Rabbit Redux

Rating:
Summary: Weak but not a total loss
Review: Having moments ago finished reading "Rabbit Redux", my immediate impression is of a highly flawed book that, just barely, saves itself in the end by bringing the two most interesting characters in the series back together. Rabbit IS a rabbit, he twitches his nose and moves wherever it tells him, and even when it takes him through a Disneyland of unbelievably cliched characters like Jill and Skeeter (a deadened teenaged runaway and psychotic black veteran, respectively, who Rabbit takes into his house when his wife leaves him) it's at least worthwhile to follow. Janice, his estranged wife, is generally undeveloped because Updike spends so much more time on Rabbit, but when she enters the book in any form she attracts attention. I hope Updike gives her more "page time" in the next two novels, she deserves it.
What Updike seems to be trying to do is create a condensed Sixties in this book, particularly the middle section: we have the Conservative (Rabbit), who has a lot to learn, we have the radical (Skeeter), who has been driven insane through oppression and needs to vent, we have the searching hippie (Jill), who needs love and understanding because the world has let her down, and we have the child (Nelson), who could go in any of three directions. There's a love-in, a be-in, a history lesson, a fight or two, and a trip through the countryside to see how the nation is faring. And it ends in conflagration, as the real Sixties did; substitute a burning house for Altamont, and there you have it. The problem is, Updike once called the Sixties "a slum of a decade", and his ode to the Sixties is kind of a slum of a novel. Too bad.

Rating:
Summary: Morbid
Review: I am reading the Rabbit series nearly in backwards order. I began with the third book, Rabbit Is Rich, and liked it so much that I picked up the book on Amazon that includes all four in the series. Curious about how it all ends, the next one I read was Rabbit At Rest, the final book. It is excellent, and the ending is very emotional and powerful. I then decided to read book 2, this one. Midway into it, I couldn't believe how bad it was.

To put my reaction into a sort of context, I walked out of the movie Leaving Las Vegas, or whatever it was called, because it was simply too morbid for me. These sad sack addictive personalities drive me nuts. I can't sit there and watch them destroy themselves. I'd greatly prefer that they killed themselves quickly and left me alone. I do not enjoy wallowing in garbage. I do not sympathize with self destructive morons. I can't help them, and I don't want to suffer with them.

This book features a weak young girl named Jill who allows herself to be destroyed by a nut case named Skeeter. Skeeter has some very valid points to make about American history, but he's not much of a house guest. I can't say I learned anything of value from Jill or Skeeter, so their sad sack story, their viciously morbid story, is pointless to me. Why suffer through it.

Rabbit just lets things happen to him and to the people around him. For a few moments he wakes up and exerts himself. He objects to Jill turning his son into a lying beggar on the street, and he goes so far as to smack her around. Then why doesn't he object to Skeeter turning Jill into a pathetic junkie? That seems quite a bit more serious. What is wrong with this idiot?

Another problem in the book is that Rabbit's wife Janice leaves her lover at the end, for no reason I can see. Her reason seems to be that the author told her to, after making it clear that she loves him desperately.

Judging from the more mature work, Rabbit At Rest, I thought John Updike was among the great writers of all time. Judging from this garbage, Rabbit Redux, I have modified my view. All I can do is shake my head and say to the author - what got into you?

Rating:
Summary: Morbid
Review: I am reading the Rabbit series nearly in backwards order. I began with the third book, Rabbit Is Rich, and liked it so much that I picked up the book on Amazon that includes all four in the series. Curious about how it all ends, the next one I read was Rabbit At Rest, the final book. It is excellent, and the ending is very emotional and powerful. I then decided to read book 2, this one. Midway into it, I couldn't believe how bad it was.

To put my reaction into a sort of context, I walked out of the movie Leaving Las Vegas, or whatever it was called, because it was simply too morbid for me. These sad sack addictive personalities drive me nuts. I can't sit there and watch them destroy themselves. I'd greatly prefer that they killed themselves quickly and left me alone. I do not enjoy wallowing in garbage. I do not sympathize with self destructive morons. I can't help them, and I don't want to suffer with them.

This book features a weak young girl named Jill who allows herself to be destroyed by a nut case named Skeeter. Skeeter has some very valid points to make about American history, but he's not much of a house guest. I can't say I learned anything of value from Jill or Skeeter, so their sad sack story, their viciously morbid story, is pointless to me. Why suffer through it.

Rabbit just lets things happen to him and to the people around him. For a few moments he wakes up and exerts himself. He objects to Jill turning his son into a lying beggar on the street, and he goes so far as to smack her around. Then why doesn't he object to Skeeter turning Jill into a pathetic junkie? That seems quite a bit more serious. What is wrong with this idiot?

