Literary Techniques
Last Updated on May 5, 2015, by eNotes Editorial. Word Count: 248
Updike is best known as a novelist of manners. The clarity and precision of his style create the illusion of real characters in a plausible setting. Updike is true to form in Rabbit Redux, but he adds another element of craft that is more experimental and original. The novel is united by several references to the flight and landing of Apollo 11. Each chapter begins with a quotation from men in orbit around the earth or the moon. The exploration of space thus becomes a controlling metaphor to describe the way Harry Angstrom is subject to the voids and craters of his experience. The young girl who moves into his house is identified as a "moon child," and Harry learns from her much about the love and madness so long associated with the moon. Updike's experiment with references to space travel and its related metaphors adds a new dimension to his achievement of social realism.
Updike also finds a new way to project the interior monologue of his main character. Harry works at a Linotype machine for the newspaper of a small city. He often thinks in terms of newsprint, and Updike exploits this as a stylistic device by including in the text of the novel several of Harry's mistakes at the typesetting machine. The mistakes are direct evidence of the distraction and confusion suffered by the protagonist. Harry feels that the rules for his life are "melting away," and Updike reflects the chaos directly on page after page.
Literary Precedents
Last Updated on May 5, 2015, by eNotes Editorial. Word Count: 215
Two of Updike's contemporaries published books just before Rabbit Redux that respond in different ways to the success of Apollo 11.
Norman Mailer was invited to the NASA facilities in Houston and Cape Kennedy. He interviewed the scientists and astronauts, had dinner with Wernher von Braun, and witnessed the liftoff of Apollo 11. The result is a book, Of a Fire on the Moon (1970), that contains some of Mailer's best descriptive writing, but he was too close to the events to be able to turn them into metaphors and images for fiction. Mailer and Updike, however, share a fascination for the language used by the astronauts, and quote several examples of how the men in space are programmed to talk like robots.
Saul Bellow was so inspired by the success of Apollo 11 that he planned to call his next book "The Future of the Moon," but second thoughts relegated that title to a manuscript owned by a comic character in Mr. Sammler's Planet (1970). There is a scientist in Bellow's novel who talks insanely about the immediate need for establishing colonies on the moon. Updike does not create a comic advocate for the space program to match Bellow's scientist, but in Rabbit Redux he does work the language of space exploration into the very texture of the novel.
Adaptations
Last Updated on May 5, 2015, by eNotes Editorial. Word Count: 71
Only the first novel in the Rabbit series has been adapted as a film. Updike reports: "Rabbit Run, made in the late '60s, came and went with tremendous speed at the box office. It was not a success, although I thought parts of the movie were very fine. It starred James Caan, whose physique was not quite Rabbit's, but his face had that worried look that was good for Rabbit."
Bibliography
Last Updated on May 5, 2015, by eNotes Editorial. Word Count: 105
Bloom, Harold, ed. John Updike: Modern Critical Views. New York: Chelsea House, 1987.
Boswell, Marshall. John Updike’s Rabbit Tetralogy: Mastered Irony in Motion. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2000.
Greiner, Donald. John Updike’s Novels. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1984.
Luscher, Robert M. John Updike: A Study of the Short Fiction. New York: Twayne, 1993.
Miller, D. Quentin. John Updike and the Cold War: Drawing the Iron Curtain. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2001.
Newman, Judie. John Updike. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988.
Schiff, James A. John Updike Revisited. New York: Twayne, 1998.
Updike, John. Self-Consciousness: Memoirs. New York: Knopf, 1989.
Uphaus, Suzanne Henning. John Updike. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1980.
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