Brewer also grows seedier over time, as reflected by increases in recreational drugs, riots, and white-collar crime, as well as formerly luxurious movie theaters gradually becoming pornographic theaters. These changes also extend to entertainment, leisure, and sports: country clubs become more prevalent, characters go on vacation more frequently or retire to Florida, and golf becomes accessible to the middle class. Other changes in American society are reflected in Brewer, such as altering family patterns, with an increase in divorce, working mothers, and family counseling, as well as the rise of new classes and groups such as African Americans, Latinos, women, gay men and women, and white-collar workers. This included changes in once long-standing institutions, as Brewer's church and ministers become more socialized. Bailey describes as 'an omnipresence of commodities and pop culture creates a pervasive aura of oppressively banal, soulless materialism.' Commentary on America īrewer reflects all the changes that occur in American society from 1959 to the 1980s and beyond. Brewer at times serves as a representation of American capitalism and commercial materialism, or what writer Peter J. Writer and literature professor Erik Kielland-Lund wrote that Brewer is used to depict 'details of the American urban scene' and the 'landscapes of contemporary America'. Mazzeno describes as an 'all-American city'. Themes īrewer represents a typical middle-class American town, one that scholar Laurence W. Judge, a suburb of Brewer modeled after the real-life Mt. The novels also include a setting called Mt. Updike, a Pennsylvania native, set much of his fiction in the state, largely in Brewer and in the much smaller rural town of Olinger.

Brewer is called the 'flowerpot city' due to its extensive use of red brick. Rabbit eventually comes to head the city's Toyota car dealership, inherited by his wife from her father. 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. 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 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.īrewer 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, 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).

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