The End, My Only Friend

Coming near to the end of this semester, and subsequently this course, I am compelled to write here about the course overall. Consider this a conclusion or a mopping up of the semester. It might be choppy in some areas, but overall will explain my process and journey from this course.

First, credit where credit is due. Professor Myers has been a wonderful guide and mentor. I appreciate his knowledge not only on literature and criticism, but also on life and America through the years. We have had many conversations together and I have learned much from him. This semester went well and flowed easily from one book to another, just as we had planned. I like the stories we chose and if there was one regret I had it would be that we have run out of time and cannot complete any more stories. Professor Myers also pushed me to consider the blog format as an effective medium to share my ideas and opinions and I thank him also for that. If it wasn't for the blog, I would have been pressed into writing a research thesis about these themes and stories, something that I loathe to consider as an undergraduate student. I know that publishing your work and researching topics is the mantra of the nation's universities, but I am a man of the times and like this casual online medium. Plus, my friends and family have the opportunity to read it and I like that. So, blogs good; thesis bad. (And full disclosure, I did not write this paragraph to garner praise from Myers. He is already too full of himself to receive anymore unwarranted praise. This was my public thanks to him because he works hard and I appreciate him taking the time to mentor me as he has.)

When I came across the nucleus of an idea to do independent study Myers and I were discussing Updike, I think, and his work with the Bech novels. So it came to be that we studied Updike because he is one of my favorites and Myers knew enough about him and the contemporary style to discuss these things with me. I cannot consider another writer that I am as fond of who also has the vast library of published works that Updike has. He has enough to fill a semester and more. Sure, I could have slogged through Hemingway or debated the merits of Heller with Myers, but Updike, unassuming, details oriented writer that he is offered the best opportunity to study fiction for me. Now, I come away with something more. I hold a deeper understanding of the writer and his ideas than when I had picked up a paperback of Rabbit is Rich for the first time. I now see more than the words on the page and the characters, I understand better the themes and motivations that the author put into his works. I am glad we studied such a storied (yes, pun) author and would do it again.

As a critic and a reader, I am more astute at discerning meaning within a story. Myers has his own rules for critiquing literature and Updike had his too, which were some of the most widely known in the world of criticism. But as a reader and student I have come up with my own too. These are aimed at people like myself who don't do it for pay but have more than a passing interest in the works that they read.

1. What is the author saying? This is the most fundamental question and the one that requires the most time spent to me. As a reader your first priority is to understand what the author is saying. Now, this does not mean parrot back what is printed on the page. Things are not always what they seem. Read the words and decide what the author is saying. This can be in subtext, or in plot details but most of all see and understand what is being done on the page.

2. To whom is he speaking? As a reader, you singularly are not always the recipient of the message. The author might be speaking through his words and through you to someone else. Whether it is a person, group or society in general it helps to see 1. what the author is saying and 2. to whom is he saying it?

3. Sweat the small stuff. Authors like Updike love to throw major themes and morality judgments at you through asides, actions, plot and objects. Just because it isn't said by a character doesn't mean that it isn't important. Don't gloss over the smaller things because a master of the mundane like Updike will throw major points at you there and you will miss them.

4. Speak up. Don't like a book? Say so. Think that a novel won't have staying power into the next decade? Preach, sister. Want to demean and degrade an author for his choice of setting or flat characters? Do it. Look, in my opinion fewer people are reading novels these days. Electronic formats have driven the masses away from books in favor of news and magazine articles. This means that writers will do more in an attempt to drive sales. But do not forget quality writing in the face of more sales. My point here is this, writers need to know if they are doing their jobs well or not. How else will they know if they are writing good stories or not? When you read, talk about it with other people and express yourself. Share your opinions and back them up with your arguments.

5. Jeffrey Eugenides sucks. Actually that's not a rule, just wanted to again express my distaste over The Marriage Plot which Myers loves and has sold well. Basically its a novel about books. Yawn. The conventions that Eugenides uses are campy and outdated to me (giving characters names that point to inner attributes, quoting French metaphysics that nobody has ever heard of, and the 1980's East Coast college setting) and overall it was about 150 pages too long. More length does not a good book make.

6. Electronic or paper, just read. I have a Kindle and like it. But i still buy paperbacks sometimes. I cannot say either format is better, I just want more people to use one of either to read more novels.

Those are my rules for fiction and have come in handy as this semester went. Sometimes it is critical, especially when you keep reading stories by the same author, to get back to basics and consider the building blocks of a story. Getting the ground up approach where you take the big things first and stack the details on top helped me with some of the works that shared themes or characters because getting bogged down is no fun.

What Held Updike Back

As we finish this semester, we have explored many crevices of the life and times of one John Updike; an American author, novelist and critic who's works have outlasted his lifespan and will continue for decades to come. I have thoroughly enjoyed this study and it has made me a better reader and critic. We studied sex, the suburbs, religion and America through the decades. However, a fair assessment and conclusion is what comes at the end: a legacy. There is no doubt that Updike is a literary legend, a titan in anyone's measure. But there is a glaring flaw to his career which saddens me, this is the fact that Updike left no literary progeny. While Hemingway can point to Mark Twain as his inspiration and model as an author, Myers and I found no such relationship for Updike. He is a man who lived and wrote alone. Taking on the American suburbs with the view for the contemporary is admirable and bold. But, there is no one who does this same thing now. No one comments on America in such a fashion or centers his works on a character like Rabbit.

Why does no one hold the flame for Updike today? I have several ideas as to why but there is one that stands out more than others. Updike has no followers because in his works he held total control. When I say that I mean this: Updike's characters said and did exactly what he told them to say and do and they did no more. Never does a man like Rabbit or Nelson take on lives or personas outside of their respective typecasts. After the first two books, Rabbit's moves and mannerisms become predictable and somewhat stale. He continues the same choices that got him into the messes he started with his family and job life and does not see that the troubles continue. Updike was too afraid to relinquish control. This is tricky because all fiction is made up and characters are all written by an author; but consider this: Yossarian changed war novels forever. Period. Everyone since Heller has written about war with a cockeyed view. Long gone are the days of the stoic soldiers fighting for a cause, knife gritted between their teeth, hacking and slashing their way through nameless and faceless enemies for God and country. All Quiet on The Western Front is a beautiful novel about war and the individual, but it comes nowhere near the realization that war is an insane proposition. Those soldiers of the Kaiser fought because it was their duty and death in the field was just bad fortune. No. Today's war author considers the other guys, after all they are humans too, and sees that the "good" guys and "bad" guys want the same thing: to survive a situation in which they have little control and the forces in action are greater than themselves. Yossarian helps us to see the futility of war and its effect on the individual. Making war a farce was Heller's calling and he did it quite well. But without Yossarian none of this would be possible. Heller sort of gave his careening bombardier a push and the character took off by himself. Yossarian Lives is not just the cult slogan for those of us who love Catch 22, it is also a literary saying that Yossarian lives outside of the novel, that is his situations and personality can exist outside of the book. Updike never allowed his characters such freewill.

Also none of his characters are "smarter" than him. All of his books are written in third person. And where a smart character would say something intuitive or intelligent or do something outside of himself Updike's ever present and omniscient Narrator jumps in and offers expert analysis and commentary. Where Updike should be offering thoughts on baseball in Rabbit, Redux it is instead the Narrator acting in his stead. Rabbit would be a different and more interesting character if he were allowed to offer Updike's thoughts on baseball himself instead of the Narrator. If Rabbit offered some salient point on the national pastime or discussed how the forced interaction with his father in law and son made him feel would be better for all involved. It would make Updike look that much more benevolent as an author because he allowed his character to voice Updike instead of Updike voicing Updike, it would be better for Rabbit because it would show the audience that Rabbit is capable of complex thought and further it would be better for the audience and longevity of the work because instead of the author directly speaking he would offer his thoughts through the filter of the character which is not only more empathetic but intersting too. Its like the voice over in a sitcom or the future Ted Mosby talking to his dumbass kids in the insufferable How I Met Your Mother. (My hatred for that show deserves its own post but suffice to say that I find Ted to be laughably weak and creepily fixated on getting married, I find Robin to be an unpleasant distraction if she isn't going to end up as Ted's wife. Further I think that Jason Segal and his redheaded wife don't add anything and that Neil Patrick Harris' back must be killing him from carrying this enema of a show.) 

