Gertrude and Claudius | Social Concerns

Long recognized as one of the most acute observers of the American scene during the last half of the twentieth-century, John Updike's special strength has been novels set in the immediate present, in which the manners, styles, and sexual mores of American culture are dissected under the microscope of his fiction. The four novels concerning the life and times of ex-athlete Harry Angstrom (Rabbit, Run, 1960; Rabbit Radix, 1971; Rabbit Is Rich, 1981; Rabbit at Rest, 1990) constitute a chronicle of a man whose best years ended when he was eighteen years old; but they...

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