The Violet Hour by Katie Roiphe

Author:Katie Roiphe
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2016-03-07T16:00:00+00:00

Updike once said that finishing Rabbit at Rest was like a kind of death. In the Rabbit books, Rabbit’s son is with him when he dies. Nelson is undone at his father’s death, demanding that he not die. Rabbit feels some sense of obligation to tell him something. He says, “All I can tell you is, it isn’t so bad.” He thinks he should say more, but then he doesn’t say more. The book ends, “But enough. Maybe. Enough.”

In 1990, Philip Roth wrote to him, “Poor Rabbit. Must he die because you’re tired?”

Though, of course, it doesn’t end. Updike can’t resist Rabbit Remembered, a continuation of the story without Rabbit. More Rabbit, without Rabbit.

In fact, it seems Rabbit has a robust afterlife because Updike needed to keep him around. He wrote to his friend Warner Berthoff, a professor at Harvard, that he shouldn’t joke about Updike doing another Rabbit book in 2009. He says the Rabbit books brought something out in him that nothing else has.

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