John Updike
Hardcover | Pages: 1520 pages Rating: 4.26 | 1564 Users | 150 Reviews
Present Books In Favor Of Rabbit Angstrom: The Four Novels (Rabbit Angstrom #1-4)
| Original Title: | Rabbit Angstrom : The Four Novels : Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit is Rich; Rabbit at Rest (Everyman's Library) |
| ISBN: | 0679444599 (ISBN13: 9780679444596) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Series: | Rabbit Angstrom #1-4 |
Explanation In Pursuance Of Books Rabbit Angstrom: The Four Novels (Rabbit Angstrom #1-4)
When we first met him in Rabbit, Run (1960), the book that established John Updike as a major novelist, Harry (Rabbit) Angstrom is playing basketball with some boys in an alley in Pennsylvania during the tail end of the Eisenhower era, reliving for a moment his past as a star high school athlete. Athleticism of a different sort is on display throughout these four magnificent novels—the athleticism of an imagination possessed of the ability to lay bare, with a seemingly effortless animal grace, the enchantments and disenchantments of life.Updike revisited his hero toward the end of each of the following decades in the second half of this American century; and in each of the subsequent novels, as Rabbit, his wife, Janice, his son, Nelson, and the people around them grow, these characters take on the lineaments of our common existence. In prose that is one of the glories of contemporary literature, Updike has chronicled the frustrations and ambiguous triumphs, the longuers, the loves and frenzies, the betrayals and reconciliations of our era. He has given us our representative American story.
This Rabbit Angstrom volume is composed of the following novels: Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit is Rich; and Rabbit at Rest.
Specify Based On Books Rabbit Angstrom: The Four Novels (Rabbit Angstrom #1-4)
| Title | : | Rabbit Angstrom: The Four Novels (Rabbit Angstrom #1-4) |
| Author | : | John Updike |
| Book Format | : | Hardcover |
| Book Edition | : | Deluxe Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 1520 pages |
| Published | : | October 17th 1995 by Everyman's Library (first published October 17th 1994) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Literature. Novels. Classics |
Rating Based On Books Rabbit Angstrom: The Four Novels (Rabbit Angstrom #1-4)
Ratings: 4.26 From 1564 Users | 150 ReviewsAssessment Based On Books Rabbit Angstrom: The Four Novels (Rabbit Angstrom #1-4)
Absolutely worth the re-read thirty years after the original read.Language is a vivid second time around, and what was new then is history now. Misogyny even creepier now, no female imperfection misses the gimlet eye. Occasioned a re-read of his bio and a driving trip through Updike-land to see his house, school, graveyard and the dreaded farm - all still there and a lot of familiar secondary character names on tombstones - no RIP there.Probably four of the very best modern novels i have ever read.
Rabbit, Run (read 10/2/09) - 3This is a dense but concise story that's at best mediocre and cast in lavishly beautiful prose. As a writer, I cannot help but appreciate the beauty of Updike's descriptions. The story, though, isn't all that and it takes some hard slogging in the beginning to get through, but overall it's a fairly entertaining read.Rabbit Redux (read 11/19/09) - 2.5Rabbit Angstrom grows on you. The first hundred or two hundred pages are just meh, but once Rabbit lets in Jill and
I carried around this book for nearly 20 years before finally committing to it. Happily, the Rabbit Angstrom series turned out to be some of the best writing I have ever read.
The Rabbit novels are a tour de force chronicle, critique, and eloquent appreciation of the American white Protestant middle-class male and the swiftly shifting culture around him in the last four decades of the twentieth century. From his feckless youth as a promising high school athlete and unready husband and father in Rabbit, Run; through vulgar affluence, serial infidelity, and guilt as a car dealer in Rabbit Redux; to angry bewilderment over 1970s social upheaval in Rabbit Is Rich, the
There are books that have a reputation, that many people seem to enjoy, but with which you can find no connection at all. When I finished reading these Rabbit books I wondered why I had persisted. Looking at it as a whole I have the impression that the author was writing magical realism from a strictly realistic perspective - he appears to be making broad statements about the experience of for example race, or adulthood, as felt by a certain slice of the US population specifically a white, male
Although it took me five months to complete, I've enjoyed every minute of it. Following the life of Rabbit Angstrom has become one of my favorite literary experiences. The themes of sex, ego, race, religion, family, and drugs influence the character through every part of this four-book series. Updike's writing is best displayed in these works; his descriptions of suburban life in Pennsylvania are easy to picture and relate to, especially as someone who grew up in the area as I did. Yet there are
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