Rabbit, Run - John Updike

   1960; 255 pages.  Book 1 (out of 5) in the “Rabbit” series.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres : Highbrow Lit; Americana.  Overall Rating : 5½*/10.

 

    He’s only 26 years old, and already Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom feels like his life is in a rut.  It wasn’t always this way; just a few short years ago he was the star of his high school basketball team, setting a local scoring record not once, but twice.

 

    But those days are gone, and now he finds himself both a husband and a father.  Lately his wife Janice bores him.  He loves his 2½-year old son, but taking care of a toddler is a lot of stress.  And now Janice is pregnant again, so he’s about relive the joys of raising a newborn.

 

    His job bores him even more.  His career consists of making the rounds to demonstrate a device called a “MagiPeel Peeler”, with which you too can experience the bliss that comes from paring vegetables and fruit.  Yawn.

 

    Harry can feel it, there’s a better life out there somewhere, waiting for him.  He just has to go find it.  But how can he do that, what with a wife, soon-to-be two kids, and a dead-end job tying him down?

 

    Run!  Rabbit, run!

 

What’s To Like...

    Rabbit, Run was published in 1960, is arguably John Updike’s most famous novel, and was such an immediate hit that he developed it into a 5-book series.  This book’s been on my TBR shelf for quite a while; I decided to read it after learning that its fictional setting – the city of Brewer – is patterned after Reading, Pennsylvania, birthplace to both the author and myself.

 

    It was fun to experience life in 1959 America again.  Diners had jukeboxes that cost you a dime per song; smoking in a hospital waiting room was normal; you could fill your car’s gas tank at the local Esso or Amoco station for $3.90; and enjoy the night’s cool breeze by hand-cranking down the car window.  “Gay” in those days meant “merry”, and you could buy a brand new paperback novel for 35 cents.  Indeed, the price printed on the paperback that I read, a 1962 issue, was “60¢”.

 

    Brewer/Reading is in the heart of Pennsylvania Dutch country, and that means both shoo fly pie and fosnachts get mentioned.  On Rabbit’s first “run”, he takes the very real “Route 222” to get away, and considers going to nearby places such as Pottstown, West Chester, Bird in Hand, Paradise, Mascot, and (my personal favorite) Intercourse, all of which do exist in southeastern Pennsylvania.

 

    Harry of course is the central character, but several secondary ones get a lot of personal attention as well, including his wife, son, high school basketball coach, fallback lover, and an Episcopalian minister.  The book’s theme reminds me of another highbrow novel I read a couple years ago, Sinclair Lewis’s Babbitt (set in the 1920’s and reviewed here).  In both books, the protagonist becomes jaded with living the great American lifestyle, and seeks alternatives.

 

    If you like anti-heroes, Harry’s your guy.  He thinks he’s irresistible to women (and in fairness, sometimes it seems like he is), he flees from his wife and son on the spur of the moment, everything is always somebody else’s fault, and at one point he flirts with the minister’s wife by slapping her on her fanny.  He’s not very likeable, yet there is a certain charismatic optimism about him.

 

    The ending is good, but not great.  Harry hasn’t improved one bit and about all you can say is that he’s now resolved to start thinking about resolving the issues in his life.  I’m guessing that sets up the next book in the series, at least I hope so.

 

Excerpts...

    The door is locked.  In fitting the little key into the lock his hand trembles, pulsing with unusual exertion, and the metal scratches.  But when he opens the door he sees his wife sitting in an armchair with an Old-fashioned, watching television turned down low.

    “You’re here,” he says.  “What’s the door locked for?”

    She looks to one side of him with vague dark eyes reddened by the friction of watching.  “It just locked itself.”  (pg. 10)

 

    “The boy’s taken his truck,” he tells Mrs. Springer.

    “Well let him get it himself,” she says.  “He must learn.  I can’t be getting up on these legs and running outside every minute; they have been at it like that all afternoon.”

    “Billy.”  The boy looks up in surprise toward Eccles’ male voice.  “Give it back.”  Billy considers this new evidence and hesitates indeterminately.  “Now, please.”  Convinced, Billy walks over and pedantically drops the toy on his sobbing playmate’s head.  (pg. 128)

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4*/5, based on 413 ratings.

    Goodreads: 3.58*/5, based on 52,620 ratings and 3,256 reviews.

 

“It’s a strange thing about you mystics, how often your little ecstasies wear a skirt.”  (pg. 108 )

    I found an unexpected number of nits to pick with Rabbit, Run.

 

    For starters, John Updike’s writing style is both unusual and difficult.  The sentences are often long, descriptive passages abound, chapters are nonexistent, even paragraph breaks are rare, and there are only three dividing spots, coming at pages 7, 114, and 221.  The present tense is deliberately overused for the sake of presenting Harry’s stream-of-consciousness thoughts.  Despite all this, John Updike’s skill at writing makes the reading bearable; lesser writers are not encouraged to emulate him.

 

    None of the plot threads get tied up.  Who will Harry go back to: Janice, Lucy, or Ruth?  Or maybe all the above?  How well will Jack Eccles’ Christian faith hold up through all of this?  Will Marty Tothero recover from his stroke?  Or next time will Rabbit run farther and longer than he’s ever run before?

 

    Again, I’m assuming these things will be dealt with in the subsequent books in the series.  But the fact that there are four more books makes me fear that nothing is going to get resolved very quickly.

 

    5½ Stars.  So why was Rabbit, Run such a mega-hit when it came out in 1960?  I suspect it was due to the fact that it has a bunch of cussing and fairly-explicit sexual situations in it, which was rare for a highbrow novel written towards the end of the Eisenhower era.  Back then there was no such thing as an R-rated movie and the Rolling Stones were forced to change the lyrics of their hit to “Let’s Spend Some Time Together” when they appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show.  But by the end of the decade the musical Hair would have full frontal nudity and California's Haight-Ashbury area would be celebrating its “Summer of Love”.  The times they were a-changin’.