Further, this fits in line with Updike's fervent devotion to Realism. Updike always wrote within the realm of the real because he lacked the imagination to see outside of those walls. Why didn't Ahmad blow up the tunnel in Terrorist? Because Updike has no concept of the mind of a terrorist, and since he cannot comprehend those machinations he leaves the end of the story with no conclusion other than the tunnel is intact and our fair weather terrorist going home to live another day in Jersey. A more imaginative writer (or at least one who did his homework) could conceive Ahmad blowing up the tunnels in a tribute to his deadbeat father or as an anger fueled rejection of his mother's lax Catholicism. What I am saying is that because Updike only wrote and acted within the bounds of that which he could see and comprehend, he bungled the end of Terrorist and showed the limits of his writing prowess.

Now, it pains me to write so disparagingly about Updike. He is a great author and man in his own right and my undergraduate complaints certainly don't permeate the vast library he wrote. But don't forget that Updike only just died in 2009. He is still widely read and consulted as an expert on words and ideas. However, he has no family tree. Consider this: great coaches are measured on their wins and championships but they are also judged on how many successful coaches they produced too. Woody Hayes won championships, but guess what? He taught Bo Schembechler, Lou Holtz, Ara Parseghian and Earle Bruce. Good list, but if you take it a step further those guys brought Pete Carrol, Urban Meyer, Jim Tressel, Nick Saban and Ron Zook among others by their tutelage. Now if you add up the number of football championships that have been won because of Woody Hayes it is astounding. This is my point, success breeds success. Rarely is there one man who is successful and doesn't pass the good stuff along. Updike breaks the trend. He is the exception, the man who didn't have a protege.

Time Magazine lists are Foolhardy

Time Magazine compiled a list of the top ten Updike books. The full list can be seen here: http://entertainment.time.com/2009/01/28/top-10-john-updike-books/slide/the-rabbit-books-1960-2001/ . While researching the internet for more information on Picked Up Pieces I came across this list. I feel book lists are flawed, ranking authors by novels is a subjective procedure. This list only appeals to the following groups of people:

1. Fans of Updike-If you are already a fan of the man's works you would be inclined to view a list like this because you either want a) your opinions on the author and his works validated or b) you want to read more Updike and don't know where to find it. These people really don't need a list like this.

2. Literary Critics-This subset is responsible for book lists. They spend time compiling lists like these and reading lists by other critics. For them there is relatively little skin in the game. Right or wrong these lists don't affect them.

3. People Who Only Read What's Popular In That Moment (AKA Jonathan Franzen's entire fanbase)- These people don't have any real interest in fiction or authors. They lack the necessary skills to discern good literature from bad. These are the people who buy novels because Oprah tells them to; they are also the people who consider Fifty Shades of Grey to be a quality novel because it was popular and contained graphic sex, never realizing that the books were sensational and smut. I have little time for people like these because they don't really read fiction nor do they really understand what goes into a novel to make it work. They see an Oprah sticker or Franzen on the cover of Time with the headline "Next Great American Author" and buy his garbage without a second thought. 

Basically I don't like these lists because of what they leave in (popular works and big name authors regardless of content) and what they leave out (novels by lesser known authors that have put something real into their novels). I will now give you the entire list and my comments on each selection.

1. The Rabbit Books- Not only picking one of the tetrology, they decide to include all of the stories. I would have separated them out because I feel that Rabbit is Rich is the best of the four. Rabbit Redux is the weakest and Rabbit at Rest and Rabbit, Run fall somewhere in the middle. I think it is fitting that these books come first on the list, they are the books that not only made Updike famous but they are also the first Updike I read and loved.

2. The Early Stories 1953-1975- Now, I have not read much of Updike's short stories but those that I have are excellent with A&P being by far my favorite. Maybe ranked a little high but by writing for the New Yorker Updike gained influence, a voice and an audience. His short stories are bright and use their sparse words well providing description in a small space.

3. The Centaur- This won Updike the National Book Award and is one that I have not read, so I won't comment further. If it's good enough for the critics then it's good enough for me.

4. Couples- Excellent novel and the one that sparked the sexual revolution in America. Ranked fourth is well enough because it is not as widely known as his later works but it is influential for many reasons. Basically know this: if Couples describes the Revolution, then Rabbit is the aftermath.

5. Bech- Widely read and known trilogy of stories about a Jewish novelist, Updike really was at the height of his powers in the 1970's and this work reflects that. However, at least one working critic (and oddly enough it is my mentor D.G. Myers) argues that Bech doesn't work because Updike isn't Jewish and can't accurately describe the lives of contemporaries like Malamud, Bellow and Roth. I think this book is too high on the list not because of notoriety but because it just didn't fit.

6. Picked Up Pieces- Updike's first work of literary criticism and the first work that proved he can not only write his own works but discern in other's writing what is good and what isn't. I was working on this one this week and will write about it further down in the post. 

7. Hugging the Shore- I know nothing about this work and frankly didn't know that it existed. A shame too, because I wish that I could go further but my time is limited within the semester format.

8. Witches of Eastwick- Lame. 

9. Roger's Version- Once again not a book that I know well. Whoever compiled this list did well. Maybe my above comments are incorrect, these lists serve some purpose.

10. Just Looking: Essays on Art- AHA! Here is the art book. Of the three secret things, Updike covers all but this in the novels we have covered. Clearly we needed to do our homework next time and consider more works outside of the mainstream. After all, Updike wrote for over fifty years so naturally some works might fall between the cracks. 

So, overall this list is incomplete to me because I haven't covered all of them. But further it means that Updike was noteworthy enough to warrant a list of his own.

As far as Picked Up Pieces is concerned, to understand Updike's criticism you have to first look at his "rules for criticism." There are five of them and they go as follows:

 1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation—at least one extended passage—of the book’s prose so the review’s reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending. (How astounded and indignant was I, when innocent, to find reviewers blabbing, and with the sublime inaccuracy of drunken lords reporting on a peasants’ revolt, all the turns of my suspenseful and surpriseful narrative! Most ironically, the only readers who approach a book as the author intends, unpolluted by pre-knowledge of the plot, are the detested reviewers themselves. And then, years later, the blessed fool who picks the volume at random from a library shelf.)

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author’s ouevre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it’s his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser. Do not accept for review a book you are predisposed to dislike, or committed by friendship to like. Do not imagine yourself a caretaker of any tradition, an enforcer of any party standards, a warrior in an idealogical battle, a corrections officer of any kind. Never, never (John Aldridge, Norman Podhoretz) try to put the author “in his place,” making him a pawn in a contest with other reviewers. Review the book, not the reputation. Submit to whatever spell, weak or strong, is being cast. Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.

Basically the main thrust of these rules is technical in nature and asks the reviewer to limit the scope of the criticism to everything that the author intended. Pieces does this almost to a fault. In fact, this work of criticism is sometimes too nice and gives authors too much credit. I think this speaks to Updike being new at criticism and perhaps not wanting to step on too many toes. But he does follow his rules and consider the realizations of criticism that everything is on the table and most importantly, after recognizing the boundaries that the author created, everything is fair game.

Picked Up Pieces is the first try of a man to enter the world of criticism and I give Updike much credit for crossing the boundary into "the other side" from author to critic. It's tough for me to read but somewhat makes sense. Updike proves that he is America's man of words with this and his other criticism because he successfully expands his career into writing all sorts of genres. 

Professor Myers is a working critic and he responds to me that Updike laid out some sort of scientific process for judging books. That by leveling the field one can critique each book based on its own merit. He cautioned me to read everything with a sharp eye and realize that there is a void between the author, the work and the critic. Much like Bernie Taupin and Elton John in their early days together as singer and songwriter the author and critic don't converse when they are working. Updike is better than most at bridging the gap by considering the author's point of view and writing to educate the audience and not be overly harsh to the original writer. I enjoyed Picked Up Pieces and look forward to the end of our course with Due Considerations in a couple of weeks.

Terrorist and The End of a Career

Terrorist was published in 2006. John Updike died in 2009. This was one of his last novels and his last political novel. Obviously drawing from post-9/11 sentiment in America as well as the difficulty of Islamic issues and tensions in the country; Terrorist is the story of an Islamic youth and his struggle to become a man. Terming this novel as a bildungsroman is not exactly correct because the story is not totally a journey of coming to age. Ahmad Ashmawy Mulloy is the teenage son of an Egyptian man, who abandoned his son when he was three, and Teresa Mulloy a woman lapsed in both her Irish heritage and her birthright Catholicism. Living in northern New Jersey, the young man has a strong belief in his faith and is the prized pupil of the local imam, Shaikh Rashid. Ahmad early on has a school scuffle with a boy who accuses him of having desire for the boy's girlfriend. Ahmad not only avoids the fight but also represses his sexuality toward the girl because he believes that is what God asks of him.

