We thought he was gone. When we last saw Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom he
was lying in a hospital bed in Florida, his heart having exploded while driving
hard for the hoop in a pick-up game of one-on-one. Rabbit at Rest was the
name of the book, and the title meant what it said.
Or so it seemed.
Licks of Love is a collection of short stories and a novella,
"Rabbit Remembered."
The Rabbit novels (Rabbit, Run (1960), Rabbit Redux
(1971), Rabbit is Rich (1981), and Rabbit at Rest (1990)) were an
American chronicle, a series of check-ups run every ten years on the national
soul. Now, with the passing of another decade (not to mention the millennium),
Updike revisits the lives of those touched by his most enduring and endearing
fictional creation.
The results are hard to judge. To say that "Rabbit Remembered" isn’t
as strong as the previous installments in the Rabbit saga may be missing the
point. Rabbit was Updike’s embodiment of Shaw’s Life Force: a genial virus
of libido with an almost religious dedication to the principles of propagation
and pleasure. Absent Rabbit’s amoral yet weirdly spiritual urges, his mid-town
Pennsylvania world is a poorer place.
We know how much has changed, for the worse, with the opening words:
"Janice Harrison goes to the front door . . . " It’s only a proper
name, but what a falling off is there! Rabbit’s widow has gone and married the
odious Ronnie Harrison, a satyr to Harry’s Hyperion if ever there was.
As things turn out, Janice Harrison is going to the front door because Harry’s
illegitimate daughter is ringing the bell. The two have never met, and the
resulting interview is awkward to say the least. For the rest of the novella
Rabbit’s family tries to come to terms - not only with the unexpected
appearance of Annabelle, but with all of the physical and emotional fruit of
Rabbit’s unorthodox past.
At their best the Rabbit novels had a kind of energy and abundance that is
mostly missing here. What Rabbit was all about was the need to run, to escape,
to push the narrow limits of his conventional, middle-class life. Unfortunately,
nobody he has left behind (with the possible exception of his absent
granddaughter) feels the same way. "Rabbit Remembered" is all about
settling down, drawing together, strengthening old emotional ties and forging
new ones. A sentimental nesting impulse has taken over. Rabbitism has been
exorcized.
And yet, compared to the dull generations pressing forward into the 21st
century, his ghost seems so alive.
Notes:
Review first published January 13, 2001.
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