It should come as no surprise that the new decade finds Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom once again keeping time with death. It has always been one of his more familiar companions; it’s part of what gives him more substance than any other Updike character. John Updike has made the play of words on paper his life–in poetry, in fiction–and the world he creates exists as few other fictional worlds do. Yet he’s always been overly willing to ornament that world with the trappings of his own life–the comfortable settings, the nagging ethics, and the more than occasional philanderings of middle-class and upper-middle-class existence as it’s played out in homes where the most recent New Yorker rests on the coffee table.
“Do you ever get the feeling, now that Bush is in, that we’re kind of on the sidelines, that we’re sort of like a big Canada, and what we’re doing doesn’t much matter to anybody else? Maybe that’s the way it ought to be. It’s kind of a relief, I guess, not to be the big cheese.”
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In Rabbit Is Rich, Updike finds real power in the elementary concept that life goes on: Rabbit surrenders space, material goods, energy to his offspring. It’s something the novelist attempts to build on in Rest. That same granddaughter, now nine years old, is the one who triggers Rabbit’s heart attack on the sailboat, by either hiding or drowning under the fallen sail. (It’s one of the few ambiguous events in the book–aside from the very end, of course.) In Rest Rabbit is forced to make room for Nelson on the Springer Motors Toyota lot where Rabbit himself found sanctuary only a decade before, but Nelson wastes the opportunity because of his cocaine addiction (of course, since this is the 80s). In the end, even Rabbit’s home is jeopardized by his offspring. Rabbit characterizes his routine, day-to-day heart pains as “that singeing sensation . . . as if a child inside him is playing with lighted matches.” While this metaphor builds on the idea of family as the emblem of death, it is also trite, and Updike hammers away at the line. A few pages later, “That bad child inside his chest keeps playing with matches”; and much later, “That evil child is still playing with matches in there.”
I’m no more convinced that our society is dying than I am that Rabbit is dead. Even the dust jacket calls Rest Updike’s “final” Rabbit opus, but the text is not so conclusive. Rabbit’s last word is “enough,” but the penultimate word is “maybe,” leaving Updike the option of continuing. In Rest he shows no desire to continue, which is one reason Rabbit’s death has been so universally assumed, but I think that in ten years, with the culture proving itself as endlessly vital as ever–no matter what beckons, war, depression, or President Madonna–Updike may be moved to revive his greatest character. Without feeling obligated to put a Rabbit book on the market, Updike might actually return to the character and find him and the world he occupies both refreshed.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): illustration/Kevin Kurtz.
