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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... objects and the play of light within an interiorized space , what Malraux called “ a simplified color harmony shot through with light ” ( 339 ) . Because he treated objects and humans equally , the former acquired a sense of importance ...
... objects of the bedroom . A square bureau holds the glassy rectangle of Nelson's high - school graduation photo ; a fat pale chair holds on one arm Harry's discarded linen trousers , the folds of cloth suggesting a hollow - eyed skull ...
... objects is evident in The Centaur , where the narrator , Peter Caldwell , laments the " dull innocence " of his 4 - H Club members in their unfortunate choice of objects to favor with light : " We met in the church basement , and after ...
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Rabbit Tales: Poetry and Politics in John Updike's Rabbit Novels Lawrence R. Broer No preview available - 2000 |