Rabbit
Redux by John Updike – a previous note on this book has been published at http://realini.blogspot.com/2016/03/rabbit-redux-by-john-updike-great-book.html
10 out of
10
This is the
second time I have read Rabbit Redux and this is because I have enjoyed the
tetralogy, critics say it is ‘a masterpiece’ and it is included on The 100 Best
novels Written in English compiled by The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/aug/17/the-100-best-novels-written-in-english-the-full-list and most of all, it is a pleasure
to read and it navigates easily, even in audiobook format…
The hero
aka anti-hero or just a common man we have met in Rabbit Run, the first part of
the roman fleuve, his name is Harry Angstrom aka Rabbit, and we can see quite a
few things we share with him, just as we have many differences, this being the
archetypal (maybe) American man of the sixties and we come from across the
globe
He has been
a fabulous basketball player in his teenage days, but later on, the promise has
been not fulfilled and he has lost his wife, job and spoiler alert – since this
note is not about Rabbit Run, I could say that the protagonist has a daughter
die, because she is accidentally drowned by Janice, her alcoholic mother, and
then Harry shares in the blame – and he is now trying to find his way, a new
identity maybe
Surely the
most important aspect that I like about this read is how much I now have in
common with Rabbit, if some decades ago I would be outraged by the equanimity with
which he takes the affair that his wife, Janice, has with her father’s
salesman, Charlie Stavros, now I am quite serene about it and find that I take
my spouse’s almost daily evasions, the long weekend trips with serious doses of
ataraxia.
There are
more than qualms about this, but they are mainly or even exclusively directed
at the money spent on these outings, the perils involved by the terrorizing,
upcoming new crisis and not by some the possible, nay, sure innuendo, and the
disparaging fact concerns the attitude of contempt, which is one of the Four
horsemen of the Apocalypse, as identified by the quintessential expert on
relationships, John Gottman, author of the classic The seven Principles of
Making Marriage Work
http://realini.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-seven-principles-of-making-marriage.html the others are Defensiveness, Stonewalling
and Criticism
Harry
Angstrom is not an innocent, injured party, for he has had an affair with Ruth
(maybe a child resulted from the intimacy) and he had driven away from home,
thinking he may end up on the ocean coast, somewhere in the South, maybe in red
Texas (red for the cult of Trump, not the communism which was associated with
that color in our part of the world) and furthermore, he has a relationship
with a teenager.
Jill settles
in the house where Janice has gone missing, and she has intercourse with
Rabbit, trying to recover from our own traumas, she has run away from home, the
place where her mother lives with her step father, taking away the white Porsche
with he (incidentally, VW has just put out shares in this company for sale, and
the estimation may make it the second most valuable car company in the world, second
only to Tesla, the toy of the crazy, richest man on the planet, who had just interfered
in the war in Ukraine…after he had initially backed the right side, giving
access to the crucial Star link system, he now talks of peace [which would be
lovely] but on some Russian terms, with them keeping the Crimea and presumably
some of the land they have invaded in this goddamn war) and she would destroy
the luxury vehicle.
She would
drive it without oil and so the engine would be ruined, but she is not the only
one to do that, for we have Skeeter mistreating the automobile – Skeeter is a
drug dealer wanted by the police, who seems to think to think he is the new Messiah
or Jesus, he keeps saying ‘right’ and has a speech that is both dazzling and
somewhat hard to believe…would a normal person talk like that, never mind one
with little education.
However,
let me refer to the wondrous To The Hermitage http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/09/to-hermitage-by-malcolm-bradbury-author.html by Malcolm Bradbury, wherein he
writes about the fabulous advantage of engaging with the literary world, where
everything is so much more interesting (his humor is unique and he says unless
we are talking Kafka or Beckett) the characters are much cleverer, the events
satisfying, scintillating (he does not use those words, of course, but you
could and should look for the magnum opus and/or the passages in question) the
readers have access to a phenomenal world and they can do that from their home,
or bed and then we could add the quote from Umberto Eco which gives readers
‘Immortality backwards’ assured for us by reading, which means living five
thousand lives, as opposed to the ones who do not read and have only one, alas…
I will
return to what makes this magnum opus (in the words of TIME Magazine) so much
more important for me, the fact that there are many parallels between the life
of Rabbit and my own, at least in the part covered by Redux and some of the
aspects that define what we do now, first of all, the continuous fighting with
the spouse and the separation that is in effect, not taken to a divorce yet
(albeit who knows, maybe she is seeing a lawyer right now, however implausible,
seeing that she woke up early and taken the car yet again on one of her regular
long, fuel consuming trips to who knows where, maybe Predeal)
Harry
Angstrom is resigned to the situation and eventually, he will even accept
Charlie Stravros working for him, and just as he does, I tolerated the fact
that I spend most of my time with the babies (aka the two macaws, Balzac and
Puccini) at home, but the extent of the spending, the travels, the insults have
become too much lately, and even if stoic precepts come to mind (wish for what
you already have) and an inclination to laughter, self-deprecating humor can
take over, still, taking all that much shit can be overwhelming…right now, she
may be in the mountains, with her sister or who knows what (that Raymond fellow
may be there as well) and the whole expense is on my tab, the silly son of a
bitch that is good for nothing, though a hero of the revolution – check this
out http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html -and able to do this http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world
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