John Updike

The protagonist of John Updike's Rabbit, Run (1960), ten years after the hectic events described in Rabbit Redux (1971), has come to enjoy considerable prosperity as Chief Sales Representative of Springer Motors, a Toyota agency in Brewer, Pennsylvania. The time is 1979: Skylab is falling, gas lines are lengthening, the President collapses while running in a marathon, and double-digit inflation coincides with a deflation of national confidence. Nevertheless,...

"Rabbit, Run is the book that established John Updike as one of the major American novelists of his--or any other--generation. Its hero is Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, a onetime high-school basketball star who on an impulse deserts his wife and son. He is twenty-six years old, a man-child caught in a struggle between instinct and thought, self and society, sexual gratification and family duty--even, in a sense, human hard-heartedness and divine grace....

Alexandra, Jane, and Sukie return to the old Rhode Island seaside town where they indulged in wicked mischief under the influence of the diabolical Darryl Van Horne. Darryl is gone, and their lovers of the time have aged or died, but enchantment remains in the familiar streets and scenery of the village, where they enjoyed their lusty primes as free and empowered women. And, among the local citizenry, there are still those who remember them, and wish...

Ahmad, who feels his faith is threatened by the hedonistic society around him, gets involved in a plot, with reverberations that rouse the Department of Homeland Security.

John Updike's seventeenth novel begins in 1910, and traces God's relation to four generations of an American family, beginning with Clarence Wilmot, a Presbyterian clergyman in Paterson, New Jersey. He loses his faith, and becomes an encyclopedia salesman and a motion-picture addict. The remainder of Clarence's family moves to the small town of Basingstoke, Delaware, where his cautious son, Teddy, becomes a mailman. Faithless himself, Teddy marries...

Joey Robinson is a thirty-five-year-old advertising consultant working in the urban jungle of Manhattan. One day, Joey decides to return to the farm where he grew up, and where his mother still lives. Accompanied by his newly acquired second wife and an eleven-year-old stepson, he begins to reassess and evaluate the course his life has taken. For three days, a quartet of voices explores the country air, relates stories, makes confessions, seeks solace,...

Rabbit, Run: "Tired of the responsibility of married life, Harry Angstrom leaves his wife and home." Rabbit Redux: "In 1969, the times are changing in America. Things just aren't as simple as they used to be for Rabbit Angstrom. His wife leaves him, and suddenly, into his confused life comes Jill, a runaway who becomes his lover. But when she invites her friend to stay, a young black radical named Skeeter, the pair's fragile harmony soon begins to...