{"id":6569,"date":"2025-03-29T09:53:27","date_gmt":"2025-03-29T14:53:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/?p=6569"},"modified":"2025-03-29T10:00:51","modified_gmt":"2025-03-29T15:00:51","slug":"wsj-updikes-rabbit-provides-a-life-lesson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/2025\/03\/29\/wsj-updikes-rabbit-provides-a-life-lesson\/","title":{"rendered":"WSJ: Updike’s Rabbit provides a life lesson"},"content":{"rendered":"

Writing on “Five Best: Life Lessons”<\/a> for The Wall Street Journal<\/em>, Andrew Wilkinson, author of Never Enough: From Barista to Billionaire<\/em>, shared five of the best life lessons he found in fiction. The first entry, from John Updike, came from the Pulitzer Prize-winning Rabbit Is Rich<\/em> (1981):<\/p>\n

\"\"“The third installment of John Updike\u2019s ‘Rabbit’ series finds Harry ‘Rabbit’ Angstrom finally comfortable\u2014or at least financially secure\u2014amid the tumultuous backdrop of 1979\u2019s oil crisis and stagflation. ‘How can you respect the world when you see it\u2019s being run by a bunch of kids turned old?’ the narrator observes, capturing the novel\u2019s eerie contemporary resonance: interest rates and real-estate climbing skyward\u2014and staying there\u2014and a gnawing certainty that the next generation won\u2019t have it quite so good. Updike\u2019s prose transforms the mundane rhythms of middle-class life into something approaching poetry as he excavates middle-class anxiety and success. Rabbit\u2019s car dealership is printing money thanks to the Japanese vehicles he sells, even as his own prejudices and racial anxieties bubble beneath the surface. His son Nelson is adrift, the world seems to be coming apart at the seams and Rabbit\u2019s own biases reflect the tensions of a changing America. The novel won Updike both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for its devastating precision in capturing what it means to ‘make it’ while watching the ladder get pulled up behind you.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Writing on “Five Best: Life Lessons” for The Wall Street Journal, Andrew Wilkinson, author of Never Enough: From Barista to Billionaire, shared five of the best life lessons he found in fiction. The first entry, from John Updike, came from … Continue reading →<\/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":[6,32,53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-person-singular","category-lists","category-updike-in-context"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6569","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=6569"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6569\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6572,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6569\/revisions\/6572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}