having finished the third Rabbit book I can tell you that john updike thinks a lot about blowjobs. a lot. and i don’t think it’s just that he’s a horny bastard obsessed with facefucking bookish young gals (which he is, of course) -- it's also that the blowjob mirrors other currents in society. i remember when the first of our friends (i’m pretty sure it was paul passarelli) got a blowjob it was a big deal and quite some time until we’d all had the pleasure. and then, a few years later, talking with the kids in my younger sister’s grade, they were all doing it. and now? well, shit – when you have the president telling the country that a blowjob isn’t sex it gives every kid a free pass to open up and/or stick it in. (still, shit of a lot better than the president telling us that torture isn’t torture, eh?)in the first Rabbit book (set in 1960), our guy goes nuts that his wife won’t do it – he wonders, actually, if she even knows what it is. and in one of the book’s set pieces, the hateful, self-loathing bastard has his mistress disrobe, get on her knees, receive his member and swallow. and he never talks to her again! in the second book (set in 1969), updike’s exploration of the changing face of race in america during the generational shift of the 60s is microcosmized (good word, eh?) as a speechless and frightened Rabbit watches his pale skinny strawberry-blonde 17 year old mistress suck off a dark-skinned militant black guy. and in the volume i just finished (set in 1979), Rabbit wonders time and again about how much great head his 22 year old son has gotta be getting.was my generation the last to think of the blowjob as a big deal? and we do, don’t we? i mean, i honestly feel that it’s more intimate, in a way, than fucking. given the choice i’d rather my girlfriend bang some guy behind my back (make him wear a condom, honey) then suck him off. and if i was gay, i think i’d be pretty serious about what went into my mouth. and i think a lot about that actually, about what it’d be like to suck a dick. i can imagine it, but only somewhat -- it definitely seems to be more than the sum of its parts. it’s difficult to imagine it physically, like, would it fill my mouth or kind of flail around in there? and how would it feel battering against the back of my throat? and it’s even more difficult to imagine the psychological experience, particularly if it wasn't someone i knew so well. i mean, i wonder how it’d feel if the dude started forcefully pushing my head down, or stuck a few fingers in my ass, or if he pulled out without warning and let go all over my face, etc… i could see digging the degradation of it all, but i could also see getting seriously fucking pissed. well, back to my point -- are there really girls sucking off older guys at the mall for shoes or is this a mid-western rumor designed to scare the hell out of puritanical fucktards? were blowjobs a big deal 200 years ago? was sally hemmings slobbering all over jefferson’s cock? was abe lincoln getting head? kennedy definitely was, right? has the blowjob followed the progress of say, black people in america -- that is, from slavery to civil rights to the presidency? (from no blowjobs to blowjobs for the slutty/adventurous to blowjobs for everyone!) or is it cyclical and perpetually going in and out of style? well, as they say, you can’t unring a bell. i’ve gotta believe that though the pendulum may swing back a bit, cocksucking in america is no fad that’ll go the way of the pet rock or coonskin cap. the blowjob – as defined by bill clinton -- is here to stay. okay. now on to #4.
(Spoilers of the first two books abound)While reading Rabbit is Rich, I often wondered why this book won the Pulitzer Prize, especially since nothing major seemed to be happening in it. But by the end of the book, I think I figured it out, and it's BECAUSE nothing really major happened that it won the prestigious award. By this point in Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom's tale, we've seen him desert his wife, lose a home, and even lose a baby. And in this third book, which deals with him in his mid-40s, I expected all the trappings of a midlife crisis novel. Getting the motorcycle. Shacking up with another hooker. That sort of thing. But what we get instead is a man who finally appears to be comfortable with himself and where he is in life, and why not? As the title proclaims, he's rich now. And like many of the circumstances of his life thus far, it seems unjustified. He really shouldn't be rich. I'm not going to go into why he's finally in a comfortable spot with his finances, but if you read the other two previous books, you can probably figure it out. It has something to do with a death in the family. I'll leave it at that.Throughout the story, Rabbit is his normal, selfish self, but you actually don't hate him for it anymore. At least I didn't. There's growth in him, but it's a growth that I don't think the character even realizes, which is difficult as hell for any writer to do. Updike fully created a three dimensional character in Harry, whereas before, I think he kind of painted a facsimile of one in the first two books. This time, thought, I think I truly actually GOT Rabbit as a person, and that's why he is the way he is in this story. He's more a human being than he's ever been before.There are also a lot of familiar faces from previous books in this entry, and it's both exciting and frightening to see them ten years older. One character in particular has changed a great deal (Nelson), and another, not so much (Janice). But in the end, I think the book paints a very intriguing story of growth and the lack thereof, and it works. Well, most of the time anyway. If there's one thing I didn't love about this book, it's that there really isn't any major event in the story to really push the characters to other places. Besides Nelson's story arc, the rest of the characters are pretty static. I'm sure that was the point--to paint middle age as not being a horror show, but rather, more like a nice settling in period if you allow it to be--but it doesn't make for the most interesting novel at times. That said, I enjoyed it for the most part, and I'm looking forward to the last official book, Rabbit at Rest. It's been an interesting journey.
