A C T A U N I V E R S I T Ä T I S L O D Z I E N S I S
FO LIA L IT TER A R IA 36, 1993
Agnieszka Salska
PATTERNS OF MEMORY IN JOH N UPDIKE’S “RABBIT” NOVELS
Jo h n U pd ike is a w riter for w hose w ork m em ory in its m an y forms: as personal m em o ry, as historical reco rd, and as cu ltu ral m em ory, has crucial im portance. His im ag ination thrives on tra n sfo rm atio n th ro u g h the selectiveness o f m em ory and depends on the tensio n between remem bering and forgetting, even as them atically th e problem atics o f stability and change is central for his w ork, especially for the “ R a b b it” sequence, especially in the light o f the fo u rth bo ok in the series. T h e “ R a b b it” novels also allow us to look a t the problem o f how m em ory tran sform s and a d a p ts the past for the needs o f the m om ent from which the p ast is being viewed.
T h e fo u r novels in the sequence sp an the fou r consecutive decades: the Fifties in Rabbit Run (1960), the sixties in Rabbit R edux (1971), the seventies in Rabbit Is Rich (1981) for which U p dike received Pulitzer Prize, the eighties in Rabbit at R est (1990) with an o th er Pulitzer Prize fo r the a u th o r. By now the d ocu m en tary inclination o f the sequence is clearly visible. Even if U p d ike him self d ow nplayed the socio-historical dim ensio n o f Rabbit Run em phasizing instead its religious concern, now th a t we have all the fo u r novels, each following one bigger tha n its predecessor, it is obv iou s th a t they grew prim arily by th e expan sio n o f the descriptive, d o cu m enta ry side. F o r “ d escriptio n expresses love” , U p dik e believes1. And so he celebrates c o n te m p o ra ry A m eric a as he know s her in W hitm an esq u e d etail and eventually, in this sequence, w ith a W itm anesque sweep.
T h e re ad er’s problem is th a t we are shocked and saddened a t how m uch o f th e scene, how m an y o f the events th a t his novels recall, we have already
1 J. U p d i k e , Self-Consciousness. M emoirs, ed. F. Crest, New Y ork 1990, p. 243. Subsequent quotations come from the same edition and are identified in the text by the abbreviation SC followed by page num ber.
forg otten. T hey d o com e back as history and for a read er o f m ore or less U p d ik e’s age an d generation, the w riter’s skill in chronicling the reccnt past has special poignancy dem o nstrating , as it docs, how o u r ow n lives tu rn in to histo ry subject to research, arran gem en t, and catego rization. Especially th e tw o later novels co n tain so m an y references to news m akin g events o f the tim e o f action th a t, o n one h an d, th e extent o f U p dike’s factu al research ca n n o t b u t seem im pressive while, on the other, a read er w ho has lived th ro u g h those events panics at th e realization o f the selectivcncss o f his ow n m em ory or, to p u t it brutally, a t the extent o f its failure. Y et U p dike is aw are o f the dangers o f overburdening his w ork w ith factuality, w ith the m erely chronicling function. Review ing E dm und W ilson’s fiction in the N ew R epublic in 1975, U pdike observed:
A n immensly mobile gatherer o f information he [Wilson] w rote no fiction w ithouth a solidly planted autobiographical base, and his fantasy, when it intervenes [...] seems clumsy and harsh. H e drew on jou rnal notations as if he didn’t tru st his memory, th at great sifter o f significance; forgetfulness, the subconscious shaper of m any a fiction, had n o place in his equipm ent2.
