A year ago I vowed to myself (and you, if you had read my review of Rabbit, Run) that I’d read a Rabbit novel annually until I’m done with the four-novel series; the idea being that I could look back and see how I’d changed in the past year, comparing the changes in my life with those incurred by Rabbit. But it’s the same shit different day for me over here, ya hear? And I’m not turning this into some kind of self centered review about me-me-me. Instead, I’m going to (eventually) talk about the me-me-me mindset that we’re all guilty of. All of us.So it’s the 60s, man, and Rabbit’s crazy ass isn’t any smarter; he still goes through life taking things as they come with little self reflection. And if he’s wiser, it ain’t by much; but the people around him have actually grown. His wife, Jancie, tired of not-getting-the-peter from her husband the past decade, finds some Greek douche bag to sleep with. But despite this -- or at times it even seems because of it – Janice is actually growing and starting to enjoy and appreciate life. And since it’s been 10 years since Rabbit, Run, Rabbit’s son, Nelson, is no longer a bebe – he’s now 12, and kind of thinks and acts like a little hippie -- which of course the Vietnam-War-supporting and ex-jock, Rabbit, can’t stand.So, yes, it’s indeed the 60s: there’s the Pill, lots of good (and bad) drugs; and there’s threats of getting blown up by the Russians; and there’s the Vietnam war where kids are dying for no fucking reason, and everyone knows someone that’s had to go, or is in fear of going himself; and with all the civil rights stuff going on, there’s still blatant, despicable racism. So things are pretty fucked up. And this novel is well-written -- Updike is someone everyone should read at least once. Aspects of the writing are remarkable, and the novel manages to have heart without delving into kitschy notions of love. But at times the book is ridiculous and silly. Updike swung for the fences; he wanted to represent the 60s in one novel; but it was like he didn’t really immerse himself in it; like he was trying to write about it from the outside, as an observer. Novels written by the “observer writer” can work, of course; but typically, I think, this needs to be from a time-scope many years later, when the vision can be clear.So the result is that the novel often feels forced. We end up with lots of sex, drug use, a ridiculous black character, fights about Vietnam, racial angst, and a young hippie chick, who of course, sleeps with Rabbit. Totally forced, because it was clear he was trying to capture the era. But like I said, when you try to force that kind of thing too early, as an outside observer, it’s never going to work -- even if you’re John Updike.Now let’s get back to the issue of selfishness. I used to think it was worse with the baby boomers. My thinking was that the generations before them won wars, and worked hard, and focused on their kids and family, and basically focused on “doing the right thing.” And then I thought that all these hippies basically showed up and that all they wanted to do was party and act like children, never taking responsibility and only thinking about themselves. Utter selfishness. And then, to make it worse, this whole generation (the Baby Boomers) pulled a 180 from some of their few admirable qualities -- those of spurning materialism and having an open mind and loving heart -- to buying a bunch of crap they didn’t need, going into debt, divorcing like crazy, and acting like they could live that way for the rest of their lives. All this while – think financial crisis -- the following generations foot the bill. So you see, I thought, “they’re still as completely selfish as they were in the 60s, just in a different way; a way that just happens to be better suited to their current stage in life.””What a shitty generation!” I used to say to friends.But in recent months I’ve changed my thinking about the Boomers. Just look at the kids these days -- talk about self-obsessed, with their facebook and video games, and constant text messaging. But they do –- thank goodness –- show signs of idealism. And idealism was something that the young generation of the 60s had plenty of. We need youthful idealism -- because let’s face it – if it weren’t for the idealism of the Baby Boomers, we would never have gotten out of Vietnam, or improved race relations as we did, or improved women’s rights as we did. Really, without the Boomers, we probably wouldn’t have escaped the general close-mindedness that had previously pervaded so much of American society.No, the Boomers didn’t keep their idealism; or, if they did, they turned it inside out, fucking it all up, turning it into something nasty – the culmination of which was the financial crisis. But we’re going to dig out of that hole. In fact, I think the young people, in their own “selfish ways,” have already started to help us progress – maybe not so differently from the way the Boomers did in the 60s. But I wouldn’t know for sure -– it’s too early to tell these things as an outside observer. ; )
