Michiko Kakutani, “Critic’s Notebook: Updike’s Long Struggle to Portray
Women,” New York Times, 5 May 1988, C: 29 http://www3.nytimes.com/
books/97/04/06/lifetimes/updike-portraywomen.html [accessed 4 March
2010].
Argues that Updike’s effort to improve his portrayal of women has been a
failure.
Brian Keener, John Updike’s Human Comedy: Comic Morality in The Centaur and
the Rabbit Novels (New York: Peter Lang, 2005).
Takes up the issue of comedy and its relationship to morality, arguing that
Rabbit is a comic hero who slowly matures over the course of the novels.
John Stephen Martin, “Rabbit’s Faith: Grace and the Transformation of the
Heart,” Pacif ic Coast Philology, 17 (November 1982): 103–111.
Reads the first two Rabbit novels through Blaise Pascal’s Pensée 507, which pro-
vides the epigraph to Rabbit, Run, discussing Rabbit’s sense of faith and examin-
ing demonstrations of grace in the novels.
John M. Neary, “‘Ah: Runs’: Updike, Rabbit, and Repetition,” Religion & Litera-
ture, 21 (Spring 1989): 89–110.
Argues that Updike’s use of repetition in the Rabbit novels—of adultery, the search
for God, and materialism—is evidence of an ultimately affirmative vision on the
part of the writer, rather than of the nihilism of which he is often accused.
Joyce Carol Oates, “So Young!” New York Times, 30 September 1990, VII: 1.
Insightful review of Rabbit at Rest, forecasting themes that have come to domi-
nate criticism on the novel and the tetralogy as a whole.
Mary O’Connell, Updike and the Patriarchal Dilemma: Masculinity in the Rabbit
Novels (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1996).
Examines the role of gender in the Rabbit novels.
Stacey Olster, “Rabbit Rerun: Updike’s Replay of Popular Culture in Rabbit at
Rest,” Modern Fiction Studies, 37 (Spring 1991): 45–60.
Discusses the significance of popular culture and historical references in the final
novel, with mentions of the others.
Olster, ed., The Cambridge Companion to John Updike (Cambridge, England &
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
Comprises twelve essays, a chronology through 2004, and a bibliography. The
work is useful for becoming familiar with the major topics in Updike criticism;
it also provides in-depth analyses of religion and moral debates, race, history,
American exceptionalism, and Postmodernism in Updike’s works.
Kyle A. Pasewark, “The Troubles with Harry: Freedom, America, and God in
John Updike’s Rabbit Novels,” Religion and American Culture, 6 (Winter
1996): 1–33.
Argues that Rabbit exemplifies the conflicts between redemption, religion, and
the American dream in American culture, while Thelma, who appears as his lover