E ven before the sequence o f the “ R a b b it” novels received its presum ed com pletio n in the fo urth , m ost bulky story R abbit at R est, D ilvo R isto ff w ro te a b o o k length study on The Presesnce o f C ontem porary Am erican H istory in John U pdike’s R abbit Trilogy where he argues th a t it is the scene, n o t really the h ero, th a t occupies the center o f the novels and generates the re ad er’s interest. M arry A ngstro m , as he is officially and also later in his life called, and his story are n ot “ the soul” o f th e scries “ b u t a dead skeleton, a stru ctu re w hich is lifeless unless life is given to it by th e flesh a nd spirit o f the scene” 3 th a t is U p dike ’s rendering o f the social and historical context o f the events in R a b b it’s life. In o th er w ords, R is to f f s interest is in the d ocum entary, chronicling aspect o f these novels at the expense o f his interest in the hero. Y et the novels, as even R isto ffs title acknow ledges, are given th eir unity and their very raison d ’etre by the fact th a t they trace the life o f one character. T he vicissitudes o f R a b b it’s personal life intertw ine w ith the changes in his surroun din gs and only th a t interaction gives th e sequence its m ultidim en tional fulness and com plexity.
H a rry A ngstrom appears in the first novel of the series when he is 26, w ith a young fam ily and a m eaningless jo b , nourishing a n ostalgia fo r his days o f basketball glory in high school. H is nicknam e “ R a b b it” com es from th a t tim e. T hu s the sequence opens significantly w ith H a rry ’s m o m ent o f fulfilm ent and trium p h already in the past. H e associates w ith grace the
2 Reprinted in J. U p d i k e , Hugging the Shore, p. 196-206.
3 D . R i s t o f f , The Presence o f Contemporary American History, [in:] John Updike's Rabbit Trilogy, P. Lang, 1988, p. 143.
kind o f experience he h ad p erform in g as th e sta r o f his hig school basketball team ; his w hole self, body, m ind, and em otions in tegrated, free o f c on s tra in ts , tran scend ing the m u n d an e sense o f w hat is possible in a feat o f inspired action. T h e grace o f such achievement, its ease, perfection, and style become R a b b it’s stan d a rd by which to m easure th e q uality o f life, its nearness to G o d o r “ it” , as H a rry calls H im . R a b b it’s one hun ger, his one over-riding need is th at the pow er and prom ise o f his uniq ue individuality be acknow ledged and respected; th a t he m ay have his way in life. T hu s th e m em ory o f the p ast, o f th a t acstatically fulfilling experience sends him run ning in que st o f its repetitio n, in the ho pe th at he m ay re cap ture and retain the suprem e m om ent. T he grace an d energy o f such inspired perform ance open for R a b b it a perspective in to tra n sce n -dence, give him a sense o f direct access to “ it” , to some pow er larger th an him self whose availability for him justifies and sanctions his insistance o n his own uniqueness an d centrality. T h a t is why R a b b it can claim th a t he has faith. His F a ith strikes m e as very E m erso nian indeed.
R a b b it A ngstrom who is only a year you nger th a n his crea to r takes m u ch from U p d ik e ’s p ersonal m em ories o f his child ho od and early yo uth in the tow ns o f Shillington and R eading, Pennsylvania. T he w riter return s to th ose m em ories in th e essays o f Self-Consciousness ad m ittin g in the last piece o f the book:
My own deepest sense o f self has to do with Shillington and (at a certain slant), the scent o f or breath of Christmas. 1 become exhilarated in Shillington, as if my self is being given a bath in its own essence (SC, 231).
J u s t as R a b b it A ng strom shares with U pdik e the physical te rritory o f y o uth an d self-form atio n so he, no d o u b t, shares with his a u th o r the anxieties and revelations o f inner life:
To be forgiven, by G od: this notion, so comm only mouthed in shadowy churches, was for me a tactile actuality as 1 lay in my loathed hide under th at high hard pellet, th at suspended white explosion, of a tropical sun. [...] The sun was like G od not only in H is power b ut also in the way He allowed H imself to be shut out, to be evaded. Yet if one were receptive, He could find you even at the bottom o f a well (SC, 70).
