1990's Rabbit at Rest closes out Updike's Pulizter Prize winning efforts

 

This is not a picture of the book I had from the library (I forgot to take one again), but it's the right cover.

Okay, for those that missed it: John Updike won the Pulizter Prize for his 1981 novel Rabbit is Rich, which was the third part of what would eventually become a tetralogy (though I usually say quadrilogy because of an old Alien box set). When I learned that the fourth part of that set, Rabbit at Rest, would also win the Pulizter Prize in 1990, I decided it was worth giving the whole thing a go.

It was worth it, but this is no easy, happy reading. 

Updike is brutal in his characterizations and consequences, all surrounding Rabbit Angstrom, an ageing, former athletic star who is brash, small-minded, selfish, and hurtful in the first book ... and just keeps getting worse. His life is unremarkable, he works, he has friends, and he has a family, but his treatment of these (least of all work) may lead you to believe that there's a grand comeuppance on the horizon for him, some judgment (in a literary way, not spiritually) that will arrive to balance the scales, but it just doesn't. Updike is also merciless.  

There are actions taken and, thanks to being granted access to interiority of Rabbit's thoughts, feelings and thoughts laid bare that are unforgiveable in the sense that it would take a miraculous turnaround for Rabbit to endear himself to the reader by the end, but as that end creeps closer and closer you get the sinking feeling that Updike isn't writing those kinds of novels. This is a main character, not a hero. 

I will say that the writing becomes, hardly better because the first novel is an excellent, frantic tale, but perhaps it becomes more ambitious as the four novels go on, and while this is all still me guessing here, maybe as Updike became more assured of who Rabbit is and who he's going to remain until the end, he also became bolder in exposing Rabbit's flaws. I guess I'm suggesting that there was a moment where Updike could have turned him around and told a story of redemption, but once he decided to push past that point there was nothing left to do but dig him down deeper. And he's so good at doing it!

So, if that sounds like your kind of story, I heartily recommend all four books.