Books by John Updike
“Rabbit determined to get the hell out of Dodge, and wants to drive to the coast although he never quite makes it because the tangle of American highways somehow obstructs him. He ends up moving one township away and shacking up with a woman that his old basketball coach introduced him to, and being no happier than he was before. He reproduces the same kind of domestic mess he was trying to escape from in the first place.” Read more...
Benjamin Markovits, Novelist
“The book is a fantastically acute and brilliantly well-observed account of society. It gets the human condition really well.” Read more...
William Boyd on Writers Who Inspired Him
William Boyd, Novelist
Rabbit at Rest
by John Updike
When I feel my faith flagging in the whole enterprise of fiction, a few pages of Updike will restore my energies.
Rabbit Redux
by John Updike
Rabbit Redux, published in 1971, is the second in his Rabbit tetralogy, and generally the least admired today. The books themselves constitute a great classic in American literature, maybe the greatest of our period. Rabbit Redux is set in 1969 and it involves racial conflict, drugs, the dissolution of the family, and reactions and struggles over the war in Vietnam. Updike himself supported the war in Vietnam, and found himself almost isolated as a figure because of that support. And the reason he supported it is one that sounds very like the reason neoconservatives today supported the war in Iraq – it’s because Updike was offended by the liberals who denounced it.
Interviews where books by John Updike were recommended
The best books on Conservatism and Culture, recommended by Sam Tanenhaus
Sam Tanenhaus, editor of The New York Times Book Review from 2004 to 2013, explains how the American right reinvented itself as a cultural counter-revolution and selects five books as backgrounders to conservatism.
Ian McEwan on the Books That Shaped His Novels
Novelist Ian McEwan talks about five of the books that have helped shape his own, from the biography of a scientific genius to a treatise on the end of time, and discusses the importance of finding “mental freedom”
William Boyd on Writers Who Inspired Him
The novelist William Boyd tells us about the authors, from Chekhov to Heller, who most influenced his own development as a writer – and reveals the secret to a well-crafted sex scene
The Best Road Trip Novels, recommended by Benjamin Markovits
Why do so many people fantasise about getting in their cars and driving away from everything they know? The novelist Ben Markovits reflects on the near-universal urge to get out on the open road, as he recommends five of the best road trip novels—from Jack Kerouac to Anne Tyler.
The best books on The United States, recommended by Don Watson
For all its rugged individualism, frontier violence, and capitalist churn, there’s always a search for grace in America, argues Don Watson, author of the excellent The Shortest History of the United States of America. As the country celebrates the 250th anniversary of its Declaration of Independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain, we asked him for books to read to learn more about it.