T h e la tte r reflection on the n atu re o f his religious experience and his experience o f G o d , offers a glimpse o f th e personal origins o f R a b b it’s flam bo y an t confluence o f sensuality and religious fa ith 4. But also, in an in escap able w ay, R a b b it’s sensuously stim u lated a p p reh e n sio n o f G od c a n n o t bu t rem ind us o f th e early W h itm an , who sim ilary used and abused his b od y as th e m a in in strum en t o f access to the transcenden t.
4 U pdike suffered from psoriasis for which sunbathing was a cure (cf. Self-Consciousness, essay П: A t W ar with M y Skin).
M o re generally speaking, R ab b it shares the trad ition al, instinctive and im pulsive bias o f so m any A m erican literary heroes. T o be at his best, to achieve his m om ent o f grace, R a bb it needs to rely on intu itio n, on im pulses o f the heart, on the cravings o f his senses and in this should, 1 think, be seen as a direct descendant o f the R o m antic individualist, o u r tim es’ version o f the Self-R eliant M an. M easured against E m erson’s or W hitm an ’s vision o f the representative, the divine average m an , H a rry A ngstrom app ears aw fully dim inished. H e is dw arfed, first of all, by the shrunk possibilities open to him: his family feels a burden, his jo b consists in talking people into buying som ething R ab bit knows to be useless. T he jo b only serves to su p p o rt him self and the family on a m odest level he resents. T he strained circum stances o f his life becom e focused in the recurring im age o f the eloset d o o r banging against the television set any tim e R ab bit needs to reach som ething o u t o f the closet.
G iven his instinctive b u t also p rogram m a tic sensuality, R ab b it turn s to sex as the m o st readily available field o f achieving satisfaction, repeating the kind o f experience th a t he h ad as a basketball star. U nlike m any critics, I th in k th a t R ab b it does know w hat he is searching for; it is n o t a concrete thing o r position but a quality o f experience, the quality o f grace and ecstasy in daily life. Sex, how ever, as in The Scarlet L etter, has social consequences en tra pp in g R ab b itt in th e institutionalized fam ily life, the necessity o f a regular jo b , the cum bersom e attibu te s of respectability. F ro m these he has to ru n , ru n fo r his freedom . T his is the p attern established by the first novel in th e series, w hich approp riately, ends in the freedom , the openness o f all possibilities restored: “ [...] he runs. A h: runs. R u n s” 5.
T he runn ing m o tif as bo th them atic center and structu ra l su pp o rt o f the novel is som ething this bo o k shares with o ther im po rta nt novels o f the fifties: Bellow’s Adventures o f Augie M arch, E llison’s Invisible M an, S alinger’s C atcher in the R y e, and , o f course, K e ro u ac ’s On the R oad. In all those novels the ru nnin g is defensive, aw ay from the system , in attem pts to p rotect the individual’s righ t to be him self, which invariably m eans to be free. T here is a political side to recording those stories o f ru n ne rs, and in the case o f R a bb it - a political dim ension to the m em ory th a t sets him in m o tio n 6. U pdik e acknow ledges indirectly his concern w ith the political dim ension o f m em ory. In a review o f M ilan K u n d e ra ’s The B ook o f Laughter and Forgetting7 the A m erican w riter endorses a form u la tio n by
5 J. U p d i k e , Rabbit Run, ed. F . Crest, New Y ork 1962, p. 284.
6 T h at the novel shares so centrally the issues and structural patterns of major contemporary w orks of fiction seems to confirm the supposition th at U pdike did no t originally conceive of it as the beginning of a series. A nother indication in this direction is the title of the second novel Rabbit Redux.
one o f the characters in the Czech a u th o r’s novel: “ the struggle o f m an against pow er is the struggle o f m em ory against oblivion” . A sim ilar struggle o f the individual to hold on to m em ories against the acceleration o f social and cultural change constitutes a central them atic concern and stru cturin g device in the series’ final novel R abbit at Rest.
