For Rabbit, with Love and Squalor: An American Read

by Anne Roiphe

Book Overview

What does it mean to love a character in a book? Many of us do. Many of us always have. These loves are not the subject of late-night phone conversations with friends or entries in our secret diaries.... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0743205057
• ISBN13: 9780743205054
• Release Date: November 2000
• Publisher: Free Press
• Length: 222 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.8" x 8.7"

Customer Reviews

A treasure from Anne Roiphe

Some writers you wouldn't want to meet, but I feel I already have met Anne Roiphe. Her body of work is rich, complex, full of surprises at herself and the world around her. She is not afraid to admit her own mistakes, and she clearly learns from experience and in the process, teaches. Anne Roiphe is also a reader who carries certainly literary characters around with her, like a cherished friend. In this book, she has her chance to talk back to Rabbit Angstrom, Holden Caulfield, and others, the way many of us have wished to. If you are a keen reader of late 20th-century American fiction, this book is for you.

Brilliant and original

Totally agree with previous reviewers. The author combines insightful critiques of the top mid century novelists (including Updike, Roth, Salinger, Hemingway, and Ford ), with fantasies which bring her together with the protagonists of their books. Her honesty is totally refreshing. Her literary insights remarkable. As I read, Roiphes analyses of the human and societal interaction were so enlightening. Why had I not seen these revelations as she describes them?Included are intimate views of her personal life. She weaves these themes into a seamless whole. I was enchanted from the first page.Thank you, Ann Roiphe for a special reading experience.

A Tour de Force

This is, in my opinion, the best Anne Roiphe book since "Lovingkindness." Her essays on Philip Roth's literary trajectory including her fantasy of meeting him at the Fountainbleu in the future is a masterpiece, as is her ruminations on John Updike and his "Jewish" problem, so to speak. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It's the fruit of her years as a reader, a writer, a feminist, and a mother. Her persona here is enviably understanding of the men in her life. Weaving her actual life (stories of her kids, and her lucky husband) with the author's characters and with the author's themselves is Chutzpah with Heart. It works. It is SO good that in addition to giving it five stars, I actually had the fleeting thought that it should be more expensive than it is, a first that any like idea has occurred to me about ANY book. Buy it immediately. You will be in heaven while reading it. Brilliant. Award-Winning. Nothing like her essays in The New York Observer, if that's all you know of her writing. This work of art is far tighter, far funnier, nearly perfect!!

A literary feast

Anne Roiphe's sojourn back to the books we read as kids is as delightful as it is insightful. She looks at male literary characters that made an impact on her and why they did so. But what is so insightful is the years of maturity that she brings as she looks back on them. How was it that Holden Caufield could speak to her so powerfully in the 50's and how did the adults miss it? What was there about Hemingway's Robert Jordan that made us want to run off to Spain? And why, in spite of his obvious shortcomings, did we sympathize with Updike's Rabbit? Roiphe's candor and insight into the characters, the times, and the authors makes this book enjoyable from start to last, leaving us craving for more. No doubt this book will send you back to those books for another look and another adventure with them. Enjoy!