John Updike's Rabbit Tetralogy: Mastered Irony in Motion (Hardcover)

by Marshall Boswell (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
This work treats the "Rabbit" tetralogy as a single, unified "metanovel" in order to demonstrate that the four discrete sections of the tetralogy provide a coherent articulation of Updike's existential vision. A chapter is devoted to each part of the tetralogy for those wishing to know more.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 253 pages
• Publisher: University of Missouri Press (February 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0826213103
• ISBN-13: 978-0826213105
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,131,989 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Impressive, November 15, 2001

By	James Yerkes (Surry, ME USA) - See all my reviews

It is really hard to overstate the importance of Marshall Boswell's critical achievement here. His goal is to explain Updike's literary vision in constructing the Rabbit tetralogy, "a dialectical vision" which he calls "an interdependent matrix of ethical precepts, theological beliefs, and aesthetic principles-less a creed than a versatile formal device; it is, in effect the scaffold on which Updike has built the entire tetralogy" (p. 3). That goal is what distinguishes this book from the only other text wholly devoted to a discussion of the tetralogy, editor Lawrence Broer's Rabbit Tales: Poetry and Politics in John Updike's Rabbit Novels (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1998). That work, helpful in isolated essayists' insights, lacks the coherent analysis and penetrating structural insights of the whole Rabbit mega-novel which make Boswell's book so valuable. Indeed, it seems fair to say that henceforth no commentator on the Updike tetralogy will be able to avoid coming to terms, up or down, with Boswell's carefully-wrought interpretation.
The four chapters analyzing the four Rabbit novels are really excellent examples of careful reading translated into readable prose. Students and general readers will find much of value in those chapters, each novel taken on its own terms, but also as expressions of the overall tetralogy vision. The Introduction lays out in careful detail the assumptions Boswell brings to this task. The key interpretive assumptions are taken from Kierkegaard and theologian Karl Barth-Kierkegaard providing the philosophical concept of mastered irony which presumes an author's vision "emerges indirectly via the unresolved tension produced by the interplay of that thematic dialectic" (p.4), and Barth providing the theological metaphysics of the "dialectic of evil, the concept of `something and nothingness,' [and] the argument for a serenely unproveable God." According to Boswell, "An unsettling Manichaean vision, Barth's dialectical theology appeals to Updike for its worldliness and its intellectually elegant explanation for the presence of evil" (16).
Those who dissent from this reading will likely do so at the point where Boswell assumes that the vision of the Rabbit tetralogy represents the entire Updikean picture of personal human experience as religious. Withal, a very impressive book, indeed.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential reading, June 10, 2001

By A Customer

This is essential reading for anyone interested in John Updike. Boswell summarizes the Rabbit books, Updike's best work, and presents a dynamic analysis of their importance. Updike doesn't just build characters, says the author, but presents the inner mystery of the human condition from a cosmic, really a theological, viewpoint.