Continuing on, Ahmad is pushed by his guidance counselor to attend college after he completes high school. Ahmad is a good student but chooses to become a truck driver because he believes that higher leaning is dangerous and against God's plan for him. He feels that being a driver will allow him to work with his hands and keep himself closer to God.

Ahmad is drawn into an Islamic terrorist plot to blow up the Lincoln Tunnel. He will fill his truck with explosives, block the tunnel and suicide bomb the tunnel all in the name of Allah. Now, your author has several issues with the above scene and the author who created it. First, I am a proud American. I have proudly proclaimed, "God bless America; and nowhere else." This country has lost thousands of lives to international terror. Oklahoma City, New York, Washington DC and Pennsylvania have all felt the scourge of terrorist action on this soil, not to mention Americans have been killed abroad in places like Somalia, Libya, Lebanon and Afghanistan fighting terror. My grandfather, great-grandfather and two uncles all served this country in the military and my great-grandfather lost his life in Korea defending out liberty. My father is a firefighter and I know he feels the sorrow and pain of FDNY losing 343 valiant men on 9/11 simply doing their jobs. In short, I have no tolerance for radical Islam. Those people hold no value for this world and their lives in it for them to do what they have done. I defend our support for the fight against global terror and the plight of Israel as they defend their sovereignty in the world.

Now, having said that, I think of Updike. And I think of The Coup where he wrote about Islam in Africa. That novel was political and included beliefs and lifestyles that are outside the norm for a chronicler of the suburbs. I feel that he did it well in The Coup but in Terrorist he is out of touch. He doesn't accurately depict what drives the young Ahmad to do what he does. Ahmad is an American and lives a good life (or as good a life can be led in New Jersey) and never in the novel do I really understand what drives him.

In the end Ahmad does not follow through with his plot, being told by his counselor that the plan is known by the FBI and they are ready to apprehend him as soon as he enters the tunnel. Again this detail is not fleshed out well by the aging Updike. It saddens me to see such a master at a loss within his own work. He forgets that the devil is in the details, and that minutiae that made him famous is lost in the work. He tries to jump on the political sentiment in the wake of 9/11 and the new opinions on Islam in this country. But, by 2006 he is somewhat late. So, a day late and a dollar short Updike publishes a novel that is short on details and long on ambitions. Melding the suburbs and a new idea like radical Islam should have been right up Updike's alley. But because he is lacking in detail the work falls short of what is promised. I wish I had never read this one because it diminishes my opinion of the author. As Kenny Loggins says, "You gotta know when to hold em, and when to fold em." And, like the proverbial cowboy having defeated the bad guys, Updike should have known when enough was enough, and he should have rode off into the sunset and left this book in his pocket. We all would have been better off.

Spiritual Iffyness

James Yerkes wrote a book about John Updike's thoughts and messages on religion. Yes, one author wrote about another and they both used printed media to spread their message. Somewhere the space time continuum is collapsing. Yerkes, whom I give credit for having studied Updike far longer and deeper than myself, quotes Updike by saying that there are three great "secret things" in humanity: they are sex, religion and art. This gives me pause; first because if I had known that two months ago all of this shit would have certainly been easier to write. The other is because of how these things are found in the Rabbit books.

Sex is not gratuitous in the Rabbit novels. There is no great love for the physical act found in Rabbit. Even in his younger days he seemed tired of sex, as though during his high school days and time in the Army he had had his fun. But these are not the sex novels. We covered sex and Updike's thoughts on the subject are contained in Couples. So, moving on.

Art. At this I shrug my shoulders. Rabbit is no art fan. Brewer is devoid of artistic culture, there is no Short North district there and no public sentiment that more art is better for the city and its denizens. I have yet to read Updike's "art" novel and I am doubting if there is one. But, the interesting thing here that leads into religion is this: Brewer, Pennsylvania is completely devoid of those sacred institutions of the spirit. This town never had an artist or a gallery. Never contained a live theater nor were there citizens who clamored for it. Hmm. I believe that I have discovered the "fatal flaw" of Harold "Rabbit" Angstrom and his universe and it is this: because there are no temples to the human spirit and no celebrations of human existence, the people lead empty lives. When they encounter hardship and tragedy, they look for answers. However, because there is no beauty and no spirituality they are left looking around for something that never existed. So, because they do not know what they never had they feel empty but do not understand why.

For the third secret thing, we have said much on religion and Updike. I am finding that because Rabbit has no real religious institution to turn to (even one he despises or forsakes) he is left at a loss when things in his life go badly. For Rabbit there is no beauty and no faith. He is caught in a spiritual iffyness because he wants to do good and be positive, but those tasks become difficult when he never knew really what was good and what was bad. It is like this: if all a person ever knew about art were paintings by Monet he would be a poor judge of art. Not because Monet is a poor artist, but because the world of art is so much wider and fuller than one artist, not to mention the forms of art that occur outside of the canvas. The same can be said for spirituality. Rabbit has never had real spiritual awareness because there is no outlet for it in Brewer. He is caught with a vague notion of what is good and no way to exercise it. 

Death in a Bathtub

Rabbit Angstrom is a man awash in a sea of meaningless life. I have covered already his struggles with race and an evolving world in Rabbit Redux.  But, there is one instance where rabbit finds meaning, loss and a necessity. One thread that Updike spins throughout the tetralogy is the death of Rabbit’s infant daughter, Rebecca.

She dies shortly after her birth in Rabbit Run. She has no speech and no character development. This child is a sticking point of feud for Rabbit and Janice because they already have one child that they are ill prepared to care for in Nelson and they cannot manage as a family with two children. Rebecca is unwanted from the start; poor thing never had a chance. Janice and Rabbit have a row, Rabbit leaves and Janice settles into the bath with Rebecca. Peace and calm are found in the soothing mist and warmth of the tub for Janice. However, this proves too calming as Janice drops the baby as she falls asleep and wakes up in a gray tub with a drowned infant. Janice is paralyzed, though not a nurturing mother to wither of her children, she is floored by her action (or inaction, really the proof of negligence or knowledge is left to the reader; as a positive person I like to think the she fell asleep under pressure and did not intend to drown the child) and is in shock at the outcome. Rabbit thinks for years after of the scene in his home and his final act of pulling out the drain plug to allow the murderous liquid to run down the drain and into the sewer. His act of first rolling up his sleeve and considering the water that killed his progeny is horrifying to me. Looking a killer in the face is difficult, but when the killer is a liquid enclosed in a benign basin like the bathtub must be the hardest of all. The water did no more than it was supposed to; it warmed the bodies of mother and daughter, cleansed their skin and gave them calming comfort. It would be different if a human had killed the babe or if a raging inferno had claimed her soul. But water. In a bathtub. Horrifying that it occurred that way. Harry feels more than guilt and anger. He blames Janice and yells at her, but really he blames himself for more. He goes so far as to blame himself for impregnating in his words “that mutt of a Springer with her thin bangs and tan skin,” he runs away at her funeral giving the first novel its name.

Rabbit Redux is full of guilt and shame. Janice sleeps around and moves out to forget the horrors. She cannot forgive herself or Harry for the loss of a child. Nelson feels neglected with a different form of survivor’s guilt than normal because though he is the child that survived, he feels anger than he is forgotten by his parents. In their loss they don’t care for their only remaining child as they should. Harry allows him too much exposure to drugs, sex and radical ideas. Janice for her part completely cuts him out except to take him shopping. Nelson is not given the upbringing he deserves and his parents pay in the end with his cocaine addiction and how he loses the family business in the end. Instead of shame and loss, the parents should have remembered Rebecca and thanked God that they have a child remain.