W hen com pared to oth er novels o f the fifties Rabbit R un stands ou t because exercising his divinely sanctioned right to “ the pursuit o f h appiness” as unlim ited freedom , the b o o k ’s hero leaves behind a trail o f suffering and even d e ath o f the innocent partne rs in the h um an intercourse. T h us, it seems, th a t if there is ground for ascribing to U pdike social and political conservatism , it is a conservatism ultim ately rooted in the H aw tho rnia n recognition o f the insatiable egoism in ou r n atu re at every m om ent liable to com m it the sin o f instrum ental treatm ent o f fellow hum an beings. H ow ever, unlike H aw th orne U pdike, does n o t think o f this sin as calculated, p erpetrated in cold blood and, therefore, unpard onable.
I f in R abbit R un H arry A ngstrom tries to o u tru n a lim iting, constraining reality, in Rabbit at R est it seems th at reality, the changing scene and environm ent are leaving H a rry behind; th at he has, perhaps, succeeded in ru ning for his freedom to the po in t o f term inal loneliness. It is N elson, H a rr y ’s son, w ho tow ards the end o f the novel con fron ts his fa th er w ith precisely such in terp re tatio n o f their troubled relationship:
I keep trying to love you but you do n ’t really want it. Y ou’re afraid o f it, it would tie you dow n. Y ou’ve been scared all your life of being tied down*.
H a rry himself, on the o th er h and , has an increasing sense o f being pushed o ut, o f becom ing unnecessary and cum bersom e. A fte r T helm a’s d e ath no body really needs him . His estrangem ent from his family grow s w hen Janice and N elson, w ho ow n Springer M otors after old M rs S pringer’s d eath , s ta rt run ning the lot betw een them and H a rry becomes red undant. H e is only “ Jan ice’s h u sb a n d ” , as he puts it ruefully at one point. H is sense o f im portance has been no t only questioned bu t decisively underm ined. T his, how ever, applies to o the r individuals around him. Instability is the m ain factor c on trib utin g to the loss o f individual’s confidence in his own centrality. R a b b it’s sense o f becom ing obsolete is tied to the accelerated changes in the culture w ith which he no longer can or wishes to cope:
R abbit feels betrayed. He was reared in a world where w ar was not strange but change was: the world stood still so you could grow up in it. He know s when the bottom fell out. When they closed dow n K roll’s, K roll’s that had stood in the center o f Brewer all those years, bigger than a church, older than the courthouse, right at the head of Weiser Square there, with every Christmas those otherw orldly displays of circling trains * J. U p d i k e , Rabbit at Rest, ed. A . K nopf, New Y ork 1990, p. 418. Subsequent qu otations come from the same edition, page number followes in brackets.
and nodding dolls and tw inkling stars in the corner windows as if G od H imself put them there to light up this darkest time o f the year [...]. So when the system just upped one sum mer and decided to close K roll’s down, just because shoppers had stopped coming in because the downtow n had become frightening to white people, R abbit realized the world was no t solid and benign, it was a shabby set of tem porary arrangem ents for the time being, all for the sake o f money [...]. If K roll’s could go, the banks could f o . When the m oney stopped, they could close dow n G od H imself (461).
A lready in Rabbit is Rich H a rry has to puzzle ab o u t the sexual m ores o f his so n’s generation. H e does n ot understand the arrangem e nts and con fig u ra tio n s betw een N elso n, his girlfriend P rue, and her girlfriend M elanie. A nd th rou g h o u t Rabbit at Rest his sense o f belonging to a n o th er tim e grows. N elson points o u t in one o f their tense conversations:
W hat you d o n ’t realize abou t a consumer society, D ad, is it’s all fads in a way. People d o n ’t buy things because they need’em. You actually need very little. Y ou buy something because it’s beyond w hat you need, it’s something that will enhance your life, n ot ju st keep it plugging along (417).
