Rabbit Novels Vol. 1

Rating:
Summary: 1-2 Punch
Review: The first two of John Updike's four "Rabbit" novels appear in this book, being around 250 and 350 pages, respectively. It was an easy decision for me to buy this, rather than, say "Rabbit, Run," because I knew I wanted to read at least the first two Rabbit Angstrom books, then maybe the others as well.

As it turns out, "Rabbit, Run" is a terrific novel, one of my favorites. I won't go too much into my feelings for this book, for this you can check out the hundreds of reviews of the novel itself. "Rabbit Redux" is a bit of a letdown and from the looks of it's own reviews here on Amazon, many others think so too.

Either way, it's nice to have them both here and along with Volume 2, the entire series in just two books. The second tome is considerably thicker owing to that "Rich" and "at Rest" are well over 400 pages apiece. I would personally avoid Penguin's volume of the Rabbit novels- all four in one book- because that is just too big to carry around and I imagine that the print is miniscule. What's the fun in that?

And on a superficial level, they just look cool. The cover is nice and colorful, kind of Bauhaus in shape and the two volumes look nice together on the shelf, good for showing off how smart and literary you are.

But the real juice is between the covers. Rabbit takes a lot of flak for being a jerk; sure, he makes a lot of mistakes. In my opinion, that's what real people do and reading novels would be pointless if they weren't about realistic characters (that's why Joyce's Leopold Bloom takes a dump in chapter 4 of Ulysses). I find Rabbit fascinating and Updike's descriptions and observations suggest a man way more in tune with the world than is normal.

Anyway, this is great and I'm glad i read it.