Out of what many American literature enthusiasts call the Big Four (Saul Bellow, Phillip Roth, Norman Mailer, and John Updike), it is Updike who is the most underrated, as well as the most likable. Granted he has his flaws: few writers as gifted has him have resorted to formula more, and ever since Couples got him on the cover of Time, he has more than often resorted to a D.H Laurence-styled sex scene, which a previous generation found licentiously liberating, but I find unreadable. But unlike Bellow, Roth and Mailer, he almost always has a genuine affinity for the women his protagonists sleep with. Another thing that separates him from the aforementioned three is that Updike understands that his protagonists have real human flaws, a literary trait that the other men have failed to grasp after dozens of books and thousands of pages. Even in race, Updike stands tall, as his progressive moderation has a basic decency and common sense that towers over the Bellow and Mailer's diametrically opposite reactionary politics.
Oh yeah, there's one more thing, he's one of the greatest stylists in the history of the English language. America's preeminent Nabokovophile, Updike has crafted his own Antierra out of the American suburb. Like many great writers, his body of work is inconsistent: the aforementioned Couples is cheap Penthouse porn, Month of Sundays tries to fuse Hawthorne's Black Veil with the sexual revolution of the 70s and ends up grasping neither, while Brazil, Memories of the Ford Administration, and Villages (his worst and most recent novel) find him repeating himself. But his best books could take up a small library. 1964's The Centaur turned the story of a father and a son caught up in a rainstorm into a Greek epic. Roger's Version and In the Beauty of the Lilies effortlessly fused religion, pop culture, and the sexual perversity that men can sometimes stoop to. The collection of his early stories, published in late 2003, is excessive, but the best stories show a master at the form of short fiction.
But the books that Updike will be remembered for, and rightly so, will be the one's in his rabbit series, a four book tale detailing the life of Harry “Rabbit" Angstrom. Through four novels, Angstrom moves from being a basketball player, to a single dad, to a wealthy owner of a car dealership. And throughout that transition, Angstrom remains a brutally misogynist, anti-social, ugly American bastard. He is also wildly successful in almost everything he does, no matter how hard he tries to do otherwise. In each book, Updike captures a certain American feeling in Rabbit's ambling and bumbling ascension: Angstrom's blood boiling misanthropy symbolized the darker aesthetics of the Baby Boom era in 1960's Rabbit Run; 1969's Rabbit Redux saw a slice of the racial and sexual schizophrenia of the 60s; and 1979's Rabbit is Rich showed a generation coming to terms with age and money. Rabbit at Rest, the book in which Angstrom's luck begins to go sour, is his masterpiece, a Greek tragedy articulated through the downfall of a flawed nuclear family. To the extent that he is successful in doing so makes it his best novel and one of the very best American novels ever written.
Article comments
1 - Sister Ray
You have a much draker view of Rabbit than I do. How is he "brutally misogynist"? He is unfaithful, yes, but that in and of its self is not brutal misogyny.
Also, there's only one car dealership in the family, which his wife's father started. Rabbit ran it after the father-in-law died and then let Nelson take over. Nelson ran it into the ground in scams to get money for drugs. Rabbit and Janice were negligent in not supervising him more, as the Toyota official tells Rabbit when he pulls the franchise.
2 - robert lashley
Apologize for the oversite, but not the assertion. Rabbit talks about his wife Janice and other women like a gangster rapper, and he does so throughout all 4 books.
3 - Nik
Great review, even if I wouldn't be quite as harsh on Rabbit as you are. I love this series and try re-reading it every few years to get something new out of it. Have you read the novella "Rabbit Remembered" he did a few years ago, a post-Rabbit coda? It's not essential but it's interesting reading.
I do think "Couples" was hugely controversial at the time, one of the more controversial books of the '60s really; it's too soon to tell if "Terrorist" will be in that league or not. Either way, it'll be worth looking at...
4 - Rodney Welch
Great review, Robert -- brought back a lot of memories about this masterful narrative. Of the lot, I prefer Rabbit Redux, the one that I think most truly fits the description of "a Greek tragedy articulated through the downfall of a flawed nuclear family" -- and what a downfall it is. Janice flees for an affair with that Greek guy, and Rabbit and Nelson take in a lovechild and her Black Panther boyfriend, and the whole thing goes up in flames. I think of it as the great 1960s novel, even it was published in the early 70s-- it truly brought it all back home, all the strife of the time, etc. But I love all those books, and Cindy Murkett remains for me the great pin-up of 20th Century fiction.
5 - Tim
excellent review, Robert. I admit I've never muck liked Updike's style, and I've tried and tried over the years to appreciate him. I'm going on a trip this week and you've convinced me to grab that ancient copy of Rabbit, Run that I've never gotten through and finish it.
6 - Henry Stimpson
On rereading Rabbit at Rest, it didn't stand up that well for me It seemed somehow stagy, with characters acting out predestined parts. The only truly well developed character seemed to be little Judy. Of course, there are brilliant parts. It pains me to say this as I love Updike's work and was saddened to hear of the death of this great man - but to me, it just doesn't measure up to the first three Rabbits.
Anyone else to weigh in?
I do think Terrorist was excellent and probably underrated.