Editors Reads Verdict
The Pulitzer Prize winner of the tetralogy — Rabbit at the peak of his material success and the depth of his spiritual vacancy. Updike's social observation is at its most acute, the comedy at its most comfortable, and the sadness running beneath it at its most persistent.
What We Loved
- Updike's social observation is at its peak here — the texture of American middle-class life in 1979 is rendered with extraordinary precision
- The comedy is Updike's warmest and most fully earned across the tetralogy
- The Rabbit-Nelson relationship captures a specific father-son dynamic — the successful father who cannot understand the son he has damaged
Minor Drawbacks
- The novel rewards readers who have read Rabbit, Run — some of its satisfactions depend on that history
- Rabbit's sexual obsessions, which Updike renders in detail, will be off-putting to some readers
Key Takeaways
- → Success does not resolve the restlessness that drove Rabbit to run — it merely gives it better furnishings
- → The 1979 energy crisis is Updike's vehicle for examining a specifically American anxiety: the end of abundance
- → Fatherhood in the Rabbit novels is always a repetition — Rabbit does to Nelson what was done to him, without understanding how
| Author | John Updike |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Fawcett |
| Pages | 467 |
| Published | January 1, 1981 |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Literary Fiction, American Literature |
| Difficulty | Intermediate |
| Best For | Readers of American literary fiction who want the definitive portrait of suburban American life in the late 1970s, and Updike readers working through the tetralogy. |
The Comfortable Man
Harry Angstrom has arrived. The Toyota dealership he inherited from his father-in-law Springer is profitable: the gas crisis of 1979 has made fuel-efficient Japanese cars desirable, and Rabbit is on the right side of history by accident. He plays golf. He has money. He is a member of the Flying Eagle Tee and Racquet Club. He is bored.
Updike’s great formal achievement in Rabbit Is Rich is rendering comfort as a form of suffering. Rabbit has everything he wanted in 1960 when he first ran, and having it is not what he imagined it would be. He is still looking for something — a woman, a sensation, a moment of the intensity that basketball once provided.
Nelson
The novel’s secondary conflict is between Rabbit and his son Nelson, who has returned from Kent State with a pregnant girlfriend, Pru, and demands a role in the dealership. Rabbit does not want him there. Their antagonism is the novel’s comic and painful engine.
Updike won the Pulitzer Prize for Rabbit Is Rich in 1982, and the novel also won the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award — a rare triple. It is the tetralogy’s most formally comfortable entry, the one in which Updike and Rabbit are most at ease with each other.
Our rating: 4.2/5 — The Pulitzer-winning peak of the tetralogy; Rabbit at his most comfortable and his most restless.
Reading Guides
Frequently Asked Questions
What is "Rabbit Is Rich" about?
Harry 'Rabbit' Angstrom is 46, co-owner of a Toyota dealership, a member of the country club, comfortable and bored in the Pennsylvania suburb he once tried to escape. It is 1979: the gas crisis, Carter's malaise speech, Iran. His son Nelson has come back with a pregnant girlfriend. Updike's Pulitzer Prize winner — middle-class American contentment as its own form of dissatisfaction.
Who should read "Rabbit Is Rich"?
Readers of American literary fiction who want the definitive portrait of suburban American life in the late 1970s, and Updike readers working through the tetralogy.
What are the key takeaways from "Rabbit Is Rich"?
Success does not resolve the restlessness that drove Rabbit to run — it merely gives it better furnishings The 1979 energy crisis is Updike's vehicle for examining a specifically American anxiety: the end of abundance Fatherhood in the Rabbit novels is always a repetition — Rabbit does to Nelson what was done to him, without understanding how
Is "Rabbit Is Rich" worth reading?
The Pulitzer Prize winner of the tetralogy — Rabbit at the peak of his material success and the depth of his spiritual vacancy. Updike's social observation is at its most acute, the comedy at its most comfortable, and the sadness running beneath it at its most persistent.
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