This is actually cut and pasted from a long comment on someone else's review! It focuses primarily on this book, altho there are some sentiments in it I'd apply to all the Rabbit stories.***warning! terribly tl;drBen said:Updike swung for the fences; he wanted to represent the 60s in one novel; but it was like he didn’t really immerse himself in it; like he was trying to write about it from the outside, as an observer. Novels written by the “observer writer” can work, of course; but typically, I think, this needs to be from a time-scope many years later, when the vision can be clear. I think this is a really important point - I also think sadly this side of Updike is typical, and maybe was brought to the forefront by his 'working up' essay-reviews on books and other topics for various newspapers and magazines. The idea is you have a smart mind + lots of books + ton of research = You Are There, but it winds up looking like one of those cheezy network television retrospective specials. His forays into historical writing - that awful play about Buchanan, the dreadful In The Beauty of the Lilies, the tepid Seek My Face - are usually bad, because he lacks both the analytic and philosophical skills necessary to draw broad social networks, and the intense psychological absorption necessary to portray another human consciousness convincingly. His writing is at once deeply personal (it's all about himself) and impersonal - the patterns of language are almost abstract (in this I think he served himself ill by taking Nabokov for a master, but anyway).The characters of Jill and Skeeter in this book are disastrous - worse than inept, I'd argue, they are fundamentally dishonest. I don't think an author necessarily has to personally empirically experience everything they write about (hello, Wuthering Heights and so on), but Updike's later cringe-inducing absolute misfires, all the way from The Coup to the dreadful, dreadful Terrorist (in the acknowledgements he thanks 'Islam for Dummies,' IIRC) indicate not a failure of experience but empathy. That bad-sex passage everyone quotes with a kind of cringing grin - something in the Widows of Eastwick about how the woman just loves giving herself a facial with fresh ejaculate - isn't just badly written, it's badly _imagined._ Who could think an actual woman might actually react like that? Does he actually _know_ any women? Yes, his writing rushes to assure us, oh yes, yes he does. Oh yes. Most intimately. And thoroughly. From the outside. (The portrayal of Janice through all the Rabbit books and stories is really a triumph of unconscious misogyny. The sad thing is Updike apparently thinks he's presenting her sympathetically....)When Updike is on, his typical oh-my-god-the-revelation-in-these-pigeon-feathers-that-golf-stroke-those-women's-asses-over-there minute observations can make you feel indeed that he is giving the reader the gift not of seeing something for the first time but of _re_-seeing it freshly, which is really rare, especially in popular fiction. But the technique also reminds me of Pre-Raphaelite landscapes -- every blade of grass, every veined leaf, is luminously, maddeningly outlined, and as a result the slavish depiction of reality becomes almost surreal. So I personally think Updike is actually at his worst in his 'naturalist Americana' writing like the Rabbit books, and it boggles me why they were awarded prizes and are frequently the most-assigned and most-read of his novels. I think judging him by them does him a real disservice. When he writes about his own swingin' seventies (going barefoot, eating lobster, Martha's Vineyard, fucking the neighbours, &c &c) it's at least halfway interesting and well-done. When he tries to project his own personal visions of liberation and loss onto AMERICA IN GENERAL as THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL, I just wind up irritated and confused.(from yet another comment)-- I should add I found the central eponymous figure of Rabbit himself a failure as a character: Rabbit is Updike's _idea_ of what a Big Dumb Jock type might be, so he is simultaneously patronizing (has Rabbit ever read a book? No, right?) and way too articulate/observant (the book is limited 3P but there are lovely lyrical bits, like 'Sun and moon, sun and moon, time goes,' which are so totally Updike-Not-Rabbit they throw me right out of the book).(BUT, I think Ruth is an amazingly well-developed female character. I really did like her. She might be one of my favourite Updike characters.)
What do You think about Rabbit Redux (1996)?
