Rabbit Is Rich is a 1982 novel by John Updike.
It is the third of four books in Updike's series about the life of American anti-hero Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom. The story begins in June, 1979. Harry is, in fact, rich. His father-in-law having passed away in the decade since Rabbit, Redux, Harry is now running the family business, Springer Motors. Harry's marriage to Janice has weathered mutual infidelities and has settled into, if not happiness, at least peace. Harry spends weekends at the golf club.
Still, though, Harry is not content. Now in his 40s, he is acutely aware of the passing of time and how he is advancing into middle age, noting his thinning hair. He's even more aware of the signs of aging in Janice. He can't stop thinking about death. He still lives in the Springer home with Janice's elderly mother Beatrice, and he would like a place that's truly his own. His son Nelson, now 22 and pretty well established as a screw-up, comes home from college and reveals that he's gotten a girl pregnant. Harry finds himself thinking of Ruth, his long-ago girlfriend, who may have borne him a daughter.
Tropes:
- Alliterative Title: Like all four of the novels in the Rabbit cycle, this one has an alliterative title that goes off of Rabbit's nickname.
- All Take and No Give: A bitter Ruth, abandoned by Harry some 20 years ago after he knocked her up, makes this observation.Ruth: You're nothing but me, me, me and gimme, gimme.
- Buses Are for Freaks: Nelson and his friend Melanie hitchhiked most of the way from Colorado to Harry's home in suburban Pennsylvania. When Harry says that Nelson could have taken the bus, Nelson says "Buses are boring, Dad, and full of creeps."
- But Liquor Is Quicker: As a drunk Janice wobbles into the bedroom, Harry thinks about how drinking makes her horny. The only problem is that he wasn't actually trying to get her drunk for sex and in fact it's a turn-off.
- Buxom Beauty Standard: Harry, who is absolutely relentless in analyzing the body of every woman he meets, praises Melanie's "big knockers". However this is somewhat subverted in that despite Melanie's large breasts Harry isn't attracted to her, and he doesn't know why.
- Death of a Child: The drowning of Harry and Janice's infant daughter Rebecca in first novel Rabbit, Run continues to haunt the series. Harry reflects on how they've let the family believe it was his fault when it was actually a drunk Janice who let the baby drown in the bathtub. Nelson remembers his baby sister when thinking about how much he hates his dad.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: Harry and his friends are bigots who use racial and ethnic slurs like "spic". Harry thinks that he can sell off the gas-guzzling clunkers he gets from trade-ins to black people. Nelson is a racist chip off the old racist block, getting upset when there's a black woman in Pru's semi-private four-woman hospital room.
- Drives Like Crazy: Nelson, the screw-up, manages to get into accidents with both his grandmother's car, Harry's car, and Janice's. Harry is furious.
- Fan Disservice: A deeply unsexy scene early in the novel has Janice come into the bedroom naked and drunk, looking for sex, which turns Harry off. So he tells her to fellate him while thinking at great length and in great detail about her physical flaws and imperfections and trying to think of his old girlfriend Ruth to get aroused. He finally does, but by this point Janice has dozed off—so Harry has sex with her while she's sleeping.
- Fruit Cart: When Harry watches Charlie's Angels, this is one thing that the Angels drive through.
- Gentile Jew-Chaser: Harry is attracted to Barbra Streisand. Specifically, "there is Jewishness in her voice that thrills him."
- Good Girls Avoid Abortion: Nelson has to marry Pru, the girl he knocked up, because she doesn't believe in abortion.
- Hollywood Mid-Life Crisis: Harry is having one. He looks at newspaper clippings of his high school basketball exploits and can only think of how old and faded the clippings are. He ruminates on his thinning hair and how he now sometimes naps in the afternoon, and he can't stop thinking of the girlfriend he abandoned 20 years ago when he was young.
- I Need a Freaking Drink: Harry is still on vacation when Janice tells him that their idiot son Nelson has run off and abandoned his pregnant wife."He has? I better sit down." To the black waiter who comes to their glass table under its fringed umbrella he says, "Piña colada, Jeff. Better make that two."
- It Will Never Catch On:
- The narrative moves into late 1979 and the hostages have been taken in Iran, but Nelson thinks "it'll blow over, they won't dare keep them long." Iran kept the hostages for 14 months.
- Harry has cashed out his gold and is looking to buy silver, because the Hunt brothers have been buying silver and the price has been skyrocketing. But he's nervous so he wonders about the bubble bursting, and the woman at the silver exchange says to him "Precious metals aren't a bubble. Precious metals are the ultimate security." It's her job to say that, of course—but three months after this scene the silver bubble spectacularly exploded with "Silver Thursday
".note
- Lady Drunk: Janice is generally depressed and unhappy with her lot in life, which drives her to drink. She's stumbling when she comes into the bedroom for sex with Harry, and she's drunk when she and Harry are at the country club with their friends.
- Male Gaze: An unending fixation with Harry, who cannot look at a woman without assessing her body in the grossest manner and thinking about sex.
- Manly Tears: Harry spends most of the novel fuming about what an idiot and a loser his son Nelson is. So even Harry is surprised when he bursts into tears at Nelson's wedding.
- Money Fetish: Harry and Janice have sex on a pile of Krugerrands. Harry even jokingly sticks one into her vagina like a slot machine. Yes, it's gross and played for laughs.
- Polyamory: Harry and Janice take a joint vacation to Florida with two other couples, and, because they're upper-class folks in 1980, engage in partner-swapping. Harry gets picked by Ronnie Harrison's wife Thelma and is caught off-guard when Thelma tells him she's loved him for years.
- Present Tense Narrative: The story is told in present tense throughout.
- Riddle for the Ages: So, is that young woman Harry's daughter, or did Ruth get the abortion after all? (The next novel, Rabbit at Rest, reveals that she is.)
- Sheet of Glass: When Harry watches Charlie's Angels, this is the other thing that the Angels drive through.
- Shotgun Wedding: Harry considers Nelson's marriage to Nelson's pregnant girlfriend Pru shotgun wedding, though it isn't literally one. It's also strongly implied that Harry married his wife Janice only because she was pregnant with Nelson.
- Sizable Semitic Nose: Harry finds Barbra Streisand attractive, thinking about her "Jewish nose."
- Skinnydipping: Harry goes skinnydipping at the family vacation cabin in the Poconos. It triggers a memory of beach outings his family took when he was young.
- Staircase Tumble: Nelson being a whiny twerp at a party leads to an altercation between him and a pregnant Pru that ends with Pru falling on some stairs. The baby's fine but Pru breaks her arm.
- Switching P.O.V.:
- Most of the book follows Harry, but at one point it switches to Melanie and Nelson to confirm that Harry is wrong and Melanie and Nelson have been sleeping together.
- Another chapter later in the book switches back to Nelson again, finding him discontent with his gassy pregnant wife and chafing under his father's thumb.
- Title Drop: The very first page of the novel considers Harry's success at Springer Motors and says "Rabbit is rich."
- Wanting Is Better Than Having: Harry makes the mistake of telling Janice his thoughts about Ruth and wondering if the daughter she had is his. Janice gets very pissed and accuses him of this, noting that he's yearning for his mistress and his maybe-daughter while he's ignoring his actual wife and doesn't want to see his actual son, who's coming back home.
