Rabbit, Run | Literary Criticism & Book Review

Rabbit, Run Critical Overview

"The novels of John Updike have spawned a criticism remarkable in its contentiousness," Bernard A. Schopen wrote in Twentieth Century Literature. "His books have evoked critical outrage, bewilderment, condescension, commendation, and an enthusiasm approaching the fulsome. The same novel might be hailed as a major fictional achievement and dismissed as a self-indulgence or a failure." In John Updike, Susan Henning Uphauser wrote,

Rabbit, Run has elicited a spectrum of responses so
varied that it is difficult to believe that critics are writing
about the same novel. Many first reviewers admired
Updike's style but repudiated the novel, emotionally
offended. Recent criticism identifies Rabbit,
Run as the most powerful of Updike's novels. Yet its
ability to offend remains.

And in John Updike's Novels, Donald J. Greiner wrote that it "continues to upset the unprepared reader." It does so for several reasons: chief among these are its explicit sexuality and its...
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