Weirdly, as I read the last page, it struck me that this book, which is jammed with late-60s turmoil, is at heart a book about the sacredness or, perhaps better, the ongoing bond of marriage. Given all the (graphic) infidelity, that may be surprising, but I was reminded of the theological thread that ran through the earlier Rabbit, Run. In Redux, it's more muted, but early on we get a glimpse of the religious component as Rabbit admits to sometimes praying on the bus. Why not at home? I'm not sure I know, though maybe he senses his marriage to Janice is falling apart, while the outside world is rapidly changing. But God, as a presence or "other" remains an important part, despite his bad behavior, of Rabbit's world.The setting (1969), 10 years after the events in Rabbit, Run, shows an older (36), fatter, more understandable (but still often unlikable) Rabbit Angstrom. He's -- on surface at least -- reconciled with his wife Janice, they have a house in the suburbs, and their son, Nelson, now 13, and with long hair, is growing up. Rabbit works as a linotyper with his father, while Janice has started working at a Toyota dealership owned by her father. But there are discernible cracks from the first page on. Rabbit has been living a death in life existence. His relationship with Jill is largely sexless (amazing when one considers the horny character with the constantly roving eye from the first novel). It's as if Rabbit, much more self-aware, is doing penance for the death of the baby, Becky, though Rabbit is always quick to consistently and cruelly blame Jill for her death. The good news here is that Jill refuses to be baited. She fights back. She even has an affair. The sad, often drunk young woman from the first novel, has become a much richer character. Upon the affair being exposed, she is defiant up to a point, but she practically offers Rabbit, after a hot night (she's learned some new things) of seeming reconciliation, a chance to reciprocate by showing some affection and asking her to stay. Rabbit being Rabbit, tells her to do what she wants. He virtually pushes her toward her lover.Enter Jill, a rich, 18 year old drug addict who has run away from home. Rabbit takes her in, and she provides Rabbit with some sexual healing. Jill is clean from drugs, and things seem to be going well (Nelson worships her), what with her making dinners better than Janice, playing guitar, and being so hippie dippy. Of particular interest to Rabbit is Jill's having seen God during an LSD trip. The fly in this unconventional domestic arrangement (which infuriates Janice -- who now lives with her car salesman lover) soon arrives in the person of Skeeter, a black drug dealing ex-Vietnam vet who has skipped bail, and needs a place to hide. I suspect it's the "Skeeter" section of the book (nearly a 100 pages long) that loses people. Skeeter won't shut up. He's constantly spouting revolutionary bullshit which, in Updike world, is a form of intellectual masturbation that eventually turns into the real thing. Updike, as I've said before, is a writer of remarkable control, so it's hard for me condemn this portion as writerly excess, but more as one to show Updike's dim view of the excesses of the late 60s. (In some ways he reminds me of Robert Stone here.) And on the subject of the I'm OK -- You're OK late 60s , I found Updike's treatment far more authentic than Roth's in American Pastoral. Anyway, it all adds up to a descent, a hellish one that involves degradation of Jill (a character I really liked), drug use by Rabbit, and child abuse to Nelson via exposure to all of this crap. It's no accident that this all ends in fire -- and tragedy. The last section of the book is devoted to the visit by Mim, Rabbit's sister. Mim is a high priced prostitute from out West, and she's flown in to see Rabbit's parents, particularly Rabbit's mother, who is dying. This is the part I had trouble with, as her appearance has a real dues ex machina quality to it, though I doubt as a literary tool, at least in my reading experience, it's ever been done with a whore before. (Updike is a very puckish writer!) Anyway, Mim surveys the emotional landscape and its players, makes some calculated "moves," starts things in motion, and jets back to Vegas. The novel could have faltered here, but Updike unspools a remarkable reconciliation between Rabbit and Janice that remains true to the characters and yet shows their growth. Janice and Rabbit are no longer the children of the first novel, but we still recognize them, just as they recognize each other: older, a bit battered by experience, maybe not even liking each other so much, but still bound together for the long haul. This very believable transformation for the two demonstrates, to me, a literary skill that's quite rare. The authorial wink at the end is something only a master can get away with, and Updike is a master.
