Back on his feet, he keeps eating fried foods and winds up comatose in an intensive care unit, clinging to the last moments of his life.Īlong the way, Rabbit bickers with his wife, broods about death, makes a hash of his relationship with a drug-addicted son and has an appalling sexual encounter with his daughter-in-law. Brushing aside a doctor’s warning, he eats bowls full of salty corn chips and nearly has a fatal heart attack. In “Rabbit at Rest,” the 225-pound Angstrom finally expires after clogging his arteries with gobs of junk food. But you’re also amazed that they hold on as long as they do.” “You know they’re going to stumble eventually.

“I guess the Sox are a lot like Harry Angstrom,” he says with a little shrug. Fresh from the “Today Show,” with makeup still on, the New England author seems more interested in talking about the Boston Red Sox and their latest swan dive than his most recent novel. He is warm and engagingly unpretentious in a hotel interview, wearing simple gray slacks and a plain white shirt. I was trying to write an American life, and so I guess you can say that I hustled Harry into a premature senility.”Ī lanky, soft-spoken man who flashes an elfin smile when he speaks, Updike doesn’t look the part of a literary eminence. Some readers thought the books would go on forever, but Updike says that was never in the cards: “These novels really couldn’t continue beyond this last one, because there was the danger of them turning into a comic strip that never ends. Through the eyes of his WASP antihero and other characters, Updike has captured the changing American scene, beginning with the 1950s and rolling through the greed-ridden 1980s. Published at 10-year intervals, they have been hailed by some critics as Updike’s darkest, most ambitious work. He has won numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, and is acknowledged to be one of America’s most multitalented authors.īut he is perhaps best known for the Rabbit novels. The 58-year-old author, whom John Cheever called “the most brilliant and versatile writer of his generation,” has produced an astonishing 39 books, including short stories, criticism, novels, plays, children’s books, memoirs and poems. With the completion of “Rabbit at Rest,” (Knopf, $21.95) Updike says he looks forward to taking a rest, then breaking new literary ground. His decision will come as a shock to millions of readers, who have followed Harry’s ups and downs through “Rabbit, Run” in 1960, “Rabbit Redux” in 1971 and “Rabbit Is Rich” in 1981.

Angstrom bunny