Rabbit Redux
| File:RabbitReduxbookcover.jpg
First edition
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| Author | John Updike |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Alfred A. Knopf |
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Publication date
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1971 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover and Paperback) |
| Pages | 406 pp |
| ISBN | 0-394-47439-2 |
| OCLC | 186352 |
| 813/.5/4 | |
| LC Class | PZ4.U64 Raap 1971 PS3571.P4 |
| Preceded by | Rabbit, Run |
| Followed by | Rabbit is Rich |
Rabbit Redux is a 1971 novel by John Updike. It is the second book in his "Rabbit" series, beginning with Rabbit, Run and followed by Rabbit Is Rich, Rabbit At Rest, published from 1960 to 1990, and the related 2001 novella, Rabbit Remembered.
Plot summary
Rabbit Redux finds former high-school basketball star Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom working a dead-end job (as a Linotype operator at the local printing plant). He is approaching middle age in the declining and fictional city of Brewer, Pennsylvania, the place of his birth. When his wife leaves him for another man, Harry and his thirteen-year-old son are at a loss. He encounters people and events reflecting the state of the nation circa 1969.
Updike's recurring themes of guilt, sex, and death are joined in Redux by racism. Harry plays host to Skeeter, a cynical, drug-dealing African-American Vietnam vet who engages him in debates about the war and race relations. Jill, a wealthy white teenager fleeing suburban Connecticut, enthralls both Harry and his son. The four of them make a scandalous household emblematic of the Summer of Love's most confusing implications. Jill dies in a house fire. Harry and his wife are reconciled at book's end. The plot refers to the background of the historic Apollo 11 moon landing.
Reception
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Meaning and use of 'redux'
Redux means "brought back, restored" (from the Latin reducere – bring back).[1] Other works of literature using the same word in the title include John Dryden's Astraea Redux (1662), "a poem on the happy restoration and return of His Sacred Majesty," and Anthony Trollope's Phineas Redux (1873).
The book's popularity resulted in a rise in the use of the word "redux" in popular discourse. In Rabbit at Rest, Rabbit notices: <templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" />
a story...in the Sarasota paper a week or so ago, headlined Circus Redux. He hates that word, you see it everywhere, and he doesn't know how to pronounce it. Like arbitrageur and perestroika.[2]
Updike pronounced the word "ray-dooks."[3]
References
- ↑ Oxford English Dictionary entry for "redux".
- ↑ Rabbit at Rest, p. 50
- ↑ Updike, John. "A 'Special Message' to purchasers of the Franklin Library limited edition, in 1981, of Rabbit Redux." Hugging the Shore: Essays and Criticism, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983. 858–859.
External links
- Anatole Broyard, "Review: 'Rabbit Redux' ", New York Times, 5 November 1971
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