Rating: 
Summary: Updike by the numbers
Review: ...which is not really the condemnation it appears. Updike is a fantastic writer who conveys every human experience with knowing poetic accuracy. His expressive tools are absolutely unmatched, and he remains one of my favorite authors. However, storytelling has never been his strong point, and this is no page turner. Not a whole lot happens to Rabbit, and there is little dramatic escalation to engage the reader. Middle-class sensibilities are authentically captured as always (though I could do without the surprisingly casual racism of these characters), but it's been done better in the service of more interesting narratives. My knowledge of his work is by no means comprehensive, but for expressive language wedded to provocative stories, I much prefer Roger's Version and S., as well as some of his earlier short stories. Updike's the best, but the Rabbit series seems a little flat.
Rating: 
Summary: A rich Rabbit is a Rabbit none-the-less
Review: 10 Years after the previous novel RABBIT REDUX, Rabbit Angstrom is now the owner of his late father-in-law's Toyota dealership. The Angstrom's belong to a club. They pal around with the rich element in town. Rabbit's son Nelson is starting to take after his father in some negative ways. The living characters from the previous novels all show up again. Rabbit spends much of his time reflecting not only basketball, but people now dead, and his own mortality. His marriage is now stable, though always dysfunctional, and he realizes he is entering into the 2nd half of his life. Money hasn't made Rabbit any happier. If anything he was much more easy-going when he worked with his father as a printer. The book, like the others, ends in a false hope happy ending. Read Updike if you want to ponder life or be shocked. The effort is well worth it.
Rating: 
Summary: Updike at his best: Real life, compassionately portrayed
Review: As good as the first in the "Rabbit" series. "Rabbit Is Rich" is Updike at the peak of his powers, describing in rich, vivid, compassionate detail the feelings, observations, memories, and dreams of recognizable people in mainstream American situations. As in "Rabbit, Run," the sex scenes (and the sexual energy in general) are poignant and unforgettable. Through these characters, Updike offers us a portrait of life's restlessness and the pitfalls of growing older. Like "Rabbit, Run" (and unlike "Rabbit Redux") this novel can be read as a standalone and be rewarding.
Rating:
Summary: Priceless, Gorgeous Writing
Review: Brilliant, brilliant, of course...but the thing that separates this Rabbit tale from the last two is how very little happens event-wise in the entire novel (that it is the most compelling one yet makes for a glorious paradox). Also, Updike again writes an ending as no one else does: without spoiling this one, the last three brief sentences manage to encapsulate all that has gone before them with shattering, breathtaking beauty. Rabbit is a lyric boor. His experience, narrow as it is, is also as universal as Hamlet's.
Rating:
Summary: Updike's Crisis
Review: First and foremost, this book is a quality read, and yet there is something of the disturbing nestled within its spine. This book reflects Updike's manifold anxieties, with Rabbit as the vehicle through which he spins the catalogue of his life's fears. It's as if Updike is admitting of not only an acute and often paralyzing fear of death, but also of a maddening inability to extricate himself from his sexual obsessions and childhood-rooted fascinations. Yes, the book serves as a superb commentary on the 70s and an indictment of suburban laissez-faire morality burdened with its sickening core of materialism and covetousness. Updike does indeed capture a sense of man at his worst, and perhaps, at what Upike would hold is his most genuine, no matter how depressing and depraved. Yet there is no doubt, above all, that in this novel, I believe we see Updike as he is. And, I found myself throughout the book thanking the Good Lord that I am not this way and hoping that I never will be. For Updike's subconscious and indeed his conscious seem so tortured as to prohibit him from seeing anything unqualifiedly beautiful. That which is wonderful comes with a devastating counterweight, a counterweight which amounts to a realization that we can only but be limited, our happiness unavoidably mitigated. I suppose thought the beauty of the book, and it is a wonderful book, is reflected in Rabbit's ability to surmount his myriad hang-ups and discontents en route to a delivering placidity whereby he is able to realize, that he is no better or worse than life itself, that try as he might, he is still saddled with himself, and that no cumulative cleansing will allow him to slough off his true skin. Updike has stamped this book with a truly novel achievement--it is simply a sorry state of affairs that few if any of us, could be so corrupted as to arrive at such a lofty degree of placid, deep-inhaling ambivalence.
Rating:
Summary: The Superlative Rabbit
Review: I once heard a learned friend say that 'Rabbit Is Rich' stands alongside Marquez's 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' and Kundera's 'The book of Laughter and Forgetting' as the three seminal works of the Postmodern Era. Now, me, I just a simple commodities trader, the way I would put it is that 'Rabbit Is Rich' is Updike's best. He portrays the ego, the cowardice, the greed, the racism, as well as the strength, charisma and force of character that are inherent to many Alpha Males waging war in the Free Market, whether it be cars or stocks or commodities, the result is the same, ABC: Always Be Closing...Updike hits our breed right on the nose, our Nietzschean love of power, and our true contempt for the politically correct simpering pussies who have no idea how to survive in the marketplace. Rabbit is a regular guy, a regular guy with flaws but not without his own brand of stubborn courage...and it is that hard-headed aspect, his failure to give up that makes him and this book the Richest of all.