Another problem in the book is that Rabbit's wife Janice leaves her lover at the end, for no reason I can see. Her reason seems to be that the author told her to, after making it clear that she loves him desperately.

Judging from the more mature work, Rabbit At Rest, I thought John Updike was among the great writers of all time. Judging from this garbage, Rabbit Redux, I have modified my view. All I can do is shake my head and say to the author - what got into you?

Rating:
Summary: Rabbit Angstrom And The 1960's
Review: I did not expect to expect to read, much less like "Rabbit Redux," Updike's first sequel to "Rabbit Run." I read the first book about 20 years ago and found it mundane and uninteresting. I felt that the only future that Rabbit had was as a Readers Digest entry. Then the next 2 sequels each won a number of literary prizes. About a year ago I purchased at Strand Book Store in NYC a large, paper-bound edition containing the first 3 Rabbit books. I started to read the "Rabbit Redux" section, but decided to put the volume down after the book's binding ripped (and later split in two). After reading and loving Updike's "Bech: A Book," I decided to purchase two used, hard-bound editions of "Rabbit Redux" and "Rabbit Is Rich."

I have just finished reading "Rabbit Redux" and was not only pleasantly suprised, but was greatly moved. The book takes place in 1969. We find Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom sharing many of the views of "the silent majority": he supports the Vietnam War, believes in monogamy, is against hippies, drug use, and is suspicious and mistrustful of "Negroes" (he cannot accept the term "black" which comes into common usage in the late "60s.). However, after his wife leaves him for another man, and after an 18 year old female runaway and then her black miltant friend move in with Rabbit, the 1960's literally come "crashing down" on Rabbit Angstrom. I won't say that Rabbit becomes radicalized, but he is changed forever.

I found the book moving, disturbing, and in many ways quite touching. By the time I finished the last page of "Rabbit Redux," I actually found myself liking this new, more mature Rabbit Angstrom very much.

Rating:
Summary: Slightly less amazing part of an amazing series.
Review: I found Rabbit Redux to be the weakest book in the Rabbit tetrology, though by no means is it a weak book in and of itself. Rabbit Redux's plot takes a detour in the middle and never quite gets back on track, though the writing itself is just as masterful as that of Rabbit, Run. Updike is good with beginnings. In Rabbit, Run, the reader was hooked by the description of Harry heading south from Brewer, Pennsylvania on his first ill-planned quest. In the sequel, the family's conversation with Charlie Stavros in the first part of the book is an excellent mix of sharp dialogue and witty description. We can quickly see how far (or, as it were, NOT far) Rabbit has come since the first book, and it's interesting to watch his wife Janice and son Nelson change along with him. Rabbit Redux introduces a host of supporting characters. Charlie Stavros tends to be the most believable and familiar (with enough quirks to make him stand out in Updike's landscape of idiosyncratic people). Jill and Skeeter, Rabbit and Nelson's two houseguests in the book's middle, are more stereotypical than I would have hoped. Updike seems to descend a little too far into social commentary in the middle of the book as Jill the Poor-Little-Rich-Girl Hippie and Skeeter the Mysterious Black Man exact their influence on both Rabbit and Nelson. Rabbit Redux feels most a part of the Rabbit series when the two aforementioned characters are no longer in the book.

Rating:
Summary: My favorite of the four
Review: I haven't met anyone else who has felt the same way, but this is my favorite of the four Rabbitt novels. I've heard complaints about the inauthenticity of filtering Updike's nuanced social and cultural observation through the "regular" Rabbitt Angstrom. I, however, like that contrivance. It creates an interesting tension and humor. And the story is the most provacative of the four books, which in turn made me more invested in the characters. The writing was on par with the final two (the first one I think pales in comparison with the other three). The way Updike renders Rabbitt's growing suspcisions of Janice's affair with Stavros, for example, is very tender, some of my favorite Updike. I also like how the moon and ghost imagery was woven through the novel. Updike's prose style, however, makes everything he writes worthwhile.

I love the last three novels, though. It's so wonderful to get to know these characters over thirty years. My favorites are Skeeter, Janice, Charlie Stavros, Nelson (esp. in the final two) and Melanie. For the person who wondered why should we care about these characters if they are losers, consider how important, at least among male writers (rebelling against the Hemingway code), the anti-hero was at the time - Invisible Man, Holden Caufield, Binx Boling, Portnoy and other Roth-like personas, Cheever's stories, Humbert Humbert, Herzog, Fred Exley. Oedipa Mass is even somewhat of an anti-hero, that is the hero of an "anti-detective novel."

