The only way in which retribution, even when self-inflicted, can be made tolerable to him-especially since he is so implicated with Rabbit, his first great success and always in danger of becoming to his, Updike’s, career what Rabbit’s early success was to Rabbit-is when it is recycled as paying a price. “Kind at heart, and at head, Updike has qualms about punishment. It never decides just what the artistic reasons (sales and nostalgia are another matter) were for bringing back Rabbit instead of starting anew its existence is likely to do retrospective damage to that better book Rabbit, Run. The book is cleverer than a barrel full of monkeys, and about as odd in its relation of form to content. There is more activity than purposefulness: an intricate scheme of parallelisms with the moon shot a rich (but in the end funked or slighted) sense of possible parallels between oral sex and verbalism or certain verbal habits likewise a sense of parallels between the job of linotyping and the job of writing. “There is a great deal in Rabbit Redux, but only because John Updike has put it there.
That’s the trouble with caring about anybody, you begin to feel overprotective.
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