Rating: 
Summary: a wordsmyth but no more
Review: I wonder what makes "Rabbit is Rich" so critically acclaimed. Who the hell is interested in an average American car-sales-man in his forties, decaying like a tooth somewhere in the midst of America, the worst place conceivable.
True, Updike is an unsurpassed wordsmith, but I am totally indifferent concerning the plot.
America has not very much redeeming features anyhow, except its literature, but this book is a all a yawn.
Rating:
Summary: a wordsmyth but no more
Review: I wonder what makes "Rabbit is Rich" so critically acclaimed. Who the hell is interested in an average American car-sales-man in his forties, decaying like a tooth somewhere in the midst of America, the worst place conceivable.
True, Updike is an unsurpassed wordsmith, but I am totally indifferent concerning the plot.
America has not very much redeeming features anyhow, except its literature, but this book is a all a yawn.
Rating:
Summary: Rabbit: The Next Generation
Review: In this third installment of the Rabbit series, circa 1979/1980, we find Harry ("Rabbit") Angstom confronted by inflation, gas shortages, the Carter Administration's crisis of confidence, and most importantly by his son, Nelson. Nelson, who is now in his 20's, desparately wants to work as a salesman in Rabbit's Toyota dealership, even though that would mean displacing the company's top salesman. Harry feels that Nelson lacks the necessary maturity and competence for the position and wants him to return to college in Ohio. To complicate matters, the dealership is now owned by Janice and by Rabbit's mother-in-law, who inherited the firm from Rabbit's late father-in-law. The women are on Nelson's side and, of course, gang up on Rabbit. These are only a very few of the many complications in this great novel. Updike further develops the Harry/Nelson father and son relationship that was begun in _Rabbit Redux_. Updike has an uncanny ability to write realistic dialogue. The reader is able to gets into the heart and head of Nelson, whose anguish is palpable. It is the anguish of a young man who desperately wants to break away from his family and the past, and to attain personal responsibility, while seriously questioning his readiness for independence. Nelson, thus, must not only struggle with his feelings about a very pregnant girlfriend who he feels it his responsibilty to marry and to support, but also with some very painful memories for which he severely blames his father. Mutual resentments felt by both the son AND the father are revealed. Both admit a fear that Nelson may be doomed to repeat the same mistakes made years earlier by Rabbit. The novel also realistically presents the various sexual insecurities of the average middle-aged male. Who else best represents the aging, average American male, but Harry Angstrom? Happily, Rabbit discovers much that is positive about himself in an interesting and sensitively portrayed (and unexpected) encounter with a friend's wife. I highly recommend _Rabbit Is Rich_ to everyone who truly appreciates excellent writing and rich characterizations.
Rating:
Summary: Rabbit: The Next Generation
Review: In this third installment of the Rabbit series, circa 1979/1980, we find Harry ("Rabbit") Angstom confronted by inflation, gas shortages, the Carter Administration's crisis of confidence, and most importantly by his son, Nelson. Nelson, who is now in his 20's, desparately wants to work as a salesman in Rabbit's Toyota dealership, even though that would mean displacing the company's top salesman. Harry feels that Nelson lacks the necessary maturity and competence for the position and wants him to return to college in Ohio. To complicate matters, the dealership is now owned by Janice and by Rabbit's mother-in-law, who inherited the firm from Rabbit's late father-in-law. The women are on Nelson's side and, of course, gang up on Rabbit. These are only a very few of the many complications in this great novel. Updike further develops the Harry/Nelson father and son relationship that was begun in _Rabbit Redux_. Updike has an uncanny ability to write realistic dialogue. The reader is able to gets into the heart and head of Nelson, whose anguish is palpable. It is the anguish of a young man who desperately wants to break away from his family and the past, and to attain personal responsibility, while seriously questioning his readiness for independence. Nelson, thus, must not only struggle with his feelings about a very pregnant girlfriend who he feels it his responsibilty to marry and to support, but also with some very painful memories for which he severely blames his father. Mutual resentments felt by both the son AND the father are revealed. Both admit a fear that Nelson may be doomed to repeat the same mistakes made years earlier by Rabbit. The novel also realistically presents the various sexual insecurities of the average middle-aged male. Who else best represents the aging, average American male, but Harry Angstrom? Happily, Rabbit discovers much that is positive about himself in an interesting and sensitively portrayed (and unexpected) encounter with a friend's wife. I highly recommend _Rabbit Is Rich_ to everyone who truly appreciates excellent writing and rich characterizations.
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