T h e cu ltu ral and value change th at has occurred w ithin the sp an o f his life, w ithin his m em ory, pursues R ab b it doggedly. W hen P ru e, N elson’s wife, adm its in despair:
‘I’m scared - so scared. And my kids are scared too. I’m trash and they’re trash and they know it’, H arry tries to object: ‘Hey, hey’ [...] ‘Come on. N obody’s trash’. But even as he says this he knows it’s an old-fashioned idea he w ould have trouble defending. We’re all trash, really. W ithout G od to lift us up and make us into angels we’re all trash (344).
A gainst this overw helm ing sense o f change, against the grow ing feeling o f his ow n irrelevance, H arry goes back to m em ories. A t the end o f his jou rn ey , at the close o f this last novel, R ab bit finds a black nighorhood in D eleon, F lorida. It draw s him like a m agn et because it evokes for him.
[...] the town o f his childhood, M t. Judge in the days o f Depression and distant war, when people still sat on their front porches, and there were vacant lots and odd-shaped cornfields, and men back from work in the factories w ould w ater their lawns in the evenings, and people not long off the farm kept chickens in backyard pens, and peddled eggs for odd pennies (478).
C ertainly, there is, in H a rry ’s m editations, a nostalgia for the w orld o f his lost yo u th b u t the black neighborhood recalling this w ord attracts him because tim e som ehow stopped there, because “this ignored p a r t o f D eleon is in some way fam iliar, he’s been there before, before his life got to o so ft” (486). T he black section o f D eleon presents to H a rry the con tin uity o f values th a t he has betrayed in becom ing rich and his m illieu has lost, it seems, entirely. W alking in this p oo r neighbo rh ood H a rry som ehow transcends the lim its o f his enclosure in the affluent w hite m iddle class life and once m ore going against the established system ’s norm s, he is “ exerting his natio n al right to go w here he pleases” (486).
T h e w hole novel Rabbit at R est is divided into three p arts entitled F L (F lo rid a), P A (P ennsylvania), M I - n o t M ichigan b u t M yo card iac Infarction . In its em phasis on the jo urn ey m otif, on the changing o f places until the final dislocation into an d th ro u g h the M yo card iac In fa rctio n, this stru ctu re echoes the first novel R abbit R un. In the third p a rt o f R abbit at R est H a rry A ngstrom again follows his instinct to run: “ A life know s few revelations; these m u st be follow ed when they com e. R ab bit sees clearly w hat to do. H is acts take on a decisive haste. H e goes u pstairs and pa ck s” (435). H e finds him self on the sam e ro ad S outh th at he to o k on the m em o ra ble n ight o f his ineffective flight from Brewer, Janice, and the constraining circum stances o f his fam ily and jo b at the beginning o f R abbit Run.
R abbit wants to see once more a place in M organtow n, a hardw are store with two pum ps outside, where a thickset farm er in tw o shirts and hairy nostrils had advised him to know where he was going before he went there. Well, now he did. He had learned the road and figured out the destination. But w hat had been a country hardw are store was now a slick little real-estate olTice, where the gas pum ps had been, fresh black asphalt showed under the m oonlight the stark yellow stripes of diagonal parking speaces (438).
R a b b it h as changed and the c ou ntry has changed. H is re turn to the sam e rou te and th e sam e situatio n m easures the changes in b o th. F o r R ab b it now know s w here he is going and in his renew ed loyalty to the values o f his yo uth (signalled by the retu rn o f his nicknam e; in R abbit is Rich only R u th called him R ab b it, otherw ise he was H a rry A ng strom th ro u g h ou t), he is going for good. R un n ing back to the m em ories o f his yo unger years (driving S outh he tu rn s on the ra dio and listens to a concert o f songs from the fifties, the sam e ones th a t he had heard on the analogo us occasion in R abbit R un), ru n nin g back to the values o f his yo uth th a t he has betrayed in R abbit is R ich where ra th e r th a n ru n nin g, he to o k to jo gging and co un try club recreation, H a rry A n gstrom also back to the tim e o f the birth o f his n atio n , the fo rm a tion o f its values and its early trium phs. F o r the last C h ristm as o f his life Janice gave her h usband a bo ok on the A m erican R evolution. H a rry takes it w ith him on his final run to F lorid a determ ined to “ finish it if it kills him ” (435), w hich in a sym bollic way it does. A lone in D eleon he revisits b o th his ow n yo u th w alking in the p o o r black neighb orh ood and his c o u n try ’s beginnings tryin g to finish The First Salute.