—Steve
Ugh. Rabbit Redux offers a peek into Harry/Rabbit Angstrom's life during the summer of '69 -- some 10+ years after we left Harry running from his infant daughter's funeral -- and I found it to be downright depressing. While time may improve fine wine, it hasn't improved the life of Harry or anyone in his sphere. Gone is the spark that set Harry off in his search of that undefined something in Rabbit Run, and he's become a surly curmudgeon long before he should. But who can blame him? The decade of the 60's has changed his country into a place he no longer recognizes or understands. People around him have gone off the rails: Janice has now left Harry to shack up with a coworker, Mim has gone west to be an actress but is mostly turning tricks, and Harry's mom is succumbing to a degenerative illness. Nelson is still a decent kid in the midst of the garbage he's witnessing in Redux, but he dislikes Harry and will surely be in need of therapy some day. Even Reverend Eccles surfaces to let us know he's quit the ministry, lost his faith, and lost his family in the process. Wonderful. The Rabbit narrative is turning into that slow motion car wreck from which you can't look away. No book has made me feel more like a low-life Peeping Tom, as if I were peering over the shoulder of one of Harry's neighbors, peeking through the picture window at the nightly hi-jinks. (Does he ever think to draw the shades?)Updike is also a bit heavy-handed in throwing the entire decade of the '60's at the reader, somehow forcing it into a few weeks of Harry's life in the summer of '69. Sex, drugs, Viet Nam, racial strife, etc. are all front and center against the backdrop of real-time events such as the moon landing and Chappaquidick. I wish I could say these topics are skillfully crafted into the narrative, but Updike's chosen instrument feels more like a hammer than a paintbrush. Harry, about as open-minded as Archie Bunker, inexplicably takes in a runaway, hippie-ish teen girl (OK, mostly in exchange for sex, so that part is explicable) as well as an angry young African-American Viet Nam veteran wanted by the cops. It seems unlikely that a drug-dealing vet could teach a master class on the history of racial oppression and exploitation, and even unlikelier that Harry would be his pupil, but after dozens of pages of mind-numbing rants, Harry emerges as the real racial progressive in his family and neighborhood -- though not without cost. As the saying goes, never confuse motion with progress, and never was this more true than for Harry and his circle in Redux. Restraint has been cast to the wind and the sex is far too easy, but with hardly any sense of liberation. People couple, uncouple, and re-couple for lack of any better ideas, and no one can find their way out of the dreariness. About the only thing that doesn't change is Harry's tendency to neglect those he cares about to the point of endangering their lives, and unfortunately that proves fatal for yet another character in Redux.Middle volumes of shorter canons often don't satisfy or resolve much (think "The Empire Strikes Back" in the original Star Wars trilogy), and Redux proves to be the rule and not the exception. Rabbit Run gave Harry a bit of a shine to offset his general jerkiness, an inducement to see what might happen next, but the shine is all but gone in Redux. In spite of it all, I will compulsively pick up the next Rabbit volume, which happens to be one of the handful of books that won both a NBA and a Pulitzer. Now that's progress. I think.
—Richard
Not quite as satisfying as "Rabbit, Run." Too sexually graphic for even my taste. The politics wandered aimlessly, and the characters were way too broad, or even cliched, for any kind of empathy on my part. Yet I kept reading it. So Updike must know something I don't about the meaning of Midwestern life. Rabbit Angstrom's adventures pick up after the first novel: he's back with his wife, but they separate. He's about to lose his job. He shacks up with a hippie girl of sorts and gets mixed up in some of her underworld drug-dealing contacts. He argues passionately for the Vietnam war and watches his son evolve/devolve before his eyes. It all comes to a rather tepid conclusion, but what's interesting is how Angstrom teeters between his conservative, mainstream views and the increasingly hedonistic life he lives in the middle of a small Pennsylvania town. It would make a crappy movie, but it works here, perversely enough.
—Gregg
