Rabbit novels come out at the turn of each decade, like a series of reports on the state of America. Rabbit is rich, the third and latest…. is effortlessly informing about time and place; about smart money and car dealing, what they say about Chappaquiddick, TV ads, the contents of a bathroom cabinet. This is a corner of America in a mood of complacence ample enough to admit self-criticism, provoked in particular by the oil crisis and the queues at petrol stations…. Much scope for criticism of America is offered, but not inadvertently, for the criticism is all made or implied in the novel itself. And Uplike's trend-spotting instincts are not just alert to news-items but sustain whole scenes of social comedy, as in the marriage preparations of Nelson, Rabbit's son and now his greatest trial. All this, even the dirty talk that grates plausibly on the ear, is so good, so alive, that one wishes Updike would stick with realism and forget about Rabbit and the meaning of life.
For Rabbit is again, as on earlier appearances, an equivocation at the heart of the novel: a holy fool, the most ordinary and average of men elevated into a state of grace. Now that he's older and richer he's still more ambiguous….
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