I'm half-way through the 'Rabbit' Quartet. John Updike certainly wrote beautifully. It can be quite raw; and certainly his protagonist Harry 'Rabbit' Angstrom is a difficult character to stomach at times. Rabbit displays deeply sexist and racist tendancies. Attitudes that would be regarded as politically incorrect nowadays - including his unwavering support for the Vietnam War. The sex is raw. Yet the humanity and honesty of the narrative is transcendant. I wonder how black readers view his depiction of the character "Skeeter", a Vietnam vet who has distinctly 'Black Panther' and messianic leanings and appears to supply the eighteen year-old feral preppy, Jill with chemicals that hastens her downfall. As the author says in the Afterword '...the trip to the moon is the central metaphor. "Trip" in the Sixties parlance meant an inner journey of some strangeness.' Far out!
I spent the summer of 1970 working as a student in the United States (near Woodstock in Upstate New York). The zeitgeist depicted in 'Rabbit Redux' and Philip Roth's 'American Pastoral' has a familiar if dream-like resonance.
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