Rating:
Summary: RABBIT REDUX GAVE ME MIGRAINES!!!!!
Review: John Updike's Rabbit Redux was sadly dissapointing. Though it is fast paced and an often exciting read, it does not accurately portray "Middle America" as the book cover proclaims. Affairs, drugs, criminals, a runaway girl --this book has it all, except an ending that's believable. One comes away from this book with less faith in morality, and a sad outlook on the institution of marriage. Indeed the character "Rabbit" and his wife "Janice" never seem to rise above their stupidity, which,of course, is what we're waiting for them to do. I can forgive Updike since this was written in the '70's, but it's awful

Rating:
Summary: I shall return only in glory
Review: The line above is not spoken by Harry `Rabbit' Angstrom, but by another character named Skeeter in John Updike's follow-up to his "Rabbit, Run", "Rabbit Redux". Nevertheless, it perfectly fits the protagonist. In this second installment of the tetralogy, everybody's favorite rabbit is back in full glory, well, sort of.

The sixties have arrived and it caught Rabbit and his family by surprise. There is a brand new moral being followed, and he, as good as any product of his time, is caught by it, in spite of still being very attached to the fifties' way of thinking. But everything is about to change. Janice, Rabbit's wife, leaves him for a Greek colleague, and his mother is sick and dying. To make matters worse, the protagonist takes a young girl to live with him --and replace his wife--, while his mind is clouded with the troubles of his time, like Vietnam War and the man landing on the Moon.

But Rabbit's reeducation is about to begin. His new girlfriend brings along an African-American --but, of course, by that time nobody used this word-- called Skeeter who has some very extreme point of views. Actually most of what he thinks --if not everything -- is totally opposed to Rabbit's believes. Living in a constant fight these two men interact in such a way that will change both of them forever.

"Rabbit Redux" --just like the previous "Rabbit, Run"-- is more than a novel about the education of a man. Actually it is like a huge painting about North America in that period. Full of pop culture references -- early in the Rabbit family goes to the cinema to see "2001 - An Spacey Odyssey", for instance-- the book shows the environment in which the sexual revolution spread in USA, among other things. It is interesting to see how Rabbit's beliefs are so wrong and how they change throughout the narrative.

Just like in the first novel, John Updike is a gifted writer. Not only has he talent for developing characters in plausible situations, but he can also write sharp razor and witty dialogues. The words come to life from the paper when his creations are dialoguing. Another highlight of his writing is the eye he has for the times of change. The sixties were as crazy as he portrays in "Rabbit Redux". Those were time of radical change and the have a strong reflection in the Angstroms' lives.

I believe that Updike's work shares some resemblances with Philip Roth's. Both are important critics of North American society, but if for the second the society transforms the family institution, for the first the family is a reflection of its times and social transformation. And these two different approaches are very interesting, and can only increase the reader's critical sense.

All in all, Rabbit will again return in glory in the upcoming two novels, "Rabbit is Rich" and "Rabbit at Rest". And I can wait to read and find out what will come next to my favorite American anti-hero.

Rating:
Summary: An improvement from the first book in the series
Review: This book is a significant improvement over the first book in the series and a clear marker of the writer's development. He makes the protagonist, Rabbit (or Harry Angstrom) into a a true anti-hero, someone we really don't like, yet can't help caring what happens to him. Rabbit is 36 in this book and his son is 13. Still struggling with marriage, sex, family and himself, we see a new phase in his life's development. There are strong sexist and racist tones to the book, especially at the beginning, some of which are dealt with by the characters by the end, others which reflect the unfortunate but real attitudes of the times. The middle section of the book gets a bit bogged down in dialogues on political theory, but the rest is fresh and engaging. This book is the best of the three Updike books I've read so far.

Rating:
Summary: The forgotten installment in the Rabbit series
Review: Updike does a nice job here of weaving together a period piece and a character-driven novel. I enjoyed this one more than its prequel, Rabbit Run. This one has more energy and better pace, though it does succumb to the occasional moment of introspective navel-gazing. The time is 1969, an exciting time for a country that is about to land on the moon but hasn't quite figured out how to play nice in the racially integrated sandbox. Updike adopts one of my least favorite writing techniques - using his characters to deliver long-winded speeches in order to convey a social or political message on behalf of the author. There are more subtle and graceful ways to do this, ways that don't make the reader feel like a brick has been dropped on his head. But fortunately these lectures are infrequent enough, and surrounded by otherwise wonderful writing. As for the character development, Updike brings his A-game. Harry Angstrom is your quintessential everyman, simple on the surface and complex underneath. His wife Janice is annoying beyond belief. And the new people who enter his life, Jill and Skeeter, possess more than enough spirit and grit to compensate for the fact that they are a bit stereotypical. While I still think the last two books in the Rabbit series are the best ones, Rabbit Redux is certainly worth reading. Updike is one of those rare writers who can get to heart of both society and human existence.