Rabbit is Rich finds Angstrom expansive in both waist size and demeanor. Harry has hopped into some luck as a successful Toyota dealer. He sells cars without passion though. He also has sex without passion all around town and plays dispassionate golf. He is middle-aged and killing himself with 1970’s hydrocarbons and foodstuffs. However, though he sucks down massive amounts of TV dinners and leaded gasoline smog, he cannot forget the daughter that he lost. Rain makes him think of Rebecca as does Janice’s midafternoon drunk that comes around six days a week.  Wasting her liver away with Campari, Janice cannot forget the crime she committed against her baby and she does not forgive Harry for she thinks that their fights and her stress caused it. Harry cannot leave the memory behind; it is though a ghost child follows him everywhere. He gets so nervous that he leaves in the middle of the night and drives through Pennsylvania to Virginia in search of peace. His thoughts are heavy. And though he drives many miles, slams doors, eats at diners and sleeps in cheap motels he knows that eventually he must return. He is shackled to his town, his cars and his woman as well as the horrifying scene he found in his bathroom so long ago. It is as though he drives with a bathtub chained to the back of his car; every mile and every exit, every turn and every route he takes but he cannot shake the truth. That bathtub, ominous and brooding, full of life and death as well as the dead body of an infant girl, Rabbit can shake none of this. For richer or poorer, better or worse, sick and in health, Rabbit remembers the tub and reaching into the lukewarm killer to release it into the world.

Rabbit doesn't care about cars.

In Rabbit is Rich, there is a lack of spirituality that permeates the entire story. Rabbit is a Godless man in a lacking world created by Updike. He attends no church, has no epiphany and feels nothing new. He compulsively sleeps around, but just as easily would sleep with his wife. He is a serial philanderer and is bored with sex and bored with his life. He plays golf but dislikes his partners. Rabbit sells cars but lacks the depth to care about what he is selling. He could just as easily sell other products.

This is the key point to me. A man with soul loves his car. A man with heart works on his car. And a man with pride shines the emblem on the hood and proudly wears his fuel injected, piston powered, overhead cam fired heart on his sleeve. Cars are a way of life to me. I am proud to be the great-grandson of a machinist, grandson of a body man and son of a mechanic. I have been in garages and shops since I could walk.  My father has built and rebuilt vehicles for the better part of thirty years.  He has an innate ability to work with his hands and produce a strong running machine. He began working at Newlon Chrysler Dodge Jeep and Eagle before I was born and cut his teeth on 2.2l powered K-cars and minivans as well as seeing the last days of the 318 ci V8 in trucks and big cars. But this passion for cars, especially Mopars, is something that he has passed to me. He has what Rabbit lacks. Rabbit sees the cars as appliances, necessities that transport people here and there and nothing more. And as far as cars are appliances, the small ricer machines he sells are the epitome of that. Small, cheap, underpowered and Spartan interiors abound in Toyota products of the 1970s. Now, the 70’s were not a kind decade to the Chrysler Corporation. But look at the difference:

Notable Chryslers:

-Chrysler Cordoba

-Dodge Challenger

-Dodge Charger

-Plymouth Road Runner

-Plymouth ‘Cuda

-Plymouth Duster

Notable Toyotas:

-Cressida

-Corona

-Carina

-Celica

The Chrysler cars above connote power, comfort and speed. Even the cheap Plymouth Road Runner could be had with Chrysler’s Hemi engine rated (more like underrated) at 425 factory horsepower. But that engine block can be modified and worked over to produce in excess of 1,000 horsepower.   They were large and had a long and low and wide stance. Toyotas are tin crapboxes that can’t get out of their own way. Would you rather have a 1970 Plymouth ‘Cuda breathing fire with a 440 ci V8 pushing 390 hp, three two bbl carbs on top with rallye wheels and purple paint? Or would you prefer a Japanese made Cressida with a 2 valve per cylinder I-6 pumping out a brutish 108 hp? In the words of Eleanor Roosevelt, as quoted in Talledega Nights, “America is all about speed. Hot, nasty, badass speed.”

I have strewn way off topic to once again proclaim my love for the Plymouth brand. But, men who drive Plymouths are like me and my father, men who care about how fast their car is and know how to make it faster. Soulless men like Rabbit drove Cressidas and got their doors blown off at every stop light. Not because the Plymouth driver is mean or brutish, but because he can blow the doors off the Cressida. And in that ancient maxim: the strong do what they will, and the weak do what they must. Give a man a Plymouth, and make him a car guy for life. Give a man a Toyota, and he probably doesn’t care about much. 

1979

This novel is the reason that I began to read Updike at all. It was also one of the first novels that brought me to consider writing as more than an academic necessity. The words on Rabbit are many, and I would say that this novel is Rich is the flagship of the series. This is Rabbit at his peak; he has his life together…mostly. He runs the dealership and has reconciled with Janice. They live together with Janice’s mother. Seemingly this was their idea for a place to stay after the fire in Penn Villas and it has gone on for ten years. It is now 1979, Skylab is falling, Detroit’s Big Four (including AMC before they were bought by Chrysler in the 1980’s) are at the height of malaise (big, slow cars that were poorly built and engines that were completely detuned and smogged out thanks to the bastards at the EPA) and Rabbit golfs. He sleeps around and is infatuated with Cindy Murkett, the curvaceous blonde wife of his golfing partner Webb. It seems that Rabbit is not greedy, but is never satisfied. He doesn’t work hard for what he has, so he has no idea of its value. 

Further because he doesn’t work hard he doesn’t have a good idea of how to attain more. So he has what he has, and it is very nice comparatively, but he aspires for more because he is clueless.

Rabbit has also gotten over those odd days of harboring Skeeter and Jill. He is content to garden and golf in the suburbs of Brewer. He takes a vacation with other couples from the Country Club and tries wife swapping with disastrous results. Though he has a fun night with Thelma, it hurts his relationship with Janice. And just before he can finally sleep with Cindy, he and Janice must rush home because Nelson’s pregnant girlfriend Pru is going into labor.

Once again Rabbit doesn’t get it all. But he cannot see the forest for the trees because he doesn’t know what is really important.

Back to Basics

I have been remiss; this blog has not received the love and attention it deserves. That will be rectified.

Transitioning from The Coup to Rabbit is Rich is an interesting slide. Updike returns to that familiar enclave that launched his career: the American suburb. Ellelou and his plight in an African nation did not hold my interest like the minutiae of Rabbit’s life does. I empathize with Ellelou, he is trying to move heaven and Earth, literally building his nation by hand, all to see it swept out from under him. He is a man who was doomed from the start yet kept trying. He was a Muslim at heart and a Marxist by default. His is a political tale of trial and despair. Updike really did a great job of writing and building the world of Kush.

But, the world of Brewer Pennsylvania, USA is one that is ready-made for the reader. Updike’s audience (me especially) can picture in the mind’s eye an image of suburban American more readily and with clearer definition than I can of a failing African state. Rabbit is more compelling that Ellelou, even though I empathize with Ellelou as a leader and a decision maker, because Rabbit is more approachable. While I am entering a conversation on race or religion, Rabbit is more visible to Updike’s general readership. He is a local car salesman with an adipose midsection and a taste for Schlitz beer and the Philadelphia Phillies. He is not a Black-African-Muslim-Dictator-Russian Ally who was college educated in the US and served in several armies as a sort of mercenary. No, Rabbit played basketball in high school and is the son of a union printer. He had no greater ambitions than to work and buy a house. While Ellelou tried and failed, Rabbit never tried and found a modicum of success.

And that is the key difference, Rabbit is an everyman. Updike wrote him ambiguously and shifty enough to hold no great ideology or dogma. He is a Republican, kinda. He does not trumpet his politics anymore but he does vote for Nixon. While he used to drive a Ford Falcon, with an American flag decal in the rear window no less, he now drives and peddles small, foreign made Toyotas. He plays golf badly enough to be approachable.  His wife left him, and then came back; but now he sleeps around and tries swapping partners on a bizarre vacation in the Caribbean. In summary: Rabbit is nothing. He is a shill, a stuffed shirt. Harold Angstrom, a man with no college degree and dubious Swedish heritage, is a specter of a man. In this we find the middle of America. Men who weren’t movers and shakers and certainly could never lead an African nation; but men who can hit jump shots and chip from the sand. Men who have unsatisfying love lives and children they can’t raise because they can’t speak to them. Rabbit is a stand in for the average man of the Baby Boomer generation. A group, who never really found themselves, but let interesting lives and in the end had a compelling story to tell. Rabbit’s is the story of millions of men: listen to me. I am a man who never wanted for anything and received more than I could handle.

And that is why Rabbit is so compelling. 

Contradicitons Abound

Updike steps outside of the comfort of American suburbia for his novel, The Coup. Here we find an author at odds with himself, toeing the line between fiction and reality. Hailed by some as his most political novel, The Coup is an interesting case of contradictions.

