Giving the mundane its beautiful due.

John Updike's Rabbit quartet.

In 1961 John Updike wrote the novel Rabbit, Run – it was conceived and written as a stand-alone story. Three decades and three sequels later, the Rabbit series, a tetralogy, has been hailed by English author, Julian Barnes, as “the greatest postwar American novel.” The novels’ protagonist, Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, a man-child and former sports star, is just twenty-six and already past his glory days as he zigzags his way on an ever-hopeful quest for the rainbow of happiness. In the first novel, Rabbit, acting on impulse, deserts his wife and son. Harry, we quickly realise, is no angel. He’s confused, prejudiced, disloyal, slobby, ruthless, careless, egocentric, puzzled, and patriotic – and yet – the reader connects with him on the page as human. We understand and empathise with this ordinary man troubled by his foibles as he tries to come to terms with the rapidly changing landscape of American life (over four turbulent decades). In Updike’s words: “My intention was never to make him – or any character – lovable.”

The blurbs on the back of each novel set the scene and timeframe:

Rabbit,Run: “It’s 1959, and Harry ‘Rabbit’ Angstrom, one-time high-school sports superstar is going nowhere.”

Rabbit Redux: “It’s 1969, and the times are changing…Things just aren’t as simple as they used to be – at least, not for Rabbit Angstrom.”

Rabbit is Rich: “It’s 1979, and Rabbit is no longer running. He’s walking, and beginning to get out of breath. That’s OK, though – it gives him the chance to enjoy the wealth that comes with middle age.”

Rabbit at Rest: “It’s 1989, and Harry ‘Rabbit’ Angstrom is far from restful. Fifty-six and overweight, he has a struggling business on his hands and a heart that is starting to fail.”

Updike never planned to write this as a series, but in 1970, a decade and several novels after Rabbit, Run, he found himself in debt to a publisher for a novel – with no goods to provide. Meanwhile, people had been asking what happened to Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom. And so, on February 7, 1970, Updike began writing a sequel and the first draft was completed on December 11. “A problem for the author of sequels,” he said, “is how much of the previous books to carry along.” This is managed with deft skill as characters are sufficiently referenced in subsequent stories to remind the reader of past events.

Each novel is set at the dying of a decade – with Harry confronting external influences and pressures that continually challenge our prevaricating protagonist. Historical markers are detailed to help orient the reader to the particular setting in time. Rabbit, Run (written in 1960) makes minimal cultural and political references with occasional news items on the car radio and a mention of the Dalai Lama’s disappearance from Tibet. Rabbit Redux (written in 1971) is framed against a backdrop of racial tension, the civil rights movement, the Apollo trip to the moon, and the Vietnam war. Written in 1981, Rabbit is Rich, witnesses the decay of American industry and, subsequently, Japan’s automotive efficiency replacing Detroit’s gas-guzzlers. Meanwhile, Harry and his wife, being financially comfortable, now have a summer condo in Florida. In Rabbit at Rest (written in 1990) the world confronts the Aids plague, terrorism manifests itself in jets being hijacked and Reagan’s presidency rolls into that of the first George Bush. As each decade turns over, Harry has to face the inexorable reality of his own decline and impending death – the recurring sense of doom hovers, particularly, throughout the last novel.

Some have labelled John Updike’s writing as ‘conspicuously autobiographical.’ Perhaps, in an effort to refute this claim or distance himself from the character of Rabbit, John Updike had this to say about Harry Angstrom: “Rabbit, like every stimulating alter ego, was many things the author was not: a natural athlete, a blue-eyed Swede, sexually magnetic, taller than six feet, impulsive and urban.”

When I put down Rabbit at Rest, the last instalment in the Rabbit quartet, I was struck by the breadth of Updike’s achievement – a mesmerising dissection of life in ordinary America between the 1950’s and 1990’s. As for the ordinary, the author was always very clear on his intent: “giving the mundane its beautiful due.”

The Queen’s Gambit makes decisive move from big screen to small.

Anya Taylor-Joy as Beth Harmon in The Queen’s Gambit.

