Rabbit Redux

By John Updike

Rabbit is up to his usual low standard in this, the second novel about Rabbit Angstrom. Not only does he slap his wife and his sometime girlfriend around, he brings a drug dealer into his home that he shares with his thirteen year old son, Nelson. Rabbit also lets a drug addict move into the house, a young teen girl, who becomes Rabbit's on again off again girlfriend. Influenced by the dealer and the addict, Rabbit begins smoking marijuana during their bull sessions in the evenings, all this in front of his son.
The novel starts out about ten years after the first novel, Rabbit, Run. Rabbit is now working at the same factory his father has worked at for decades. Jan, Rabbit's wife, is working at her father's car dealership and she has gotten involved with a fellow employee and has moved out of Rabbit's house and in with her lover, leaving Rabbit to care for their son.
A guy from work introduces Rabbit to a rich teenage girl who has run away from home and needs a place to stay. Rabbit is attracted to the girl and agrees to let her stay at his house. Somehow her drug dealer boyfriend Skeeter, who is running from the law, also ends up at the house. Rabbit, Skeeter, and the girl spend their evenings getting high and listening to Skeeter lecture Rabbit on the plight of the black man, all under the impressionable eyes of Rabbit's son.

I still hate Rabbit and I didn't like his house guests any better. Rabbit is a lousy husband and a lousy father and it was unsettling reading about Rabbit's willingness to expose his child to such unsavory behavior and characters. Rabbit and his friends and their antics were disgusting and I felt sorry for his kid being exposed to that filth. Unsurprisingly in the end it all goes up in smoke. I guess Rabbit had a good time and maybe that is all that matters to him. Still, as much as I despise Rabbit, Updike tells a pretty engrossing story, even if most of the characters in it are unsympathetic. I just hope Rabbit takes a turn for the better in the next novel, Rabbit Is Rich.

For another review see Kirkus Reviews.

New Words

Redux: Of a topic, redone, restored, brought back, or revisited.

Hectographed: a type of printing process. 'The menus are in hectographed handwriting. Nelson's face tightens, studying it.'

Ofays: a white person; white, white-skinned. 'He knows he can never make it intelligible to these three ofays that worlds do exist beyond these paper walls.'