Rabbit at Rest

As a woman a couple of generations younger than Updike, Roth, et al, I've always avoided the Big Boys, assuming (with some paranoia) that they intended to exclude me from their audience. Having recently been astonished by Roth's Everyman, I decided to give Updike a try, and started with the last novel in his famous quartet. There is no denying that this is a brilliant novel. Updike places his reader squarely in the head of Rabbit Angstrom, and there is not a single false note in the book. And the clarity of the prose is breathtaking -- you get the sense that every word was perfectly chosen to communicate precisely what Updike wanted to communicate. But, for this reader at least, the first 300 pages or so often filled me with an uncomfortable icky-ness. I could understand Rabbit, but I didn't identify with him. In fact, the character I identified most with was his ten year old granddaughter. Rabbit's causal references to his wife-swapping in the Carribean thirty years ago, or to the tingle in his a--hole caused by his heart medication, made me squirm. I just didn't want to know that much about Dear Old Dad, or Grandpa, or whatever. The last 100 pages, however, were so luminous, so pure, that the squirmy-icky feeling fell away, and the distance I felt from the character receeded. I suddenly understood all of those facile book jacket accollades -- "Crowning Achievement" and "Great American Novel" and the rest. I'd been converted, despite all my resistance. There are some other things about the book that are simply amazing. The book was set in 1989 and published in 1990, and Updike captures that time with unbelievable precision. Throughout the book, however, I had a strong feeling that Updike was foreshadowing 9/11 -- it's almost as if Rabbit could see it coming. In fact, if this book had been written after 9/11 instead of twelve years before, I almost would have found the foreshadowing a little too heavy handed. I'd love to ask Updike about that -- or, more precisely, I'd love to listen in on someone else's conversation with Updike on that subject, because, quite frankly, in his brilliance and judgmentalism and dismissiveness toward women, he still scares me.

Having become enamored with Rabbit Angstrom through this magnificent tetralogy, I was sad to see the end finally come. Rabbit with his highly unlovable ways, his crude sexuality, his ethnic slurs, his disdain for the "dumb mutt" he married, all would normally tend to turn someone off, and yet Updike has made this anti-hero an endearing and enduring creation. Rabbit is the 20th century man in all his dysfunctional glory, who in spite of his many shortcomings, is like an old friend we are immensely fond of and want to keep up with. Though all the books are well-written, it is in this fourth and final installment that Rabbit and Updike both reach their peak and mesmerize the reader. Rabbit at 55 is feeling the pains of a lifetime of beer-drinking and cholesterol-laden foods. While on an outing with his granddaughter, he suffers his first heart attack and thus begins his long trip into the valley of death and the nostalgic trip down memory lane that so often precedes that. Looking back on his life, he decides it must be a religious tie that kept him with Janice as he can think of no other reason. Rabbit and Janice are now leading "the good life" and while cocaine-addicted son Nelson runs Springer Motors, the senior Angstroms spend six months of the year in sunny Florida where Rabbit golfs and Janice plays tennis and attends a women's group regularly. It is Janice that has changed most, making the best of her life with Rabbit while enjoying the carefree existence of a snowbird. It is surprising to Rabbit when he discovers that, though outwardly together, to herself Janice will always be the woman who drowned her own daughter. Rabbit is still deeply interested in American history, but it is his personal history that haunts him-the daughter he thinks is his, the daughter he knows is his but died, the son he can never connect with. When Rabbit commits the ultimate betrayal of his son, he does what he does best, he runs. In classic Rabbit style, he ignores his problems, ignores his doctor's advice, ignores the laws of common decency, and becomes his one and only soulmate. Rabbit's final run and his last days are some of the most angst-ridden yet best-written pages in contemporary American literature. If anyone ever wants to know how it was to come of age in 1950's America and live through the 1990's, they have no better blueprint for tracing events than the story of Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom.

Rabbit at Rest is a wonderful book, what more can I say? During the reading of it, I continually wanted to pass judgment against Rabbit and characterize him as a "bad" person, but I couldn't. Rabbit at 55 years old isn't "bad" - he is a product of 55 years of life and sadly, he cannot seem to figure out how to change himself and get on a smoother road to peace & happiness, even though he wants to, he should, and knows he should. Rabbit is a man stuck in routine. He talks down to Nelson, obsesses about infidelity, disregards his health, and sees Janice as a "dumb mutt" because he always has and doesn't know how to live his life any other way. This book makes you think about how many of us there are who just can't figure out how to break out of our routines, even when those routines are unhealthy and killing us. We're all scared of change, just like Rabbit.

In this book, the Angstroms are semi-retired and living in Florida. Rabbit has a heart condition and he's not doing anything to improve his health. His son Nelson has grown into a wreck of an adult, to which Harry and his wife deserve the lion share of the blame. The parents are so old and respectable now, you forget what they put their son through, until he reminds them. You really want to root for Harry to overcome all of the obstacles he faces, like you root for charming outlaws to outrun the posse. You sense that Zeus and the Gods are sitting on Mt. Olympus using Harry Angstrom as their plaything. Despite the fact that Updike is given literature status (this book won the Pulitzer), it's very easy to get into. This isn't long and arduous James Joyce prose, but an easy to follow modern day story that will make you think. The series is either a scathing indictment of latter 20th Century middle-class America that invents their own agony or it's just Updike's view of how normal people live. Whichever, I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys serious fiction.

With the exception of Updike's golf stories, the "Rabbit" series, and his short stories, I have found his other novels a bit esoteric, abstract, and oblique. In fact, I remember starting 2-3 of these books, but I never finished any of them. But the Harry Angstrom series is a direct wallop to the collective jaw of the American reader With the fourth installment of the "Rabbit" series Updike proves that he is among the greatest American writers (along with Tom Wolfe, for example) producing fiction that oozes with sarcasm.In "Rabbit At Rest" Updike uses the sometimes sad life of cad Harry Angstrom as a metaphor for the aimless, immature, and irresponsible segment of Americans that refuses to grow up.Most of us would probably hate to admit it, but there is a little bit of Rabbit Angstrom in all of us.