Allan Scott, screenwriter, acquired the rights to the 1983 novel by Walter Tevis, The Queen’s Gambit, with the intention of getting it made into a movie. Scott, whose screenwriting credits include co-writing the 1973 psychological thriller, Don’t Look Now, subsequently found, though, that interest was thin on the ground. “I can tell you eight studios that turned Queen’s Gambit down on the grounds that chess doesn’t sell tickets.”

Fast forward to 2020, and the Netflix version of The Queen’s Gambit, co-created by Allan Scott and US writer-director Scott Frank, is the streaming service’s most watched mini-series ever. 28 days after its release it had been watched by 62 million households and also ranked No. 1 in 63 countries. The Google search phrase ‘How to play chess’ has hit a nine-year high. Just today, via Google, I watched a six-minute video explaining in detail the set up for the series’ eponymous chess move.

Allan Scott had to be patient to bring this story to life, but it wasn’t as if he was twiddling his thumbs in the meantime. He’s your quintessential renaissance man: screenwriter, film producer, author, radio presenter, television compere, whisky company chairman, former head of the Scottish Film Production Fund and the Scottish Film Council. More recently, just before The Queen’s Gambit premiered, Scott contracted the coronavirus not once, but twice, within months.

The runaway success has raised the prospect of a second series, problematic, some say, because the author, Walter Tevis, died in 1984 without having written a sequel. Allan Scott, however, doesn’t see the lack of a sequel as an impediment to continuing the story, should that prospect be raised: “You know, when people say that (something can’t be done) you always turn out to be a liar. Yes, of course it can. Because it’s fiction. I can do six episodes of what happens to her right after Russia. I could do you six episodes of ten years later when she tries to make a comeback. I can do you ten episodes of what happens when she gives up chess. Do you know what happens to most great chess players when they give up chess? They take up bridge. I could give you a whole series about bridge!”

– Allan Scott, Co-Creator of The Queen’s Gambit.

Whether or not a sequel ever happens can’t diminish the quality of the writing and impeccable production of this sumptuous seven-part series. The art direction captures in vivid detail the Cold War era of the mid-1950’s to the late 1960’s. Chess, that seemingly mundane board game, provides the playing field for some electrifying and highly entertaining encounters. The authenticity of the games themselves guaranteed by the enlisting of former world chess champion, Garry Kasparov, as one of the consultants on the series. And, while Allan Scott never managed to get The Queen’s Gambit to the cinema screen, this fabulous story doesn’t feel the lesser for its home screen run.

Words against pandemics

The Flaggy Shore, County Clare, Ireland

In Seamus Heaney’s 1996 poem, Postscript, he invites the reader to visit the Flaggy Shore in County Clare, Ireland. In 2018, on a flat, lilac-grey morning, some five years to the day after the death of the poet, I took him up on the invitation. Standing in quiet contemplation, I listened to a recital of Postscript by the man himself. Heaney won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995 “for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past.” His poetry makes me think of Robert Frost, I’ve since discovered Heaney cites the American as an influence. Newsweek reviewer, Malcolm Jones, of Heaney’s work said: “Heaney’s own poetic vernacular – muscular language so rich with tones and smell of earth that you almost expect to find a few crumbs of dirt clinging to the lines.”

It’s now 2020, and the world is seized in the grip of the Covid-19 pandemic. Through these times we all, perhaps, are given to moments of uncertainty and despair. Heaney was once asked about the value of poetry in times of crisis. His answer offers some hope we might be able to fight external forces from within. “If poetry and the arts do anything, they can fortify your inner life, your inwardness.”

Thinking back on that morning standing on the Flaggy Shore with Seamus Heaney’s sweet lilting voice, I offer that we, all of us, might seek out the small and precious moments in life and allow them to “catch the heart off guard and blow it open”.

Postscript

By Seamus Heaney

And some time make the time to drive out west

Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,

In September or October, when the wind

And the light are working off each other

So that the ocean on one side is wild

With foam and glitter, and inland among stones

The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit

By the earthed lightning of a flock of swans,

Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,

Their fully grown headstrong-looking heads

Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.

Useless to think you’ll park and capture it

More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,

A hurry through which known and strange things pass

As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways

And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.

Link to Seamus Heaney reading ‘Postscript’:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhSUj7ixYTk