Brewer, Pennsylvania is a fictional city that serves as the major setting for American writer John Updike's "Rabbit" cycle of novels (comprising Rabbit, Run, Rabbit Redux, Rabbit Is Rich, Rabbit at Rest, and Rabbit Remembered, two of which won Pulitzer Prizes for Updike). It is the center of the only fictional universe which Updike developed across multiple works, and symbolically represents his assessment of American culture from 1959 to 1999.
Depiction
Brewer is described as being the "fifth largest city in Pennsylvania", and seems to have many characteristics in common with the real-life city of Reading, Pennsylvania, but is in fact a composite of many places. Brewer is large enough to have a daily newspaper as well as a weekly, the Brewer Vat, printed by the company where Rabbit works as a linotypist in Rabbit Redux, and a fairly well-defined social and class structure. It also has a cinema multiplex, which Updike uses as a device to define the era in which each novel is set by frequently listing which films are playing there. Rabbit eventually comes to head the city's Toyota car dealership, inherited by his wife from her father. The novels also include a setting called Mt. Judge, a suburb of Brewer modeled after the real-life Mt. Penn, Pennsylvania. one that scholar Laurence W. Mazzeno describes as an "all-American city". Brewer at times serves as a representation of American capitalism and commercial materialism, or what writer Peter J. Bailey describes as "an omnipresence of commodities and pop culture creates a pervasive aura of oppressively banal, soulless materialism."
Brewer experiences an economic decline over time,
Reflection of protagonist
Brewer often serves as a symbol and embodiment of the various states of mind Angstrom experiences throughout the course of the Rabbit novels. For example, in Rabbit Redux, Angstrom's isolation and feelings of being trapped are reflected in the book's description of Brewer as a "stagnant city" and a wasteland characterized by a "desolate openness", as well as his home as a "spacecraft" floating through a monotonous setting filled with uncaring residents. Similarly, in one passage of Rabbit, Run, Brewer serves as what the narrative describes as "shelter of love" and "return to security" for Angstrom even as he experiences an existential crisis. Members of Angstrom's family experience similar mixed feelings about Brewer; for Harry's son Nelson, Brewer is a "home that has simultaneously nurtured and stifled him", according to Bailey.
See also
- List of fictional towns and villages
- List of fictional towns in literature
- Yoknapatawpha County – William Faulkner's fictional Mississippi county