Word: angstroms
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There is not much glamour in getting old. Not in America, and not in the eighties. You stop working, you go to Florida, and if you are like Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, you play golf, eat junk food, and try to hang onto your sexuality as long as you can. For the most part, you sit around and wait for your life to fall apart...
...Princeton during the 1950s. Philadelphia Fire by John Edgar Wideman -- Fictional characters caught up in the factual bombing of Move headquarters by Philadelphia police in 1985. Age of Iron by J.M. Coetzee -- South Africa, with cancer as a metaphor for apartheid. Rabbit at Rest by John Updike -- Harry Angstrom hops offstage, perhaps to meet his maker. The Further Inquiry by Ken Kesey -- The head Prankster rerolls the legendary cross-country bus trip. Tender by Mark Childress -- For the character Leroy Kirby, read Elvis Presley. Orrie's Story by Thomas Berger -- The author of Little Big Man retells the Greek Oresteia...
...What's more, Updike himself has been fueling this story, both in a June speech at the American Booksellers' Association convention in Las Vegas and in the New York Times Book Review. How to explain all this fuss about the fate of an imaginary character? Well, Harry C. ("Rabbit") Angstrom first appeared 30 years ago in Rabbit, Run and then re-emerged in Rabbit Redux (1971) and Rabbit Is Rich (1981). A lot of readers have periodically checked the progress of their lives against that of the onetime high school basketball star from eastern Pennsylvania. Rabbit's demise seems...
Rabbit Is Rich by John Updike (1981). In his third incarnation as the titular hero of an Updike novel, Harold C. ("Rabbit") Angstrom makes good money selling Japanese cars (Toyotas) to Americans. Still, something has gone wrong in Rabbit's native land, and Updike's valedictory to the late 1970s creates an unforgettable comedy of diminishing expectations...
What makes Bob run? Partly it's real-life Rabbit Angstrom anguish over his own flunked future. A high school basketball star with genuine pro prospects, Doss entered Connecticut's Fairfield University on a full scholarship. Academic disaster: he lasted two semesters...