The Rabbit series

Rabbit, Run (1960) depicts three months in the life of a 26-year-old former high school basketball player named Harry 'Rabbit' Angstrom, and his attempts to escape the constraints of his life. It spawned several sequels, including Rabbit Redux, Rabbit Is Rich and Rabbit At Rest, as well as a related 2001 novella, Rabbit Remembered.

Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom is 26, married to Janice his high school girlfriend who drinks heavily, and has a two-year-old son named Nelson as well as a job selling kitchen gadgets in a small town named Mount Judge, Pennsylvania. He believes that his marriage is a failure and that something is missing from his life. Having been a basketball star in high school, Harry finds middle-class family life unsatisfying. On the spur of the moment, he decides to drive south in an attempt to escape. He soon turns around to return home, however, where after a short night's sleep he visits his old basketball coach, Marty Tothero.

Tothero introduces Rabbit to Ruth Leonard, who is a part-time prostitute, and they begin a three month affair. During this time, Janice moves back into her parents' house. Rabbit, jealous of a past fling between Ruth and a local man, forces Ruth into submitting to fellatio (presented here as a degrading sex act), and on the same night Janice goes into labor. Rabbit leaves Ruth and rushes to the hospital.

Janice gives birth to a baby girl, whom she and Rabbit name Rebecca June. Rabbit returns to live with his wife, and accepts a job at his father-in-law's car dealership. Rabbit attends church one morning, and fueled by the flirtatious overtones of the minister's wife, he tries to get his wife to have sex with him. When she refuses, and makes a comment about the "whore" that Rabbit lived with for 3 months, Rabbit runs out. The next morning Janice, while drunk and afraid that Rabbit has left for good, accidentally drowns their infant daughter in the bath. When Rabbit returns for the funeral, he refuses to take the blame for the baby's death, ultimately running away once more. He returns to Ruth and finds her pregnant. She puts forward an ultimatum: file for divorce or she will get an abortion. Unable to make a decision, Rabbit runs away once more, leaving the novel's ending in midair.

Rabbit Redux (1971) is the second book in his "Rabbit" series, which begins with Rabbit, Run, and is followed by Rabbit Is Rich and Rabbit At Rest. There is also a related 2001 novella, Rabbit Remembered.

Rabbit Redux finds the former high-school basketball star working a dead-end job and approaching middle age in the downtrodden and fictional city of Brewer, Pennsylvania, the city of his birth. When his wife leaves him for another man, Harry and his twelve-year-old son are at a loss, and the chaotic state of the nation circa 1969 finds its way into Harry's home.

Updike's recurring themes of guilt, sex, and death are joined here by racism, as Harry plays host to an African-American named Skeeter, a cynical, drug-dealing Vietnam vet who engages Harry in debates about the war and race relations. A wealthy white teenager fleeing suburban Connecticut, Jill, enthralls Harry and his son, and the four of them make a scandalous household emblematic of the Summer of Love's most confusing implications, culminating in a house fire that kills Jill. Harry and Janice are finally reconciled at book's end.

Rabbit Is Rich (1981) is the third novel. It finds Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, a one-time high school basketball star, has reached a paunchy middle-age without straying from Brewer, Pennsylvania, the downtrodden, fictional city of his birth. Harry and Janice, his wife of twenty-two years, live comfortably, having inherited her late father's Toyota dealership. He is indeed rich, but Harry's persistent problems, including his wife's drinking, his troubled son's schemes, his libido, and spectres from his past, complicate life. Having achieved a lifestyle that would have embarrassed his working-class parents, Harry is not greedy, but neither is he ever quite satisfied. Harry nurses a crush on a country-club friend's young wife, dangerously seeking approval. Nevertheless he is unable to read the warning signs.

Rabbit at Rest (1990) follows the exploits of Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom from 1960-1990. It finds Harry forty years after his glory days as a high school basketball star in a mid-sized Pennsylvania city. Harry and his wife of thirty-three years, Janice, have retired to sunny Florida during the cold months, where Harry is depressed, bored, and dangerously overweight. Unable to stop nibbling corn chips and macadamia nuts, he finds himself contemplating death. He is distracted from his worries by the acts of his drug-addict son, Nelson, to whom Janice has very unwisely given control of the family business, a Pennsylvania Toyota dealership. Despite his unhappiness, he manages to take some comfort in his nine year old granddaughter, beautiful, athletic Judy. After Nelson comes back from rehab, and Janice begins work as a real estate agent, the family finds out that Harry has had an affair with Nelson's wife, Pru. This prompts Harry to escape to Florida. While hiding, Harry dies of heart disease.

Between realism and experimentation:

Дата добавления: 2014-01-11