But while these earlier heroes inhabit a world now irrecoverable, Rabbit dwells in our time, in our place. Indeed, Rabbit Angstrom is becoming as definitive a figure for our cultural consciousness as Mark Twain’s Huck Finn, Ernest Hemingway’s Nick Adams and William Faulkner’s Ike McCaslin. Now with the release of Rabbit Is Rich (Knopf, 467 pp., $13.95), it is fair to say that Updike’s “Rabbit” books are forming an American saga. John Updike is our finest literary celebrant both of human ambiguity and human acceptance.Īt the beginning of this decade and each of the past two, John Updike has published a novel about Harry (Rabbit) Angstrom, his prototypical American character who embodies the fears and hopes, the vices and virtues, of our age. The product of Updike’s natural religion is his conviction that God is discovered, if at all, in the irresolvable dialectic of human existence. Current articles and subscription information can be found at This material was prepared for Religion Online by Ted & Winnie Brock. Copyright by the Christian Century Foundation and used by permission. This article appeared in the Christian Century January 20, 1982, p. Wood’s most recent book is The Comedy of Redemption: Christian Faith and Comic Vision in Four American Novelists (Notre Dame).
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