‘Rabbit at Rest’ Wins Critics Circle Award

John Updike’s “Rabbit at Rest,” the conclusion of his acclaimed series that began in 1960, won the 1990 National Book Critics Circle award for fiction Saturday.

“‘Rabbit at Rest’ brings to a close a work which will stand as one of the major achievements of American fiction in the 20th Century,” Critics Circle board members said in a statement.

The awards are given annually in five categories--fiction, nonfiction, poetry, biography-autobiography and criticism--for new books by American authors published in the United States.

Robert A. Caro’s “Means of Ascent: The Years of Lyndon Johnson” won top honors for biography-autobiography. The book, the second in Caro’s Johnson biography, chronicles Johnson’s political career in the years surrounding World War II.

The winner for nonfiction was Shelby Steele’s “The Content of Our Character: A New Vision of Race in America.”

“Bitter Angel” by Amy Gerstler won the award in poetry.

Arthur C. Danto’s “Encounters and Reflections: Art in the Historical Present” received the award for criticism. The board called the work “the model of what criticism must attempt in the 1990s.”

Danto is art critic for The Nation.

Updike won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction with the third work in his four-part Rabbit series, “Rabbit is Rich.”

The central character, Harry (Rabbit) Angstrom, faces death in the final work. “Angstrom’s sickness unto death parallels and brilliantly illumines America’s own . . . decline,” the board said of “Rabbit at Rest.”

The Critics Circle also awarded a citation for excellence in reviewing to Molly Giles, a free-lance critic and assistant professor of creative writing at San Francisco State University.

Donald Keene, a Columbia University professor, will receive a board award for his lifetime work as a translator and anthologist of Japanese literature, the circle announced Saturday.

Founded in 1974, the National Book Critics Circle is a nonprofit organization of 580 book critics and book review editors.

An awards ceremony is scheduled for March 14 at New York University.