lost. This affects Harry more. He has a heart attack. While at hospital, Rabbit meets a woman who he thinks could be his daughter from Ruth. He travels to the place where the woman lives thinking of meeting her and Ruth, but true to his character, leaves the place without facing up to the facts. He never knows if she was indeed her daughter. This is probably the best part of the novel comes, Harry's thoughts on the woman, his indecision on whether to go to her home, and finally running away from the confrontation. Another poignant moment is the funeral of Ronnie's wife, where Ronnie confronts Harry about having an affair with his wife. At the end, both of them form some sort of reconciliation, not out of affection or respect, but maybe due to the fact that death is a great leveler and beyond that there is no worth in recriminations or ages hold misunderstandings. It is a symbol of the old age they are into where most things that seemed important earlier seem trivial now. But then Harry goofs up again. In an act of insanity, he has a one night stand with Nelson's wife Pru. Janice and Nelson come to know about it. Harry runs again (for the last time) to Florida. There, in a cyclical turn of events he plays a one-on-one basket ball game with a young man and suffers a heart attack. He is admitted to the hospital where Janice and Nelson see him. The cycle has come full.
It has always been interesting to me that Updike wrote this novel over 4 decades, so that, while the characters aged, the author too aged. Now, how would the novel have been if it had been say, written as a single volume covering the same period of 40 years. For one, it would need to have been set in the 20s and end in 50s. Updike could not have surely incorporated in each part the essence of the decade that it represents first hand (race relations in the 60's, more sexual freedom in the 70's). Would it have been better it had been written as a single volume or does the changes and evolution in perspective that the author (or anyone for that matter) undergoes enhances what he writes. But whatever the case, this is one heck of a series and best read together. Reading one at a time, would not do justice to its content. However, if you are new to Updike and wary of getting into 4 books of an author upfront, you could start of with this short stories to get an idea of his works, themes and concerns. If you have already some of his works and like them, this series is for you.
P.S - The novels are available as a single omnibus collection (at least the first 3 are), so buying them like that makes sense both monetarily as well as lessens the hassle of having 4 different books, so if you plan to buy this series go for the omnibus edition.
June 8, 2024
John Updike är en av mina favoritförfattare av två skäl. Det första och mest uppenbara är språket. Han är oöverträffad när det kommer till bildspråk och liknelser och lägger lika mycket kärlek till att med träffsäkerhet beskriva skummande vatten som rinner längs en trottoarkant som han lägger på en kärleksakt. John Updikes språk är ett nätverk, där alla orden får nya färger när de länkas samman med varandra. Det han skriver är ofta tragiskt men med en lätt tillbakalutad, humoristisk ton.
Den andra anledningen är hans förmåga till att skapa personporträtt. Harry ”Haren” Angstrom är en skitstövel, en antihjälte, men också en omtänksam pappa, farförälder, en spjuver. Som läsare förstår man och sympatiserar med honom.
I böckerna följer man Haren från ungdomens skepsis och frustration till ålderdomens bitterhet. Det är ett fascinerande omfång. När jag stänger sista boken så känner jag att jag kommer sakna honom; hans humörsvängningar, pikar och syrliga kommentarer om världsläget.
Det finns två saker som Updike ofta kritiserats för. Det första är att han skriver helt utan intrig. Detta stämmer till stora delar. Men då måste man förstå att hans avsikt förmodligen aldrig varit att skriva på det viset. Böckerna är uppbyggda kring ett antal vardagliga scener, och genom de levande karaktärerna blir scenerna laddade, vi förstår deras motiv och frustrationer och lägger därför, precis som i riktiga livet, in en massa mellan raderna.
Den andra kritiken mot Updike är sexet. Det är inte bara i böckerna om Haren som det är framträdande, det finns i alla hans verk. Det ligger alltid nära till hands, alla karaktärer har en tydlig sexualdrift. För mig blir det i vissa böcker (särskilt Haren är Rik) på gränsen till för mycket, medan i andra (Haren vilar) bättre balanserat. Förmodligen var Updike själv en väldigt sexuell individ, men där sex i litteraturen ofta kan bli pinsam tycker jag att den i Updikes fall blir vardaglig och komisk. Det finns i Haren är Rik en helt oförglömlig scen i vilken Harry och hans fru leker med guldmynt i sänghalmen.
Berättelserna, som utkommit med 10 års mellanrum, skildrar Amerika.
De är vad man borde läsa för att på riktigt förstå den amerikanska drömmen. Eller det som utgör landet: fattigdomen, misären, yuppies, knarket, familjelivet, myllret av ras och grupptillhörigheter, bilförsäljarna, golfklubbarna, politiken, döden.
Utmärkt läsning för den som vill försvinna i fint språk eller för den delen skaffa sig en ny, lite störande men underhållande vän, i Harry Angstrom.
Den andra anledningen är hans förmåga till att skapa personporträtt. Harry ”Haren” Angstrom är en skitstövel, en antihjälte, men också en omtänksam pappa, farförälder, en spjuver. Som läsare förstår man och sympatiserar med honom.
I böckerna följer man Haren från ungdomens skepsis och frustration till ålderdomens bitterhet. Det är ett fascinerande omfång. När jag stänger sista boken så känner jag att jag kommer sakna honom; hans humörsvängningar, pikar och syrliga kommentarer om världsläget.
Det finns två saker som Updike ofta kritiserats för. Det första är att han skriver helt utan intrig. Detta stämmer till stora delar. Men då måste man förstå att hans avsikt förmodligen aldrig varit att skriva på det viset. Böckerna är uppbyggda kring ett antal vardagliga scener, och genom de levande karaktärerna blir scenerna laddade, vi förstår deras motiv och frustrationer och lägger därför, precis som i riktiga livet, in en massa mellan raderna.
