Rabbit Redux by John Updike --review by Carla Price
I returned to re-read this novel after about fifty years. My interest was spurred after reading and reporting on the book’s predecessor, “Rabbit Run.” Throughout the novel, the international and national events of l969 form an ongoing backdrop to the lesser drama of Harry’s life.
My memory of the second book was sparse, although vivid to me was Harry Angstrom’s disappointment about his 13-year-old son’s disinterest in school athletics. Successful team performance, Harry knows, would give the boy some “bliss” to look back on in middle age, when life turns small and slack.
The book picks up when Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom is 36 years old, viewed by Updike as “middle aged.” He has lost his athletic build and is a tall, soft, pot-bellied, self-pitying man. (Harry’s parents, age 65, are regarded as ancient by Updike; Harry’s mother, Mary, is dying of Parkinson’s disease. Harry mentally refers to his father as “the old man.”) Although unwillingly at first, Harry has followed his father into the print shop, and become an expert linotype setter. However, the new offset process is breathing down his neck, and near the end of the novel, he has been laid off. In “Rabbit Run,” the then 26- year- old Harry abandoned his dull, pregnant wife, Janice, and haphazardly took up residence with a sometime prostitute, Ruthe. The birth of the Angstroms’ second child, followed by the new infant’s death at Janice’s hands (accidental drowning – Janice was drunk) occasioned his return to his marriage. Now, ten years later, it is Janice who strays. She is working for her father at his auto dealership, and aggressively pursues Charlie Stavros, an ace car salesman, who accommodates her overtures and makes her feel like “Helen of Troy.” Charlie is Greek-American, and acquaints her with a Greek restaurant and left-wing political views.
Janice, who in Rabbit’s mind is a “poor mutt,” is a dull-witted, lackadaisical housekeeper, and a lazy, unimaginative cook, who never opens her cookbooks. Harry returned to the marriage, guilt-ridden, grieving the loss of the new baby, and anxious to do right by his little boy, Nelson. Now, ten years later, via his own gossiping parents, Harry is apprised of Janice’s affair. His first thought was “Who would want her?”
Eventually, Janice leaves to “find herself,” and “finds herself” pounding at the door of Charlie Stavros, the charming salesman, a confirmed bachelor who has no intention of marrying her or any other woman. But now, with Stavros, Janice has discovered sex, in all its aspects, and does not want to return to her humdrum marriage, which provides scanty sexual relations. Harry, deeply affected by the drowning of their baby girl, has long ago lost interest in Janice. There is a comic scene in which Stavros confronts Harry as he and his Dad leave the print shop at the end of their shift. Stavros invites Harry for a drink. He strongly hints that he would like to get rid of Janice. Stavros feels around for an opening, to see if Harry will take her back, and finally admits that having Janice in his apartment full-time is “confining.” Harry is coy; within two weeks of Janice’s departure, he has reinvented his life with new housemates.
Everyone in town knows that Janice has left Harry. At work, Buchanan, a Black pressman at the print shop, invites Harry to mix and mingle with his friends at a local night club for Blacks, Jimbo’s. Not wishing to seem rude or racist, Harry drops by, where he is introduced to Babe, a Black entertainer (jazz pianist, songstress), Skeeter, an embittered young Black Viet Nam vet, and Jill, a white runaway, who is perhaps age l8, possibly younger. The bar owner and habitues would prefer to have Jill otherwise occupied, as she is underage and could draw police attention to the establishment. Babe, Buchanan, and Skeeter manipulate Jill into Harry’s domain, as he has a spouseless house, and is in need of female companionship. Jill moves right in with Harry, and becomes his bedmate, as well as a great favorite of his 13-year-old son, Nelson. The nightspot, Jimbo’s, is eventually raided, not because of Jill, but due to drug dealing. Wanted by the police on drug charges, Skeeter moves in, too. (Skeeter may or may not be the son of the print shop’s other Black pressman, Farnsworth.) Jill, who has a drug history of her own, has escaped from a wealthy Connecticut family, owns a Porsche, and cooks quite well.
Skeeter is an avid student of Black American, owns numerous books, and utilizes the evening hours to educate Harry, Nelson, and the reader of the novel. Marijuana is dispensed, and as Harry smokes more and drinks more beer, his barriers drop, and he becomes accustomed to the new menagerie he is supporting. There are no clergy interventions, as there were in “Rabbit Run.” Also, Harry fends off, or more accurately, postpones, the brazen sexual invitations proffered by his wife’s lifelong friend, whose husband has recently left her.
A sub-plot develops when Harry’s beloved 30- year- old sister, Mim, visits from the West Coast, where she is a successful call girl for “gangsters.” The reader may ponder how the lives of Harry and Mim, brought up in a strict, loving Lutheran home, both fairly bright and athletic, have taken these turns into the underworld. (The answer may lie in having had unrealistic expectations amid the constrictions and dearth of opportunities in their mountainside Pennsylvania county. Both Harry’s Mom and his boss urge him to leave the county, to pursue other work.) Mim assists by bedding Charlie Stavros three times, both to infuriate Janice and to help free Stavros from the shackles of Janice. In a pathetic bedroom scene, Janice pleads Stavros that she has ruined her husband, abandoned her son and her house, and disgraced her parents, but Stavros, who struggles with heart disease, will not be bent to her will. He is not in love, and will not marry her.
A small error was noted by this reader. When Mim appears at their parents’ home, she is driving an “indigo” Toronado. Later, when Harry fantasizes about Mim and Stavros, he describes the car as “scarlet.” Did not a proofreader, or Updike himself, notice this inconsistency?
Harry’s new homelife ends in a tragic fire, with Skeeter escaping and Jill dying. Living at home with his parents, his son, and the gadfly sister, Mim, life reverts to guilt and dreariness. American astronauts are on the moon, the Viet Nam military action rages on, and Nixon is President. Nelson begins to play soccer, and Harry lives on severance pay and looks forward to unemployment checks. Janice’s fling ends, and she beseeches Harry to resume their marital life.
Thus, a slice of Pennsylvania small town life has been presented for posterity.