In R abbit at R est m o re th a n in the three earlier novels U p d ike identifies H a rry A ng stro m w ith the U nited S tates. A t the request o f his g ran d d au g h ter Jud y (b orn a t the end o f R abbit is R ich), H arry dresses up as U ncle Sam an d takes p a rt in the fou rth o f Ju ly parade w ith J u d y ’s girl scouts group. T he incident is und ou bted ly based on U p d ik e ’s p erso nal m em ories. In Self-C onsciousness the w riter rem em bers th a t his fathe r was U ncle Sam in th e V ictory P a ra d e afte r W orld W a r II, and th at it was for him an act
o f sincere, convinced patriotism (SC, 31). F o r H arry A ngstro m , U p dik e’s creatio n, it is a m uch m o re am bivalent and strange experience:
[...] w hat a precarious weird feeling it is for H arry at last to pu t his suede-booted feet on the yellow double line o f the tow n’s main street and start walking. He feels giddy, ridiculous, enorm ous. [...]. The trem or in his heart and hands becomes an exalted sacrificial feeling as he takes few steps into the asphalt void, rimmed at this end o f the route with only a few spectators, a few bare bodies in shorts and sneakers and tinted shirts along the curb (368).
B ut as he w alks o n and the crow d begins to cheer for b oth U ncle Sam and H a rry R abb it since some in ha bitants o f Brewer seem still to rem em ber R a b b it from the days o f his youthful prom ise, H arry fully acccpts his identification with A m erica:
K ate Smith belts out, dead as she is, dragged into the grave by sheer gangrenous weight, “G od bless America” [...] H arry’s eyes bum and the inpression giddily - as if he has been lifted up to survey all hum an history - grows upon him, making his heart thum p worse and worse, th at all in all this is the happiest fucking country the world has ever seen (371).
In the course o f this novel, H a rry ’s life eventually emerges as identical with the course o f A m erican history from the early achievem ent and prom ise to the bloated, overw eight condition, given to soft living and m aterial com forts, and w orried ab ou t the m ortally sick heart. F o r as the doctor tells Janice: “ H a rry ’s is a typical A m erican heart, for his age, econom ic status, et ce te ra” (166). In R abbit at R est “m iddle A m erica” is H arry A n gstrom ’s age, well past its prim e and finding it increasingly difficult to cope. A nd viewed in the long perspective, the R ab b it novels co n tain n o t only the story o f H arry A ngstrom or chronicle the successive post-w ar decades. T hey also record the struggles, defeats and, it seems, eventual dem ise o f A m erica’s m ost persistent m ythical figure - its ro m an tic, individualist hero.
R a b b it’s d eath (assum ing th a t he indeed dies) appears as a conscious o r a t least sem i-conscious choice, an answ er to the qu estio n im plied th ro u g h o u t the novel in H a rr y ’s growing perception o f the failure o f his body and o f his red u n d an t status in the family. T he question is “ how to g o”? and in H a r ry ’s in terp re tatio n it is one o f style. T he issue gets focused in the debate over the case o f P ete R o se’s w ithdraw al from his baseball career. W hen the quality o f his perform ance deteriorated, R ose forced his club into a financial settlem ent. H is practical way o f stepping back is opposed to th a t o f an o th er player, S chm idt, w ho, when his perform an ce becam e p o o r, sim ply quitted th ou g h he could have earned an oth er half m illion dollars by hanging in until the end o f the season. H a rry explains:
[...] like Schmidt himself said, it got to the poin t where he’d tell his body to do something and it w ouldn’t to it. He knew w hat he h ad to do and couldn’t do it, and he faced the fact and you got to give him credit. In this day and age, he p ut honor over money (351).
