Back on the shelf

My single-volume edition of John Updike's series of four 'Rabbit' novels helped me out a couple of days ago when it came to marking my 600th blip, but now it's time to put it back on the shelf. I found this a bit of a difficult read, and not just because the whole thing stretched to over 1500 pages. Harry 'Rabbit' Angstrom, the main protagonist, isn't exactly an endearing character -- definitely more an anti-hero than a hero, which is probably the principal problem I have with the series. There's more, though. For starters, I found the many pages of explicit sex scenes became quite wearing, and couldn't help feeling that Mr Updike had included them rather gratuitously in order to earn himself a reputation as a bit of an enfant terrible. Then there were the sometimes interminable internal monologues. He says himself in the introduction to this revised edition that he possibly fell too much under the Joycean spell, and I'd have to agree with him. The final criticism I have is about the day-to-day-ness of a lot of the narrative. The level of detail is all a bit overdone for my liking, and I couldn't help often feeling that he needed a stronger editor who would have done some judicious pruning of the more mundane passages.

And yet ...

... there's still something about these books which sucks the reader in and leaves an indelible impression behind. A lot of this may in fact be due to the very level of detail which I've already criticised. There's no doubting the fact that John Updike conjures up a rich and strong feeling for the epic spread of American life which he covers. In this resect it was interesting to compare it with another book I'd read not long before the Rabbit ones -- Bridge of Sighs, by Richard Russo. That too succeeds wonderfully well in painting a picture of American small-town life. Russo's view is of a more run-down existence than Updike's, but both deal with the disintegration of the local living experience and its swallowing-up by big-time corporate interests. Reading both so close together was an interesting experience. If pushed to pick one over the other I'd have to go with Bridge of Sighs. Perhaps my opinion of the Rabbit books was affected by reading them all in one go (after all, they were published at 10-year intervals, so the original readers had lots of time to catch their breath between each offering). I'll remember the Updike, but I'll remember the Russo with greater fondness.

I've back-blipped yesterday: Wounded in action.