Den andra kritiken mot Updike är sexet. Det är inte bara i böckerna om Haren som det är framträdande, det finns i alla hans verk. Det ligger alltid nära till hands, alla karaktärer har en tydlig sexualdrift. För mig blir det i vissa böcker (särskilt Haren är Rik) på gränsen till för mycket, medan i andra (Haren vilar) bättre balanserat. Förmodligen var Updike själv en väldigt sexuell individ, men där sex i litteraturen ofta kan bli pinsam tycker jag att den i Updikes fall blir vardaglig och komisk. Det finns i Haren är Rik en helt oförglömlig scen i vilken Harry och hans fru leker med guldmynt i sänghalmen.
Berättelserna, som utkommit med 10 års mellanrum, skildrar Amerika.
De är vad man borde läsa för att på riktigt förstå den amerikanska drömmen. Eller det som utgör landet: fattigdomen, misären, yuppies, knarket, familjelivet, myllret av ras och grupptillhörigheter, bilförsäljarna, golfklubbarna, politiken, döden.
Utmärkt läsning för den som vill försvinna i fint språk eller för den delen skaffa sig en ny, lite störande men underhållande vän, i Harry Angstrom.
August 8, 2019
This Everyman isn't really Anyman. While I generally gravitate to flawed characters, Rabbit Angstrom is painfully predictable. He seems incapable of introspection, but wallows in depression and a sense that life has been unfair to him while, in reality, he skates over the disasters he causes. Updike's beautiful prose seems entirely wrong for Rabbit--it suggests a depth that never seems to be there. The peripheral characters, with the exception of his sister, all seem to be paper cutouts of people, not fully-fleshed. The misogyny grows stale and, for me, places the books in the category of "books that don't age well." Meaning that I think Updike really isn't an important writer, beyond his obvious skill and style. He tackled much the same territory in Toward the End of Time (1997) and if anything, the main character, Ben Turnbull, is more repulsive than Rabbit. That is not a book of it's time--it's an anachronism, an attempt to retread the same ground--another book that doesn't go anywhere with a sexually obsessive, miserable, twisted character surrounded by cartoons, with few promising threads that Updike seems to just let dangle. Updike was still a talented wordsmith, but IMO he struggles with the long form. Where his short stories a empathic, nuanced, and emotionally gripping, I found the Rabbit novels to be a chore. I continued reading because they're a window into the eras in which they're set, if only from a narrow white Protestant point of view. If one considers Rabbit as simply representative of the worst impulses of those eras, he can be ignored, and the books serve as a chronicle of American postwar culture. Some writers, like Nabokov, can work within societal strictures that seem outdated and still remain relevant. Others, like Ian McEwan, can channel those repressive mores into something modern and gripping. I have the feeling that Updike's novels will fade over time to a quaintness that will only serve as nostalgia.
September 24, 2023
Rabbit Angstrom: The Four Novels by John Updike
Rabbit, Run
An immature, once hot-shot high school athlete with a pregnant wife and 2 ½ year old decides on a whim to flee one night instead of picking up his son at his parents. This world operates as though no morality exists and selfishness rules. Degenerate characters are not sympathetic characters. When reading this book, I felt degraded to the level of the indefensible Rabbit. Perhaps this was caused by Updike’s use of the present tense or his reliance upon adjectives and adverbs ad nauseum. His characters are as shallow as hoarfrost and consequently evoke no sympathy. A hollowness pervades throughout. It does not elevate the spirit – so why should I read it? To be sympathetic to the immoral? A more engrossing read would be a book on how it happened that Updike had this and successive novels of Rabbit published. That is the great mystery.
Rabbit Redux
Gad, more of the same crap.
Can’t read anymore Updike. Horribly boring.
Rabbit, Run
An immature, once hot-shot high school athlete with a pregnant wife and 2 ½ year old decides on a whim to flee one night instead of picking up his son at his parents. This world operates as though no morality exists and selfishness rules. Degenerate characters are not sympathetic characters. When reading this book, I felt degraded to the level of the indefensible Rabbit. Perhaps this was caused by Updike’s use of the present tense or his reliance upon adjectives and adverbs ad nauseum. His characters are as shallow as hoarfrost and consequently evoke no sympathy. A hollowness pervades throughout. It does not elevate the spirit – so why should I read it? To be sympathetic to the immoral? A more engrossing read would be a book on how it happened that Updike had this and successive novels of Rabbit published. That is the great mystery.
Rabbit Redux
Gad, more of the same crap.
Can’t read anymore Updike. Horribly boring.
May 1, 2020
This one is tough. Updike is direct, clear, and realistic. He is also self-indulgent in a way few authors could get away with. He deserves a reputation as master of the mundane, but that’s just the problem. Everything here is so mundane that it veers far too close to boring.
There is some fine prose, but far too much of it. I could have dealt without quite so much focus on Harry’s internal and external sexual life as well. It was important in places, but in others felt like more of the same for no reason.
Glad I read it, but glad I’ve finished.
There is some fine prose, but far too much of it. I could have dealt without quite so much focus on Harry’s internal and external sexual life as well. It was important in places, but in others felt like more of the same for no reason.
Glad I read it, but glad I’ve finished.
February 7, 2021
Research has found that men think about sex every four minutes. Harry Angstrom, the 'hero' in John Updike's series of four Rabbit books certainly does that. Each novel is set ten years apart so that in the final one, Rabbit at Rest when he is in his late 50s, he's still fantasizing over every female he meets. As a woman I found it hard to take at times, but the books are so brilliantly written, I forgive all. My only criticism and perhaps because I'm English: I would have edited down the lengthy descriptions of car journeys.
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