To begin, Ellelou’s government in the novel is a form of Islamic Marxism. This brand of rule is a contradiction within itself. Islam is a government and ideology and religion all rolled into itself. Islam recognizes no other government or rule for man that that of Allah himself. Shariah law dictates the lives of Muslims and supersedes all other forms of government that man might create for himself. So in this state of Kush, composed of tribal villages and farms, there was largely no need for a Marxist dictator. The people through their faith and local customs govern themselves. National government did not bring about sweeping changes for the local populace. Being farmers they never had the industrial infrastructure that other socialist states like China and Soviet Russia did. Thus, there were no factories to bring under state control and no private wealth to redistribute. This makes Ellelou largely unnecessary. While he looked inward to Kush to solve some issues of starvation and disease, he should have been looking outward. Reaching out for more foreign aid revenue could promote new agriculture and foreign investment could put his people to work in industrial jobs. This is what created his downfall. In a bloodless turnover of power, his Minister of the Interior works with the American government to bring in foreign aid and industry, two things which Ellelou detested.

But further this novel is a contradiction because it is a work of fiction. To the author, fiction can be a contradiction. He has control over everything in the story; as the characters are fictional he can bend them to his will and shape them in his (or another) image. However, that much power can become a problem because in the writing it can get out of control. Politics and fiction do not normally mesh because they belong to separate worlds. All politics is work of physical men and women. It is real and tangible. Fictitious politics are the work of one man: the author. His political views and opinions and workings always shine through into the novel. No other input is required. In the writer’s world, good guys share his political views and the bad guys don’t. Take Updike, his Islamic-Marxist dictator rules over a starving country that has seen drought for five years. But, when he is overthrown in favor of a pro-American man who is a dubious Muslim and has a taste for foreign clothing, the rain returns, foreign aid pours in and seemingly Kush becomes a far better place. As an American, Updike’s disdain for Russian-style communism shows when Ellelou, the Soviet ally and former soldier, is cast aside for a softer man favorable to Western powers and ideas. Ellelou has a heart of gold and genuinely tries for his people. But when the chips are down and the buck stops here and other overused colloquial sayings are needed, Updike casts aside his warrior prince to make way for a silk-shirted, pro-American man who rules by the numbers. And in between, Ellelou is cast into exile.

Making Something out of Nothing

OK, role play time. Picture yourself in the following situation:

-You are the revolutionary leader of a sub-Saharan African state.

-Your revolution brought into power a fascist state based upon two ideas seemingly at odds, Marxism and Islam.

-Your third world country is mainly subsistence farmers, and those precious goods you do manage to export are cash crops dependent on floating world market prices

-Your people yearn for Western goods and ideas, but you quash their access in the name of the revolution that brought you to power.

-Oh, and finally there has been a drought in your country for the past five years, baking the ground hard as clay and forcing a famine onto your already struggling people.

If you were given the above scenario and considered it in your mind, you would see that it is a tight spot. However, if you are Colonel Ellelou in The Coup, this is not a hypothetical; this is real. Ellelou is a former French colonial soldier who has travelled the world, studied at a college in the United States and returned to his native land to lead a revolution and become President. This novel is set in 1973 and the Cold War is dividing the world. Under his reign the nation of Kush has signed an agreement with the Soviet Union and allowed Russian missiles to be planted in bunkers in the country.

He is a proud man how holds fast to both the ideals of Islam and Marxism. He has four wives but it is in doubt if any of their collective children came from him. He also prays morning noon and night and does not partake in drugs or alcohol. Further, Ellelou believes in a socialist system but does not have a social economy. The problem lies in the fact that socialism doesn’t work when there is nothing to socialize. Kush had no banking system to be nationalized and no manufacturing economy to be governed. This is a former European colony made of differing tribes who want no central government.

Critics called this Updike’s most political novel, and I have to largely agree. Not because it contains party politics or the thrills and drama of American political showmanship, but because The Coup is government at a basic level. This novel is a story of statecraft. Considering the above scenario, how could one person ever hold all of that together? Well, Ellelou tries. His policies try to make Kush a fair and honest land. Really, in building a nation from the ground up, it is a wonder that any one man could do it at all.

Prose and Style as presented by America's Pastime

John Updike is not a character in Rabbit Redux. His personality does not enter the narrative as a character, narrator or theme. Updike created the world and sits above it and orchestrates the events to unfold, but rarely does he enter it himself. Letting the reader draw conclusions is the best form of writing, as it allows for more interpretation; and in this world of Post-Modern fiction everyone has a voice.

As a sidebar, do not be afraid to read and interpret what you read. Draw your own conclusions and make your own statements. Once the novel is published, the author has no more authority over it than anyone who chose to pay money to read his work. The author is beholden to you, the audience. Not the other way around. Civilization has not stopped because a book went unread, and no author is above criticism. I learned this fact last winter when attending my contemporary literature course. We read Break the Skin by Lee Martin and then had a seminar with him because it was an interesting novel and because he is also a professor here at Ohio State. In this meeting, we asked questions and discussed the work. He was happy to oblige, especially at questions that were critical of his writing style or questions that him why he made the choices he did regarding plot, setting and characters. I enjoyed this session immensely and found that authors are not above the criticism.

But back to this author and this work, Updike is not a player in his own works. Rabbit and friends are not reflections of the author. While Rabbit is overweight, of average intelligence and oafish; Updike in his living years was thin, handsome and in the know about politics and foreign affairs. While Rabbit is not a reflection, he is also not the opposite. Every work comes from the author’s own experience. And Updike, being the All-American man of words that he was, made Rabbit in his image of experiences and people. Rabbit is a combination of all the things that Updike likes in humanity, dislikes in humanity and things in his own character that he lacks or appreciates.

In Redux there are certain passages that are written that are clearly Updike’s hand entering into the world.  Early on when he, Nelson and Janice’s father attend a baseball game, Updike says this:

“But something has gone wrong. The ball game is boring. The spaced dance of the men in white fails to enchant , the code beneath the staccato spurts of distant motion refuses to yield its meaning. Though basketball was his sport, Rabbit remembers the grandeur of all that grass, the excited perilous feeling when a high fly was hoisted your way, the homing-in on the expanding dot, the leathery smack of the catch, the formalized nonchalance of the heads-down trot in toward the bench, the ritualized flips and shrugs and the nervous courtesies of the batter’s box.” (Page 88)

I assure you that speech like this is reserved by the author for his own private use when he is attempting to speak on something grand and mystical. Rabbit, nor none of his brethren in this world, never EVER use this style of speech. They don’t say things like staccato or perilous. Their nonchalance is stated as awkwardness or uncertainty. Updike never allows his characters to be cool enough to be nonchalant. No, here Updike is speaking in terms of Baseball. Baseball, that magical game that contains all of America’s hopes and dreams; the pageantry and pride of a nation resides in a strange game derived from its British father, rounders, and its Indian cousin, cricket. The Game. Updike says that baseball is fundamental to Rabbit’s world in that it is the height of sporting prowess. Rabbit can’t achieve it, he is forever stuck in sweaty gymnasiums; banished to the cold dark winter months where sport can’t flourish outside and must be kindled like tinder in square boxes containing hoops and men in shorts until it can return in full flame to its sconce on the diamond. Baseball. Updike captures the essence of a nation in such a simple game. Rabbit can’t fully comprehend it because Updike won’t allow him to do so. No, Rabbit. Your victory and pride have passed, but even at your height you could not obtain this greater glory.

In this passage and others like it. Our author speaks from outside but is looking inward. He sees the majesty of the game, but it’s complete mystical power eludes Rabbit; it goes over his head like another fly ball escaping the yard. 

Summer of Love?

Defined by William James, pragmatic morality is “whatever works.” Neither reflecting on past experiences nor looking too far ahead, pragmatism sees the situation at hand and responds to it. It is not inherently good or evil, but very neutral thinking. Rabbit Angstrom is a pragmatist, and that fact comes to full fruition during Rabbit Redux.

