Rabbit Tales: Poetry and Politics in John Updike's Rabbit NovelsLawrence R. Broer These essays show the Rabbit novels to be a carefully crafted fabric of changing hues and textures, of social realism and something of grandeur, worthy of Dickens, Thackeray, and Joyce. In the tales of"Rabbit" Angstrom-Rabbit, Run (1960), Rabbit Redux (1971), Rabbit Is Rich (1981), and Rabbit at Rest (1990) John Updike has produced one of the most compelling literary tapestries of our time. Updike's Rabbit, the aging high-school basketball star adrift in the century's confusion, is an archetypal American hero, one strikingly real and individual yet emblematic of his class, his country, and his era. Updike's remarkable achievements in these novels as poet and historian-his ingenious weaving of lyric and epic, of art and four decades of American politics-require that the novels be read on a variety of levels, thus lending themselves to the diverse critical approaches represented in Rabbit Tales. Lawrence R. Broer brings together twelve essays by prominent Updike scholars to illuminate the unique achievement of the four Rabbit novels and demonstrate unequivocally the importance of the Rabbit novels to Updike's canon and to 20th-century American literature as a whole. |
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... move- ment . Indeed , throughout his canon Updike suggests a relationship between the loss of space in the United States and the dilution of heroism . The sound of the axes that Natty Bumppo deplores is a staple in Ace's culture ...
... move on , until there was really no place left to move to , which is where he was when he finally said “ Here . " Pos- sibly Rabbit knew where he wanted to get when he practiced and starred at basketball , but not Harry , not afterwards ...
... move into the sun- shine .... at last beyond the dark recession of crowding rocks he has seen a patch of light ; he ... moving ” ( 92 ) . Updike embraces the traditional - archetypal associations of light equaling truth , salvation ...
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Rabbit Tales: Poetry and Politics in John Updike's Rabbit Novels Lawrence R. Broer No preview available - 2000 |