Rabbit, Run

I’m not sure why, but I remember this book having some kind of resurgence in my childhood. Perhaps it was just in my household. But I remember seeing it being read by both my parents and my uncle, and I remember lots of talk among them about it. I was way too young to read it myself, but more recently a friend recommended it. Updike is a nuanced and linguistically competent writer, and the plot is fast and engaging. As a character study it is engrossing.

It’s hard in this modern era to look past the sometimes grating white-centerism of the book. Maybe that was intentionally thematic, but I can’t help but think it runs deeper. In this book there are Americans, men and women, and then there are Negroes and Chinamen and so on. The obvious implication is that non-white Americans aren’t real Americans, or at least require some kind of modifier. This doesn’t have much to do with the book itself, but as I said it is grating to me now. And serves as a reminder that if I had read this book 15 years ago, I doubt I would have noticed at all.

I also came away thinking the book is so deeply rooted in 1960s America that it was hard to relate to. In some way’s it’s a time capsule into an America that hadn’t yet been so deeply influenced by books like this. That makes it academically interesting but also subtracts from the ethos of the reading experience. I came away interested, intrigued, maybe even impressed. But not particularly moved. Is it a criticism that is lacks the timelessness of some of the “great” novels of the past? Probably not. At any rate I’m glad I read it and I think I probably will read the whole series.

Postscript: Perhaps I’m being overly negative here, but I’ll pile on. What’s up with the cover on the eBook edition? The publisher really phoned this one in which is a shame for a book of this calibre. It looks like someone squinted at the much more artful first edition cover below, sighed, said “That looks hard…” and fired up MS Paint and a clipart library. It really rubs me the wrong way when publishers treat their eBook releases like this.

When I lived in a small mid-Western US village in the mid-90s I had a bit of a feeling that I was stuck in a time-warp, and could just have easily been in the 50s or 60s. This book is set in small-town America at the end of the 50s (it was published in 1960) and is therefore in some ways rather recognisable for me. The protagonist is a character who is easy to dislike and difficult to like. I can't say I enjoy books where I cannot feel any sympathy for the central character, and this was not an exception. And it is not only 'Rabbit', when it comes to it, I don't think there are any characters in this book who I would like to spend an evening with. But I must say, it is well written, evocative and was clearly challenging the society of its time.

Revisited a book I first read as a teenager, when I was busily consuming Updike, Roth, Bellow, and Cheever. I love Updike's prose -- the richness of the descriptions. Rabbit sure is a shit, isn't he?

Rabbit, Run, John Updike’s first novel about the now-infamous Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, details the selfishness of its main protagonist, a man who lives in a world of “would have’s” and “could have’s” instead of acknowledging the surrounding circumstances of his life. First published in the 1960’s, Run, Rabbit takes an interesting look at an American Society that has freshly shed the burdens of world war and is concerned with rebuilding and revitalizing the culture. <br/> Set in Pennsylvanian suburbia, Rabbit is a salesman of a kitchen appliance known only as the MagiPeeler. However, Rabbit is far from content, and is deceived by his allusions of grandeur, somehow imagining that he deserves star treatment for his high school successes in basketball. <br/>    John Updike—who has been labeled as a misogynist by many critics—comes down hard on the female gender. Throughout Rabbit, Run , women are portrayed as weak and susceptible to the charms of the loathsome Rabbit. For women to succumb to such a detestable character only reaffirms how Updike views women: like blind sheep led to the slaughter. <br/>  Furthermore, Updike’s novel was positively riddled with errors. Whether this lapse in grammar ought to be attributed to the lazy publishing company or the poor observations of the author is unclear, but the fact remains that the book is practically unreadable. At first, I thought the author was simply going for a post-modern, rule-bending voice or tone, but as the mistakes began to pile up—and as I read reviews from my peers—I realized that the only word that could possibly define Updike’s voice is “unimaginative.” Between missed punctuation, an excessive use of pronouns, run-on sentences, awfully repetitive sentence structure, and  verb/tense agreement, Rabbit, Run is an absolutely ghastly attempt at the art of writing, in general. <br/>    The redeeming qualities of Rabbit, Run are twofold. First and foremost is John Updike’s ability to subject the reader to empathy. Although I disliked Rabbit from page one (and I practically hated him by the time I finished the novel,) it is impossible to deny the subtle ways in which Updike evokes an emotional response that surpasses pity. The same actions Rabbit engages in at the story’s end are prevalent at the exposition, but the reader doesn’t absolutely detest Rabbit as the story begins. One reason for this could simply be human nature—we sympathize with Rabbit because we want him to be good. Another reason might be that Updike shows us more and more of Rabbit’s personality as the story progresses, as if we’re truly getting to know the character as we would any other human being. Either way, though, by the time the final words rung out in my mind’s eye, I tossed the book from me in disgust.<br/>   The second quality that saves Rabbit, Run from being complete trash is the author’s use of unique metaphors. For example, when Updike is describing basketball—something that the reader understands Rabbit loves—he refers to the hoop as ”the high perfect hole with its pretty skirt of net.” This metaphor is particularly fitting because it coincides with the only other thing that Rabbit seems to love—loose women. This sexually charged metaphor lends a glance into Rabbit’s character as well as divining his emotional attachment to the sport of basketball. Because the metaphor juxtaposes his sexually charged tendencies and his love affair with basketball, the effect is doubly hard-hitting. <br/>   At the end of the day, Rabbit, Run tries to impart some measure of wisdom, but—instead—ends up leaving only halfway-relatable statements concerning the human condition (“Everybody who tells you how to act has whiskey on their breath,” “He wonders why there are so many signs coming back and so few going down.”) From cover to cover, Rabbit, Run was a disappointment of error-filled writing that left me bored and unchanged. <br/>