Like Theodore Deeiser’s Sister Carrie, Rabbit is a “waif amid forces.” In his own world, not ours but the one that John Updike created for him, Rabbit is a reactionary and a fatalist. His actions account for nothing and everything is predetermined. All he can do is attempt to respond to events and occurrences. This is why, in the summer of 1969, he places an American flag decal on the back of his Ford. This is a symbolic sign of protest. He is against the hippies, college students and minorities that are raising their hands and voices in protest of a poor economy, President Nixon and the Vietnam War. Rabbit also has feelings on the war itself; while sitting in a Greek diner with his son, wife and Charlie Stavros, he pleads a case to the peacenik Janice and Charlie that Vietnam would be a better place if it were devoid of human existence. Rabbit is a true member of Nixon’s “Silent Majority” but he is not so silent; nor is he a fan of Nixon saying that he is an ignoramus who happened to end up in the White House. Being an ignoramus himself, Rabbit would wish that Nixon was also a passive character in his own life. Rabbit yearns to find others like him, those few who plod through life without direction and happen into situations that they don’t want to take credit for or realize how the situation was formed. No, Rabbit is alone. In all of Brewer there are precious few who allow themselves to not be the hero of their own life story.

The summer of 1969 dominates the surrounding context of this novel. And though Rabbit would not admit it, he is involved in his own free love situation. Janice, living across town with Charlie, has left Rabbit and Nelson alone in the ranch house in Penn Villas. Rabbit finds himself playing host to Skeeter, a Vietnam vet and possible fugitive as well as Jill, an 18 year old girl from the Connecticut upper crust who has run away from home. Rabbit, passive character that he is, allows them to live rent free and begins sleeping with Jill. Jill also has trysts with Skeeter in exchange for drugs. Pot and heroin abound in this small suburban home. Through nightly readings of Skeeter’s books, Rabbit becomes intimate with black culture and black thinking. These speeches by Frederick Douglass and Malcolm X make the reader see what Rabbit truly lacks: empathy. These speeches ask him to consider something outside of his own skin, and every time he cannot comprehend thinking outside of his own. Rabbit is not empathetic. This is why he is so heartless to his parents, lacking in recognizing what Nelson needs and his failure to see Janice as more than a functionary of his household. Empathy is the key to this novel. Who, in Updike’s world, has it and who doesn’t is what drives the plot and action. Empathy determines why Rabbit can’t move himself forward.

Why Rabbit?

Why Rabbit? Why pick a seemingly insignificant man to write a tetralogy about America from the late 1950s to the end of the 80s? Why not pick another one of your characters, Updike? Why not the novelist Bech or the builder Hanema? Harold “Rabbit” Angstrom, US Army veteran of Mt. Judge, Pennsylvaina, former basketball star and father to Nelson and the deceased Rebecca was a man of no great courage. He was not the man to become anything. His glory began and ended before he ever got married or earned a paycheck. In Rabbit Redux he is a union linotyper working alongside his father until he is laid off. He lives at first with his wife Janice and son Nelson in a new development outside of Brewer at Penn Villas, your typical middle-class-ranch-home-Ford-in-the-driveway-conservative-roast-beef-eating subdivision. This home ends in fire, which will be discussed more later. But, the fact is this; Rabbit Angstrom was the ideal candidate on which to write not one but multiple novels.

Page 4, “The small nose and slightly lifted upper lip that once made the nickname Rabbit fit now seem, along with the thick waist and cautious stoop bred into him by a decade of the Linotyper’s trade, clues to weakness, a weakness verging on anonymity… years have pass since anyone has called him Rabbit.” Rabbit was for the time a shape shifter. Any one reading this novel set in 1969 could form Rabbit to be themselves or anyone they knew. A weak, former athlete listing sluggishly and slovenly into an overweight middle age was almost the calling card of the White, blue collar American male of the day. Everyone was Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite. These men wore blue pants, drank beer from a can, toiled in rough union jobs, drove a Ford and would pay dearly for the privilege to live such a life. Updike chose Rabbit and made him who he was because of his malleability. When you read this novel, you can think of someone like Rabbit. A man who can stand on his own feet, but financially barely so; and physically hasn’t seen his feet since he was feeling up girls in his dad’s car on Friday nights after playing fullback for his high school.

Rabbit is like this. He has no future that we can see, and this is the second book that he is featured in. His marriage is in tatters within 50 pages of the start; Janice, having decided she liked the company of lecherous old Charlie Stavros, a salesman at her father’s dealership, moves out. She leaves Rabbit and Nelson alone in their split level eating TV dinners and watching Laugh In. To add insult to injury, and though she works at her father’s Toyota dealership, she takes Rabbit’s trusty Ford Falcon with her. Rabbit is forced to ride the bus across town, sitting with old ladies and black kids that he despises.

The point is this: everything that happens to Rabbit just happens. Because of his attitude it is largely outside of his control. These events, the death of a child, the breakup of a family and a house burning down can happen to anyone. Updike wrapped all of this up and made it happen to the one, the only, the Everyman, Harry ”Rabbit” Angstrom. 

An Affair, and Why You Should Support the NHL Players

Before she says it, you can tell that Janice is sleeping with Charlie Stavros and not Rabbit. Why? What drives people to do what they do? I don’t know, maybe a better question borrowed from Ayn Rand is: “Who is John Galt?” Janice sleeps around not only because she likes the feeling and the excitement but too it is a rejection of Harry. Her husband after the tragic drowning of his daughter Rebecca, has decreed that he will father no more children. Further their marriage is hollow with the loss of sex. Rabbit works all day and spends his evenings alone with Nelson while Janice holds up the pretenses of a job at her father’s car lot while she bangs Stavros on the side.

This loss, and the news on the tv in the background, makes me think of the current losses on both sides of the new NHL lockout. Both sides are wrong and right at the same time. Janice wants children and excitement but can’t see that she is not a good mother or a good wife. She is flighty and unprepared for the world. Rabbit, while wrong to hold out from his wife the opportunity to bear more children, is too grounded. He makes no attempt to piece together his life after the loss of his child, nor does he appreciate the joys of the son he has left. So, hockey. Owners feel the squeeze because of rising player salaries and more costs in running a team. Players, whose talent diminishes in value every day they grow older and every time they step on the ice, feel the squeeze because of bad ownership and declining opportunity. I side with the players because unlike regular wage laborers who have decades to make their money, have but the short time between the draft and injury/retirement/unsigned free agency to make their money. Think about it. If I promised you a salary of $50,000 for thirty years guaranteed, or the chance to make $10,000,000 in the space of a few years in your 20s, which is the more secure choice? Hockey players have little job security. One bad season, one injury or one bad owner can force you out. And then where are you? In your 20s with little or no real world training and you have to survive until your death knowing that your greatest times are behind you, that’s where. The players are a product of an entertainment economy and rely on the largesse of the American economy for a paycheck and a brief few moments of glory. Rabbit Angstrom felt this in high school with basketball.

Maybe that’s why Janice wants excitement; she never had her basketball moment. She went from high school to marriage to losing a child to middle aged boredom in the blink of an eye. Never did she feel the eyes on her, the people hanging their emotions on her performance in an arbitrary event, nor did she feel the post-game glory and warmth of the loving fans who appreciated her efforts. I would advocate that everyone go enjoy themselves and feel proud of themselves and that hockey fans support the players against the owners in this new lockout.

Go Red Wings. 

MG cars and Vespa scooters

In Couples the people described are different. Not in their houses, which are large and well appointed, and not in their clothing which is standard fare for wealthy Massachusetts residents of 1962; especially Piet’s often mentioned apricot windbreaker jacket, no the difference lies in their automobiles. Their cars, that everlasting symbol of American freedom and prosperity, are not American and they are not main stream. These people, in an air of superiority and conspicuous consumption, drive foreign autos which are not only expensive to purchase, but expensive to maintain.

In an effort of full disclosure and transparency, your author must state the following: I am an ardent believer in American cars. I love American car companies and the vehicles they have made and make today. No Asian or European car, to me, has the passion or power or beauty that a proud American car has. They might build some models here, and might employ some non-union workers, but they will never be as iconic as the great nameplates that are home grown. Further, I am a Chrysler fan boy. From the original 1920’s Chrysler Six, to the 1955 Chrysler 300, to the 1971 Plymouth ‘Cuda, to the original Dodge Caravan that saved the company to the 1993 Jeep Grand Cherokee that I spent much of my childhood in, to the small block Hemi powered cars and trucks today I love them all. Chrysler, regardless of Italian and UAW ownership, is an American company. They build Ram trucks in Warren, Michigan, brand new 300 horsepower Pentastar V-6 engines in Trenton, Michigan, new high tech transmissions in Kokomo, Indiana and Jeep Wranglers in Toledo, Ohio. I am proud to support such a great company that at one time was the tenth largest corporation in the United States. However, being a social elite, the Hanemas, the Thornes and the Whitmans do not share my sentiments,

Unlike the “workingman” Piet, who drives a green Chevrolet truck, all of the vehicles mentioned in the novel are foreign, specifically European. Angela Hanema drives a Peugeot, a French sedan; Foxy Whitman drives a MG, a British sports car, and in the greatest mockery of American automotive might, Freddy Thorne drives a Vespa! A grown man, tooling around a Massachusetts town on an Italian scooter, I would be aghast if one of my parents’ friends rode a scooter as his daily driver. But, more perspective is in order.