H arry returns to the R ose-S chm idt choice several tim es and his preference is in variably for Schm idt: “ I f you have to do it w ith hustle and grit, you sh o uldn ’t be o ut th ere” (385).
R a b b it dies o f a hea rt failure which overtakes him w hen he is playing basketball on a street corn er field in the black n eighborhood o f D eleon, F I., w hich he had been com pulsively visiting fo r the past weeks. H e is playing a one on one gam e w ith an accidental black youngster w ho ju st happens to be on the spot:
R abbit feels a gap, a m om ent’s slackness in the other, in which to turn the corner; he takes one slam o f a dribble, carrying his foe on his side like a bumping sack of coal, and leaps up for the peeper. The hoop fills his circle o f vision, it descends to kiss his lips, he can’t miss.
U p he goes, way up tow ard the torn clouds. His torso is ripped by a terrific pain, elbow to elbow. H e bursts from within [...] (506).
In one o f the essays in Self-C onsciousness there is this reminiscence:
Shortly after the insurance report, 1 was playing basketball - we husbands and fathers were still young enough to play this game o f constant m otion - and 1 looked up at the naked, netless hoop: gray sky outside it, gray sky inside it. And as I waited, on a raw rainy fall day, for the opposing touch football team to kick off, there w ould come sailing through the air instead the sullen realization th at in a few decades we would all be dead (SC, 100)’.
In the scene from R abbit at R est this m em ory is transform ed into a gesture o f victory in w hich R ab bit once m ore exercises his righ t o f radical freedom th a t relates H arry to the com m itm ents o f his you th and to the central m ytho s o f his once youthful culture. T he po int is th a t a t the end o f the eighties w hen H a rry is 56 and A m erica had gone th rou g h the R egan era w ith increasing anxieties and fears: political, social, econom ic, m edical, m oral, and others, the possibilities for b oth seem drastically dim inished. In R abbit at R est A m erica is H a rry A n gstrom ’s age as U pd ike echoes from w ithin the sadness and a sense o f loss o f his m iddle age vision, the H a w th o rn ia n confluence10 o f his h e ro ’s age and the co u n try ’s age, his h ero ’s individual history and the history o f the country.
T ow ard the end o f the last essay in Self-C onsciousness U pdike m editates d urin g a sleepless night at his aged m o th e r’s farm house:
F or isn’t it the singularity o f life th at terrifies us? Is no t the decisive difference between comedy and tragedy th at tragedy denies us another chance? [...] H ow solemn and huge and deeply pathetic our life does loom in its once-and-doneness, how inexorably linear, even though our revolving planet offers us cycles o f the day and of the year to suggest
5 The insurance report told U pdike that his lungs were “ slightly emphysem atous” , an incurable condition as he found out in medical books (cf. SC, 99).
th at existence is intrinsically cyclical, a playful spin, and that there will always be, tom orrow morning or the next, another chance.
[...]
The universe itself we know now to be, like our individual lives, singular in its career, beginning in the Big Bang and ending in entropy [...]. Things in general take on a tragic oncc-and-doneness, displacing the ancient comedy, bred of ignorance, o f infinite possibility and endless cycle (SC, 265).
