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Rabbit still runs, not to escape Janice and responsibility but to try to shrink his 42-in. waist. Jogging stimulates him into philosophy: "Life tries to get a grip anywhere, on earth that is, not on the moon, that's another thing he doesn't like about the thought of climbing through the stars." Thought has become Rabbit's refuge and strength. He and Janice and two other couples take a Caribbean vacation.
Some genteel mate swapping is suggested, and Rabbit finds himself in a cabin with a woman he does not desire. He stalls in the bathroom, examining the contents of the medicine chest: "He wonders whatever happened to Ipana and what was it Consumer Reports had to say about toothpastes a few issues back ..."
Updike's prose, which has sometimes drawn criticism for its sprays of filigree, remains faithful to the concrete forms of Rabbit's imagination. Images take root in the here and now: Rabbit's merchandise ("Like a little sea of melting candy his cars bake in the sun"); a swimming pool ("lit from underneath at night as if it has swallowed the moon"); a moment in January ("It is cold, a day that might bring snow, a day that feels hollow"). These moments, and many others like them, shed radiance on Rabbit and his surroundings, the very glow of transcendence that this overweight car salesman still, stubbornly, thinks of as his birthright. He does not always see it, but Updike's readers are granted this vision and something more: a superlative comic novel that is also an American romance. —By Paul Gray —While he was writing Rabbit, Run, more than 20 years ago, John Updike discovered that "I enjoyed being inside this guy's skin." The feeling revived a decade later, when he began Rabbit Redux: "It all seemed to be there, he seemed to be ready, waiting for me, and I didn't have much trouble fitting back into a Rabbit sort of rhythm." By then, Updike realized that still another sequel might occur to him: "I left some dangling threads in that book, possibly to be picked up later. But the real shape of Rabbit Is Rich didn't occur to me until the gas crunch of June 1979."
Updike's continuing interest in Harry Angstrom has led some to suspect that Rabbit is an alter ego, the author's version of what he himself could have become had he not left Shillington, Pa., for Harvard and a glittering literary career. "Well," Updike laughs, "I'm a good deal shorter than he is" (Rabbit is 6 ft. 3 in.; his creator 6 ft.). They differ in other ways too; the attraction seems to be one of opposites:
"Rabbit does not read books; for me, who reads and writes maybe too many, it's sort of a relief to deal with a character who is quite innocent of all that." Furthermore, the young Updike never seriously considered remaining in his native state: "Had I stayed a Pennsylvanian, I would have been a much tamer one than Harry Angstrom; I'm not sure by any stretch that I could have lived his disorderly life."
Updike's life has bounced back nicely after a painful separation and divorce in the mid-'70s. He and his second wife Martha are approaching their fourth anniversary. They live in an eleven-room farmhouse, circa 1880, in Georgetown, Mass., a small town about 30 miles north of Boston.