What do You think about Rabbit Is Rich (1997)?
It was strange to read this novel and be the same age as Rabbit. I'm not sure I identified with him more because of that, but since Rabbit is often thinking of himself in terms of mortality, it was hard not feel I was basically in the same spot on the escalator of life. Updike's prose is amazing. His descriptions, humor, poetic lines all infuse his writing with layers of perception. Add to this that he breathes life into full bodied characters and writes a plot that keeps moving forward like a thriller and you have a magnificent book.Updike, like Bellow, spoils almost every other writer for me. It takes me a month or two to recover from these encounters with truly remarkable intellects before I can appreciate others novelists again.
—A.
What's extraordinary about Updike's art is how ordinary his materials are. No sensational subjects like pederasty, pandemic or terrorist plot, although Rabbit Is Rich teases with the possibility of incest. There is couple swapping, on a vacation at the Bahamas, its treatment is, however, neither moralistic nor voyeuristic, but sympathetic about human desires and fears. No epiphanic event: Pru, Harry Angstrom's daughter-in-law, falls from the stairs, but keeps her baby. She does not change, and neither does her feckless husband, Nelson. Instead of sensation or epiphany, Updike offers in this third installment of his Rabbit tetralogy, the lived experience of a Toyota salesman in 1979, who has become rich because of his wife, who is struggling against the decay of age, who feels constantly threatened by a sullen son, and who reads Consumer Reports with a seriousness devoted to the Bible in an earlier age. The last trait is a clue to the extraordinary nature of ordinary Harry. Despite his moral failings, his perceptual denseness, his linguistic crudities, he is immensely attractive, to readers and women, because of his great hope for life. This hope, so Protestant in spirit, is satirized in the feisty comical scenes of Harry's speculations in gold and silver. It is also castigated in the plot involving Ruth, a past lover, and her daughter, both of whom Harry abandoned. The meeting between Ruth and Harry is one of the most poignant scenes in my reading. Against death, necessity and boredom, however, this hope lifts Harry to some greater place. Sullied, doubtful, compromised, this may be the only kind of transcendence possible in our postmodern age, but its smallness only makes it more to be cherished.
—Jee Koh
I loved-loved-loved this book. In my mind it's a masterpiece, and the only question is whether it's excellence rises enough to compare to Gatsby and The Sun Also Rises. I'll say it's not quite there, but it's close. Harry Angstrom has always been a great character, but in this book Nelson and Janice finally find their voice. What elevates this book is the battle between Rabbit and Nelson, backed up by his mom and grandmother. The kid is coddled and spoiled, and annoying as hell, but Updike gives him enough vulnerability to make him more than a caricature. Rabbit finally has the adult voice Updike should have given him Rabbit Redux, but let's just call that regrettable book a '60s indiscretion. Updike has always frustrated me because of his tendency to over-orchestrate his characters and his penchant for showing off what a good writer he is. In this novel he hardly has any false steps. The tension between the characters drive the story and Updike stays out of the way. What I thought was a false note, Rabbit's simple-minded lusting for a friend's wife, turns out to simply be a setup for a crucial scene.Perhaps I'm so enthralled with this book because I share a similar age with Rabbit - he's 46 and I'm 45. Certainly I can't think of a book that so ably gets into the head of a 40-something as well as this one. I think this simply reflects that after 20 years Updike finally understood all the nuances to Harry, his great invention. Now I'm going to start Rabbit At Rest, weighing in at 22 hours. Arthur Morey's brilliant narration throughout all the Rabbit books has s been a joy. I've gotten quite a few stares on the sidewalk and on the train as I laugh out loud at Harry's observations.
—Dan