I t is on this p attern o f the extension o f private m em ory into collective consciousness and o f the parallel darkening o f the youthful vision into the m iddle aged sense o f loss and dispossession th a t the whole sequence o f the R ab b it novels, as we have them now , operates. It is this p attern also th a t p uts U pdike clearly w ithin the tradition o f “ the great A m erican novel” in w hich so m any A m erican au tho rs from C ooper and H a w th orne to F itzgerald to M ailer tried to condense th e national experience, the unique A m erican exhilaration with the vision o f another chance and the ineviatblc disillusionment o f its loss, into a m ythical story o f a single life driven by the prospect o f possibility and betrayed by the passage o f time.
Institute o f English Studies University of Łódź
Agnieszka Salska
STRUK TURY PA M IĘC I W CYKLU PO W IEŚCI O „K RÓ LIK U ” JO H N A U PD IK E’A
Wielorakie formy pamięci: kronikarski zapis, osobiste wspomnienia, mit literacki i kulturowy, m ają dla Johna U pdike’a, autora czterech powieści o „K róliku” , kluczowe znaczenie. W całej tetralogii, a zwłaszcza w jej ostatniej części Królik się uspokoił (1990) wyobraźnia pisarza karmi się napięciem między pam iętaniem i zapominaniem, a dialektyka stabilności i zmiany leży w samym centrum splotu jej w ątków tematycznych.
B ohater wszystkich powieści, H arry A ngstrom zwany „K rólikiem ” , podziela tradycyjną skłonność bardzo wielu amerykańskich bohaterów literackich do kierow ania się w wyborach instynktem raczej niż intelektem. Żeby osiągnąć szczyt swoich możliwości, „K rólik” musi odw oływać się do intuicji i porywu serca, musi iść za swoimi naturalnymi pragnieniami. Wydaje się w tym względzie spadkobiercą romantycznego bohatera - indywidualisty, współczesną wersją „Self- R eliant M an ” , człowieka polegającego n a sobie.
W porów naniu ze swym emersonowskim czy w hitmanow skim pierwowzorem „K rólik” w ydaje się straszliwie pomniejszony, przede wszystkim przez otoczenie, w którym żyje i przez przyspieszone zmiany cywilizacyjne i obyczajowe, za którymi w ostatniej powieści cyklu już nie m a ochoty nadążać.
W Królik się uspokoił, bardziej niż we wcześniejszych powieściach serii, H arry A ngstrom utożsam iany jest z A meryką. „Serce H arry’ego to typowe amerykańskie serce wziąwszy pod
uwagę jego wiek, status ekonomiczny itd.” - mówi lekarz żonie „K rólika". 1 kiedy H arry umiera, jesteśmy świadkami śmierci centralnej postaci amerykańskiego mitu kulturow ego, za wszelką cenę niezależnego, wolnego bohatera-indywidualisty. Retrospektyw nie, cykl powieści o „K rólik u” prezentuje nie tylko losy H arry’ego A ngstrom a, stanowi nie tylko kronikę głównych w ydarzeń, przemian i klim atu kolejnych dekad X X w. po II wojnie światowej; powieści te również obserwują i utrw alają walkę, porażki, i, jak się zdaje, ostateczne zejście ze sceny najw italniejszej mitycznej postaci w amerykańskiej kulturze, jej rom antycznego bohatera-indywidualisty.
W finalnej powieści cyklu losy H arry’ego okazują się analogiczne bądź naw et tożsame z dziejami Stanów Zjednoczonych - od wczesnych osiągnięć i wielkich nadziei do stanu nabrzm iałej od nadwagi ociężałości, przyw iązania do wygód i zamartw iania sią o śmiertelnie chore serce. Cały cykl oparty jest o zasadę rozciągania pryw atnego doświadczenia i osobistych w spomnień (z których wiele H arry A ngstrom dzieli ze swoim, o rok tylko starszym, tw órcą) w ten sposób aby nabrały wymiarów i ciężaru zbiorowej pamięci kultury. Temu procesowi towarzyszy równoległe ciemnienie młodzieńczej wizji nadziei i otw artych możliwości w nieodłączne od wieku dojrzałego poczucie straty i wydziedziczenia.
