In 1990, Updike published the last Rabbit novel, 'Rabbit at Rest', in which his lead character died.

So it's been impressed on my head that this egg exists, and now you could hardly write a Rabbit novel without mentioning it.

The fact that the Rabbit novels had such a large presence in American culture allowed me to think that such a thing could be done.

(The extreme example of the latter is found in the four Rabbit novels.)

This masculine desire for escape appears in Updike's famed "Rabbit" novels.

Harry Angstrom is dead after three decades as the fidgety, flinching hero of John Updike's Rabbit novels.

To grasp the larger import of this scene, though, you have to understand the way it builds on the "Rabbit" novels.

The Rabbit novels, for all their grittiness, make up Mr. Updike's surpassingly eloquent valentine to his country.

In 1990, he published the last Rabbit novel, Rabbit At Rest, in which his main character died.

And - most consequentially, as it happened - what about John Updike's four "Rabbit" novels?