This novel is set in 1962. According to the automotive historian at ateupwithmotor.com, during this time 1 out of every 9 new cars sold in the US was not only a Chevrolet, but was a specific Chevy model. That’s right. 11% of all new car sales were Chevy Impalas. GM held so much market share in the early sixties that they pulled factory tech support for every level of auto racing, NASCAR and NHRA drag racing included, in the fear that they would sell too many cars and be hit with anti-monopoly charges by the US government. I am sure that GM would love to have that problem today. Toyota didn’t come over until 1957, Honda in 1969. And until the gas crisis of 1973 these cars were largely an afterthought. Small and unrefined, powered by dinky four cylinder engines and lacking the luxury and panache of American cars, these Japanese cars were not strong sellers. Even the European cars, like MG sportsters and Mercedes-Benz were overshadowed by American Corvettes and Cadillacs. Further, many of these models were only available in right-hand drive, their producers being unable to federalize and put the driver in the correct seat. These cars did not have the dealer support either. Parts for repair had to be shipped from Europe, a costly and time consuming affair. Owning a European car at this time was not only socially awkward, but expensive and capricious too.

Why then? Why did the couples own such odd cars? Because they could; it’s that simple. They didn’t have to drive a Ford. They didn’t need a reliable, large automobile. If the rest of their lives are so different, their cars should be too. When dealing with consumers as these, they were not tethered to reason. I hope that I am never in a position to choose European cars over American, simply because they are different. And God help me if any of my friends ride sccoters.

There goes the neighborhood

My biggest fan, and harshest critic, told me this morning that my most recent post was unsatisfactory. She also doubted my intimacy with the material; she told me that the audience can tell when I’m bluffing and not speaking from a point of authority. This conversation gave me pause. But once the pause was over and I thought once again I thought of intimacy. Couples is full of intimate moments, and the idea and practice is a central theme of the story.

To begin, I do not think that Updike, for all his wordiness and ability, truly can write an intimate scene. Unlike Philip Roth, and another of my favorites Joseph Heller, Updike’s sex scenes are lacking in the truly descriptive and frankly raunchy adjectives that readers of the genre are looking for. When Piet takes Foxy to bed, readers want to know more than Updike can deliver on. We want to feel their extramarital passion, see the depths of her desire in her eyes. We want Foxy, though she is pregnant and bloated, to seem as sexy and desirable as Piet sees her. Make her into the object of lust and wanton desire to the reader that the characters see her as. Updike sets out to write a sexy novel, but falls short in the sexy parts. This subject of promiscuity and extramarital affairs seems as foreign to Updike as open heart surgery would be to a dentist. While Updike is a great writer, and the dentist may be an expert at his profession, the subjects of sex and cardiology are foreign to these men in this extended metaphor. Similarly, you would never ask a Methodist minister to direct a skin flick, so one must ask: why did Updike undertake the effort?

John Updike saw around him a loss in spirituality. In America he saw people turning from the more established churches and thumbing their noses at the Congregational and Episcopal churches. The old orthodoxy of Catholicism was too harsh and what remains of the great Protestant churches doing less protesting and more pandering, these facts led to smaller congregations and fewer followers seeking the truth. Longing for the Puritan tradition that started the New World, and all of the societal connections that came with it, these people turned to empty sex to solve their problems. Piet Hanema is one of these people. A man of the Earth, a builder of houses and driver of a green Chevrolet truck, he is lost spiritually. In his home of Michigan, surrounded by his Dutch family and his Dutch Reformed faith, Piet had a clearer sense of self. He was the son of a gardener and a schoolboy. However, moving to Massachusetts and working with the horse-trader Matt Gallagher has made him a lost soul. He attends a Congregational church more concerned about his weekly tithe than his spiritual wealth and as a result he begins affairs with three different women outside of his marriage. Georgene Thorne, Bea Guerin and Foxy Whitman all separately find their way into his grasp. However, it takes two to tango. Not all of the fault lies with Piet.

In the fictional seaside town of Tarbox, there is this social group of ten couples who would have considered themselves in the old Puritan days an “elect”, chosen by God to intermingle with each other. Not finding solace and sexual excitement with their respective spouses they turn instead to other members of the social group to get their jollies. Why? How can there be so much sexual frustration and it be so large to encompass twenty people? Why did no one, especially the Jewish couple (Saltz) or the Catholics (Constantines) see that what they’re doing is against their respect doctrines? Because they have turned against the dogma and formed their own religion; this is where they replace God and Jesus with coitus and orgasms. Updike posits that the sexual revolution began not on a college campus and not in the great metropolitan centers like New York or Los Angeles. But that the great, glorious revolution began here: in a suburban Massachusetts town with a few couples that outwardly seemed well to do and mentally adjusted. Look at the professions of the men: general contractor, airline pilot, biologist, computer engineer, dentist, etc. And look at the women, all had borne children into this world and some were teachers and members of local government. These are not what you would categorize as “swingers”, these are the “normal” people. They drive nice cars and live in nice houses and are supposed to have nice, polite, unbecoming sex with their spouses. Never would the casual observer see these people as sexual deviants or miscreants. But instead this is the perfect cover, by being higher class and respectable people they formed a great camouflage for their deviant acts.

However deviant his characters are, Updike still misses the true coup de grace. He could have made Couples one of the greatest novels of all time by including more intimate details of the lovemaking. Sex sells in advertisement and in novels. Rabbit could be but a footnote on his greatness if Updike had made his characters intimate. Make Piet desire these women not only because his wife is cold and distant, but because he is a healthy man and has healthy desires. I am not a fan of extramarital affairs, but if Angela won’t give Piet enough sugar, help the reader understand why he does what he does. Piet works as a contractor, and wants to return home the glorious breadwinner, snatching survival from the jaws of a cruel world. However, in seeking gratification he is snubbed by his capricious Angela. As a result, he takes his burning libido and manliness into strange beds. Updike needed to do more to show the dysfunction in the marriages and what drove his characters to sleeping around. Tell us and show us why Angela Hanema is cold in the sack and why Bea, Foxy and Georgene are so inviting to Piet. But too, tell me what has gone wrong in the women’s lives that drove them to Piet. Finally, make the sex sexier. I don’t want vague adjectives. This is one instance of “tell me, don’t show me.” Updike is too foreign to the sex scenes for a man who was married twice and fathered children.

I have enjoyed Couples but find Updike too polite in bed. He clearly was not a man enthralled or interested in sex and affairs and all of the trappings and baggage that come with such activities. Updike was correct to explore the advent of sexual liberation, but his ideas are lost in translation. Forty years past, this member of the millennial generation is searching for the real smut, and finding none relegates Couples to the back of the Updike collection, a shame too, because this book had so much promise and fell short.

This post is dedicated to my mom, Jennifer, who pushes me every day to be the best that I can be. I hope this writing showed more effort and intelligence on the work, mom.

"Just nod if you can hear me; is there anyone at home?"

