Rabbit Is Rich

Rabbit Is Rich
by John Updike

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Book Summary Information

Author: John Updike
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1996-08-27
ISBN: 0449911829
Number of pages: 544
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks

Book Reviews of Rabbit Is Rich

Book Review: Where "Wife Swap" isn't just a T.V. show.
Summary: 3 Stars

(I made a mistake with the stars, it should be four). As stated in my recent reviews of "Rabbit Run" and "Rabbit Redux," I purchased the Rabbit tetralogy in its single volume form, and am attempting to read it straight through. I'll admit it, during some parts of "Rabbit Run," with Upike's occasionally ponderous prose, and Rabbit's amoral ways, I had my doubts about finishing. But, perhaps because I've simply grown accustomed to Updike's style, and Rabbit's sense of morality (or lack thereof), I enjoyed "Rabbit Redux," and "Rabbit is Rich," alot.

As with the two previous Rabbit novels, in "Rabbit is Rich" we continue to learn about Updike's/Rabbit's fear/obsession with: aging, death, children, suburbia, race, sexual preferences, breasts, genitalia and sex, sex, sex. We also get to learn something about golf and sailing techniques, and how to swap spouses on a vacation without, apparently, any guilt or consequences. Lest I sound sarcastic, I want to make one thing clear: "Rabbit is Rich" is well-written and compelling, and I can certainly understand why Updike is considered one of America's best contemporary novelists.

In "Rabbit is Rich," with the backdrop of the end of the Carter presidency (e.g. high inflation, gas shortages, and Americans held hostage in Iran), Harry Angstrom has taken over his late father-in-law's car dealership, specializing in Toyota's, and has proudly joined the ranks of the upper-middle class. He's fortunate to have a dependable right hand man, Charlie Stavros, also his closest friend, and his wife Janice's former lover (although that, surprisingly, doesn't stand in the way of their friendship). Rabbit's chief nemesis is his son, Nelson, who has returned home before completing college with a female friend, obviously running away from something. Nelson wants to join his parent's auto dealership to sell used convertibles, and Rabbit correctly deduces that Nelson is making the same mistakes in life as he did. Their love-hate relationship consumes much of the book.

Another problem that disturbs Rabbit's relative bliss has to do with his meeting a young woman at the dealership who he believes might be his illegitimate daughter, because she looks so much like Ruth, the prostitute he had an affair with 20 years earlier. Less significant is Rabbit's frequent fantasizing about getting rid of Janice, and hooking up with the younger wife of one of his golf buddies. Rabbit has obvious personality shortfalls, but some people seem to like him a great deal (especially the wife of yet another golf buddy, who is stricken with Lupus).

Anyway, I thought I would quote two good samples of sentences which demonstrate Updike's extraordinary descriptive writing:

Example one: "She breathed that air he'd forgotten, of high-school loveliness, come uninvited to bloom in the shadow of railroad overpasses, alongside telephone poles, within earshot of highways with battered aluminum center strips, out of mothers gone to lard and fathers ground down by gray days of work and more work, in an America littered with bottlecaps, and pull-tabs and pieces of broken muffler."

Example two: "The town he runs through is dark, full of slanty alleyways and sidewalks cracked and tipped from underneath, whole cement slabs lifted up by roots like crypt lids in a horror movie, the dead reach up, they catch at his heels."

Is it any wonder that critics rave about Updike's descriptive powers? Although Updike's Rabbit series isn't for everyone, I have come to appreciate more and more, with each successive Rabbit book, what an extraordinary writer he is.

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Summary of Rabbit Is Rich

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award

The hero of John Updike?s Rabbit, Run, ten years after the events of Rabbit Redux, has come to enjoy considerable prosperity as the chief sales representative of Springer Motors, a Toyota agency in Brewer, Pennsylvania. The time is 1979: Skylab is falling, gas lines are lengthening, and double-digit inflation coincides with a deflation of national self-confidence. Nevertheless, Harry ?Rabbit? Angstrom feels in good shape, ready to enjoy life at last?until his wayward son, Nelson, returns from the West, and the image of an old love pays a visit to the lot. New characters and old populate these scenes from Rabbit?s middle age as he continues to pursue, in his zigzagging fashion, the rainbow of happiness.

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