{"id":4987,"date":"2020-05-17T13:28:27","date_gmt":"2020-05-17T18:28:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/?p=4987"},"modified":"2020-05-17T13:31:53","modified_gmt":"2020-05-17T18:31:53","slug":"novelist-ajay-close-names-rabbit-her-favorite-character","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/2020\/05\/17\/novelist-ajay-close-names-rabbit-her-favorite-character\/","title":{"rendered":"Novelist Ajay Close names Rabbit her favorite character"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Novelist and dramatist <strong>Ajay Close<\/strong> (<em>Official and Doubtful, A Petrol Scented Spring, The Daughter of Lady Macbeth, <a href=\"https:\/\/smile.amazon.com\/What-We-Did-Dark\/dp\/1912240890\/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&amp;keywords=what+we+did+in+the+dark&amp;qid=1589736533&amp;s=books&amp;sr=1-1\">What We Did in the Dark<\/a><\/em>) was asked by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heraldscotland.com\/arts_ents\/18449860.books-ajay-close-anne-enwright-john-updike-sally-rooney\/\"><em>The<\/em> <em>Herald <\/em>(U.K.)<\/a> to share her favorites, which included:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Favorite book read as a child:\u00a0 <em>The Owl Service<\/em>, by Alan Garner<\/li>\n<li>First book that made an impact:\u00a0 <em>The Complete Shakespeare<\/em><\/li>\n<li>Books that made her laugh\/cry: <em>Man or Mango?<\/em> by Lucy Ellmann, <em>The 5 Simple Machines<\/em>, by Todd McEwen; <em>Janine<\/em> by Alastair Gray, <em>Underworld<\/em>, by Don DeLillo<\/li>\n<li>Favorite character:\u00a0 Harry &#8220;Rabbit&#8221; Angstrom<\/li>\n<li>Book you wish you&#8217;d written:\u00a0 <em>The Green Road<\/em>, by Anne Enright<\/li>\n<li>Guilty pleasure: Iris Murdoch and her &#8220;20-odd novels&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/files\/2020\/05\/croppedAjay-229x300.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-4991\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/files\/2020\/05\/croppedAjay-229x300-229x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"229\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a>In naming her favorite character she says, &#8220;Twenty years ago it would have been one of Philip Roth&#8217;s or Saul Bellow&#8217;s mouthy egomaniacs, but as I get older I find myself bored by larger-than-life characters, on and off the page. John Updike&#8217;s novels are too priapic to be fashionable these days. His attempts at writing women are, frankly, insulting. Nevertheless, I choose Harry &#8216;Rabbit&#8217; Angstrom, fleshed-out over four novels, <em>Rabbit, Run<\/em>; <em>Rabbit Redux<\/em>; <em>Rabbit Is Rich<\/em>; <em>Rabbit at Rest<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;A superannuated high-school jock still thinking with his groin, a meathead car salesman who despises his wife Janice (&#8216;the little mutt&#8217;) and sees his admittedly repellent son Nelson as a rival threatening his identity as the family alpha. Updike smuggles us inside Rabbit&#8217;s skin, gives us every venal impulse and selfish thought, the politics he&#8217;s picked up from reading <em>Consumer Reports<\/em>. Why should we care about him? Because every few pages Updike shows us the tender boy buried underneath all that.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Novelist and dramatist Ajay Close (Official and Doubtful, A Petrol Scented Spring, The Daughter of Lady Macbeth, What We Did in the Dark) was asked by The Herald (U.K.) to share her favorites, which included: Favorite book read as a &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/2020\/05\/17\/novelist-ajay-close-names-rabbit-her-favorite-character\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":818,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-person-singular","category-lists"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/818"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4987"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4987\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4992,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4987\/revisions\/4992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}