Since reading Couples, I have found the narrative vibrant and interesting. This seaside Massachusetts town named Tarbox holds some nostalgia and warm feelings for me. I appreciate Updike’s images of nice homes and nice people. However, beneath the surface are people searching for answers to questions that religion and faith used to answer for them. However, being a new generation of individuals and humanists, the answers that satisfied their parents do not hold for them. Set in 1962, this novel is Updike’s attempt to explain where and how the sexual revolution started. Updike describes the lives of ten couples, all well to do people living in beautiful homes and driving expensive cars. The couples can be confusing to follow because the dialogue moves quickly and there is sometimes little mention of who is speaking to whom, especially when it comes to scenes of them in bed. So, here is the list of the married couples at the beginning of the novel:

Marcia & Harold Smith

Janet & Frank Appleby

Georgene & Freddy Thorne

Irene & Ben Saltz

Carol & Eddie Constantine

Angela & Piet Hanema

Foxy & Ken Whitman

Bernadette & John Ong

Terry & Matt Gallagher

Bea & Roger Guerin

Also, here are the affairs early on:

Marcia Smith & Frank Appleby

Janet Appleby & Harold Smith

Georgene Thorne & Piet Hanema

Ben Saltz & Carol Constantine

Irene Saltz & Eddie Constantine

In Updike’s reckoning, these people in rural Massachusetts wanted religion; they wanted something larger than themselves in their lives. They were looking for more than just their own counsel. However, the options were limited. Being modern people they did not want the orthodoxy and dogma of the Catholic church, and the Congregational church was too light and easy on the soul. They wanted the middle ground, a non-orthodox church that made them accountable for their actions. If they had only lived a few centuries before, the Puritan church would have been more than happy to show them the way. Unfortunately for them, and their spouses, Massachusetts is a religious wasteland. Catholicism is too heavy and the Tarbox Congregational church too focused on making money and preserving the shell of a dying faith. Having no spiritual source of comfort, they turn to each other. Forming a new religious identity based on sex and sleeping around, it does not satisfy their souls but only deepens the chasm between their minds and their lives. Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb would be a fair assessment of how these people feel during their affairs. The comfort and intimacy provides a temporary shield which protects them from the emptiness they feel in marriage and suburban living.

Because of this vacuum of tangible faith, and their belief in a "Post-Pill Paradise" (the first tablet contraceptive Enovid was cleared by the US FDA in 1961) affairs are what pique their interest and this disenfranchisement from the societal norm makes them a social elect. Those lucky few who have affairs and live within that construct are set apart, living as couples in all shapes and forms. Married or sleeping around, these people live life as couples, constantly searching for in each other what they should find in thelselves.

Basketball

Continuing with Rabbit Angstrom, we will approach his interest in sports. Combining his love for basketball with the fact that many men of his generation played amateur sports tells me that America’s love for sport and competition ran high in the post-war years. Rabbit played basketball for his rural hometown of Mt. Judge, Pennsylvania. In his description of that time, some of the gyms they played in were so small that they had backboards mounted directly to the end walls. The crowds reached to the rafters to watch Rabbit shoot and score against the opposition. In the Rabbit books, Angstrom is what every boy aspires to be and what every man wants for his son. Rabbit, to the denizens of Mt. Judge, was Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant and Magic Johnson rolled into one player. He was their superstar, the leader and the man who got the ball on every possession. Most nights he would play well and score many baskets, but win or lose Rabbit would put up multiple shots a game. It’s like the present day Los Angeles Lakers, Whether Kobe goes 20/40 shooting or 7/40 shooting, he is going to put up all 40 shots every night and his teammates can learn to deal with it. In Mt. Judge, it was Rabbit’s team.

This point was much to the chagrin of Ronnie Harrison, Rabbit’s friend from the country club and the husband of Rabbit’s illicit lover Thelma. Ronnie played basketball with Rabbit and would be considered a grinder or a role player. While Rabbit was out front, draining shots and getting the credit, Ronnie was in the post and in the paint playing tough defense and rebounding. Throughout the books these two have a long and twisted relationship, but two metaphors come to my mind here: Ronnie is Newman to Rabbit’s Seinfeld, and if Rabbit is Jordan then Ronnie is Dennis Rodman (without the hair and piercings and women’s clothing). Ronnie did not receive the spotlight on the court, but talking heads on ESPN would value his contribution to the team. Some would even go so far as to say that Rabbit could not be the player he was without a Ronnie backing him up, pulling down boards and posting up on defense. These men are a microcosm of the larger world and America at the time. In the prime of both of their lives, Rabbit is a successful Toyota dealer, member of the country club and various civic organizations and makes a very comfortable living without trying very hard. This parallels his experience in high school and on the basketball court. Ronnie is a struggling insurance salesman, has to work hard every day to pay his bills and has to live knowing that Rabbit is sleeping with his wife. These men are characters of the world around them.

America has a great sporting past, and though the largest sport today is professional football, this wasn’t always the case. Boxing and baseball dominated the sporting world well into the 1960’s, hockey was (and is) a niche product for cold latitudes and basketball was just coming onto the scene in post-war America. Baseball captured American hearts in such a way that is curious. Of the stick-and-ball sports it is the most obtuse: the defense controls the ball, there is no clock and most positions outside of catcher and middle infield do not require real athletic talent. Baseball was the pinnacle of sporting entertainment to those post war suburbanites. They lived and breathed baseball at all levels, from Little League to MLB to old-man-slow-pitch-rec-league softball. Boxing too captivated their minds and spirits. Blood sport, handed down through history from ancient Greece all the way to the biggest names like Sonny Liston, Jake LaMotta and Sugar Ray Robinson. These men climbed into the ring and beat each other senseless all for the glory and honor of the crowds. While these sports are beautiful and successful in their own right, it makes sense that Rabbit Angstrom made his bones playing a different sport than them.

Basketball is cheap; it only requires one ball and two hoops. It also doesn’t require as many men as football or baseball. Since only five are needed per side, poor schools can afford to outfit a team more readily than if they played football or baseball (which to anyone who has seen Hoosiers makes sense because Hickory doesn’t have the cash for football, let alone enough boys). And, it is played in the winter. Farmers and farming communities are at their most idle when snow is on the ground and the crops are in the silo. Plus, small towns can more easily support a basketball team and fill a small gymnasium than they could fill a football stadium. For Mt. Judge, the poor rural town in Pennsylvania, basketball is as good as sporting gets. And for the time, Rabbit is the best they have ever seen. Young boys in town want to be him, and all of the girls want a piece of him. He swaggers and struts around the town because life is easy for him. He has no further responsibility or care in the world than to put the orange ball in the hoop.

In this period, sports glory matters more to the fathers and sons because life was boring. In sports there are glimmers of action and adrenaline. Hitting a line drive, or having one hit to you, is for a few seconds, almost as intense as the combat these men saw abroad. Pride was gained and lost based on the Friday night score and how the hometown team did. And for the few years that Rabbit Angstrom rained buckets for Mt. Judge, life was not bad. 

On Suburbia

 Starting this semester’s work, we commence with Updike’s 1960 novel, Rabbit, Run. One of his early works and the one that helped him win acclaim because it began the Rabbit series. One of the themes this novel deals with is suburbia; or more specifically how the 1950’s generation dealt with suburban living.

This topic requires some background, as the economy boomed after World War II, more and more middle class Americans moved away from cities and into suburban bedroom communities. They built single family homes on predetermined lots, had a lawn for their children to play within, and a garage to store the great chrome festooned Chrysler Newport or Ford Mainline that the family used for transportation. This type of lifestyle can seem idyllic to some. The peace, security and general comfort that a suburban home can provide is a pleasing quality to many people. Even your author, who saddled with a fair amount of college debt and a poor job market, would give a great amount to have his own home in Westerville or New Albany. Living in my own two story home and driving a new Chrysler or Jeep would seem just about perfect to me.  However, to Updike’s Rabbit Angstrom or Richard Yate’s Frank Wheeler in Revolutionary Road, suburban living and all of its trappings is something to be reviled and disdained.

One of the factors for this that Prof. Myers and I discussed is what I will call the “Traumatized Veteran Theory.” This premise considers that as a large majority of the men, both in fiction and real life, from the 1950’s were veterans of World War II. They won the glorious cause by beating Hitler and Tojo, sparked a manufacturing and research boom back home, and were touted as liberators and the most powerful military force in countries abroad.  Because of their wartime experience being adrenaline packed and stimulating to the senses, the minutiae of mowing the lawn, listening to the wife and playing with the kids is boring. It is so boring, that they yearn for more excitement in their lives. But these men are beholden to the trappings of middle class life that they wish to dispose of. If we consider the 1950’s as the “conformist decade” where everything and everyone in White middle class society was the same, men were not faced with hard choices. Their most pressing choices in life were Ford or GM and scotch or bourbon. Notwithstanding that with either choice the man will end up with a car or whiskey, his life was largely routine and bland. Coming from a world of vicious jungle combat or French whores or North African heat, these men were not stimulated by the comfortable lives with homemaker wives and sons playing Little League. Being affected by war makes these men disinterested in civilian living, but the facts that they won’t step outside of the norm and that they have a duty to their families to provide means that they will continue to lead lives of quiet desperation and fulfillment

I am attaching a link to Supertramp's song " Take The Long Way Home" as an accompanying piece to the desperation and sadness these men felt.