Weekend Guide: 10.08.2021
rabbit and american realism
For the past few years I have tried to ground my genre hopping and rudderless reading patterns with a series. I cranked through the Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante, got lost in The Three Body Problem series by Cixin Liu and have even considered jumping on The Dark Tower train — but alas, I am not a nerd.
This year has been all about the Rabbit Series by John Updike. Four books about a guy named Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, an ordinary middle-class man lost in the sterility of the modern world.
The Rabbit series consists of four books each one written at the end of a decade, between 1960 and 1990: Rabbit, Run, Rabbit Redux, Rabbit Is Rich and Rabbit At Rest.
We follow Rabbit on a wild ride. An extended affair with a prostitute in his twenties. Starting a commune with an underage girl and a drug dealing Vietnam vet in his thirties. To owning a Toyota dealership, joining a country club, and peeing on his friends wife on a Caribbean swingers vacation. It was the seventies!
Through all of the madness, sex obsession, and yearning for more — Rabbit is an everyman. Updike writes suburbia better than anyone I have ever read. Better than Roth, better than Bellow. He is the master, a true American Realist.
Updikes mantra was "to give the mundane its beautiful due”. I like the sound of that! Life is mundane. We are all in it. Let’s make it beautiful. It is a truly noble pursuit, and something he accomplishes with Rabbit Angstrom.
I am three quarters of the way through the series and I’m stuck. While zipping through four books has never been a problem for me — as I stare the fourth and final installment in the face — i’m frozen, unwilling to put Rabbit to rest.
I see too much of myself in Rabbit. Yeah, I know. That’s the point. I just don’t want to know how it ends. Life. I would rather leave that stone unturned.
What if you could read your ending? The book of your life is right there on the table. Do you get cozy and read through it uninterrupted? Take it slow — page by page? Or do you throw it into the fire?
Suppose someone said to you “your life’s through”?
I am not ready to move to Florida.
Thanks for tapping in with me this week. If any of you have read any of these, let me know. I would love to talk Updike with you. Truthfully, I would love to talk about any books with anyone. My email is open.
Peace and love.