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“Rabbit, Run” by John Updike (1960)

Rabbit, Run by John Updike

Rabbit, Run Review

Grade: B+

Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, the main character of John Updike’s 1960 novel Rabbit, Run, is a 26-year-old former high school basketball star, stuck in a loveless marriage with a thankless job, longing for some kind of escape. And so, Rabbit being Rabbit, he abandons his pregnant wife within the book’s first 25 pages to chase the American dream, but he only makes it to the other side of town, moving in with a prostitute introduced to him by his former coach.

It makes for a very funny premise, and when told through Updike’s extremely poetic and occasionally profound style, it makes for a very compelling read. After all, the masculine urge for escape is relatable to everyone. Or, rather, Updike’s such a talented writer that Rabbit’s masculine impulses are easy to empathize with. The further he self-destructs, the more human he becomes.

Then again, Rabbit isn’t exactly the most likable protagonist: he hates his job (MagiPeel appliance salesman), his hometown (Brewer, the fifth-largest city in Pennsylvania) and his dumb alcoholic pregnant wife (Janice, who primarily exists — at least from Rabbit’s point of view — to nag and birth children). Watching him constantly take advantage of those around him would be quite exhausting if it wasn’t for Updike’s wit and clarity. Not to mention the book’s present tense P.O.V., which keeps Rabbit’s cycle of assholery refreshing despite its repetition — an uncomfortable and entertaining read.

Edward Hopper - Summer Evening

Back in 1960, Rabbit, Run provided a fresh perspective: a window into the soul of American men disillusioned with the middle-class WASP lifestyle, searching for spirituality but lacking religion, obsessed with sex yet scared of commitment, desperate for meaning in a seemingly meaningless world. Admirable cowards, self-righteous fools. In other words, the Quintessential American AntiheroTM.

But because Updike’s influence was so immense (the 28-year-old writer became an immediate literary sensation after the novel’s publication), Rabbit, Run has lost some of its initial impact. The story of the imperfect everyman is well-trodden territory nowadays, with thousands of similar characters who have taken up Rabbit’s running-away-from-family mantle. Although Rabbit can be considered an original, there have been many like him, some better, many worse.

Then again, I can’t blame Updike for a half-century of imitators. Rabbit, Run is still relevant today simply because the writing is so powerful. His prose, especially at the sentence level, is so lush and observant that this dense, plotless, character study becomes a compelling page-turner. And even though Updike’s depictions of sex and women are clunky and one-sided and stereotypical — unavoidable flaws that unfortunately undercut the expressive realism of the writing — Rabbit, Run remains a stimulating journey worth reading.

FURTHER READING:

STRAY OBSERVATIONS (including SPOILERS):

  • The opening passage, in which Rabbit joins a group of kids playing a basketball game, is probably my favorite of the entire book. I wouldn’t be surprised if it inspired Don DeLillo’s famous prologue to Underworld, which chronicles the famous 1951 World Series finish between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants. Both are profound, philosophical musings on the relation between sports and American identity.
  • It’s funny reading the basketball-related passages today and considering how much has changed. Even though Updike does an incredible job capturing the game’s physical majesty, underhand free throws were still the norm back in 1960. The kids are amazed that Rabbit swishes a jump shot rather than using the backboard. In today’s three-point era, the 6’3” Rabbit probably would’ve went D1.
  • Still, I wish there were more basketball scenes in the book rather than just the opening. At least the golf scene is a worthy substitute, especially when Rabbit momentarily finds the meaning of life in a towering drive down the fairway. “That’s it! That’s it.”
  • There are a lot of things that I feel Updike touches on but doesn’t explore fully, including basketball, consumerism, Freudian psychology and even existentialism. Other late modernist novels, or postmodernist I guess, like Philip Roth’s American Pastoral and DeLillo’s aforementioned Underworld take the basic blueprint of Rabbit, Run and expand upon these themes with more philosophical depth.
  • Another one of my favorite passages: young Reverend Eccles’ P.O.V. section, in which he undergoes a minor crisis of faith while visiting his Episcopalian parishioners and an elder Lutheran minister. Just like the good reverend’s namesake (the Book of Ecclesiastes), spiritualism in Rabbit, Run is simultaneously optimistic, pessimistic and frustratingly ambiguous.
  • Written toward the beginning of the sexual revolution, Rabbit, Run’s casual discussion of sex was quite taboo and pioneering at the time. Nowadays, however, these scenes are a little too drawn out and self-serious. Case in point: Rabbit fucks Ruth for seven pages.
  • I get that Rabbit is a misogynist with a narrow, primal understanding of women, but even Updike reinforces these stereotypes by giving his female characters little agency of their own. Their entire existence hinges on their male partner, and even the stream-of-consciousness P.O.V. sections for Janice (wife) and Ruth (prostitute) don’t really get inside the heads of the characters beyond a rudimentary desire to please Rabbit above all else.
  • The ending is a tad anticlimactic, but it’s perfectly poignant, as Rabbit has learned nothing at all from his ordeals and continues his neverending quest to be free from all his self-created problems. Tramps like him, baby, they were born to run.
  • To see Rabbit’s growth, or lack thereof, throughout his life, Updike wrote three additional novels checking in with the character: Rabbit Redux (1971), Rabbit Is Rich (1981) and Rabbit at Rest (1990).
  • As much as I enjoyed Rabbit, Run, I think Updike was an even better poet than a novelist. After all, some of the best parts of this book are the lyrical descriptions of the setting, which take on a vivid metaphysical quality that the main narrative never quite reaches.
  • Updike was also a great literary critic, and I’d recommend reading his insightful book reviews.

QUOTES FROM RABBIT, RUN:

  • Boys are playing basketball around a telephone pole with a backboard bolted to it. Legs, shouts. The scrape and snap of Keds on loose alley pebbles seems to catapult their voices high into the moist March air blue above the wires.
  • He remembers that when Marty Tothero began to coach him he didn’t want to shoot fouls underhand but that it turned out in the end to be the right way. There is this quality, in things, of the right way seeming wrong at first.
  • He cuts through the Sunday-stunned town, the soft rows of domestic brick, the banistered porches of wood. He drives around the southern flank of Mt. Judge; its slope by the highway is dusted the yellow-green of new leaves; higher up, the evergreens make a black horizon with the sky. The view has changed since the last time he came this way.
  • His putt slides past on the down side and goes two or three fucking feet too far. Four feet. Fuck.
  • “It was a good war. It wasn’t like the first. It was ours to win, and we won it. All wars are hateful things, but that one was satisfying to win.”
  • The June breeze sighs at the screens of the long-closed windows.
  • Final Lines: His hands lift of their own and he feels the wind on his ears even before, his heels hitting heavily on the pavement at first but with an effortless gathering out of a kind of sweet panic growing lighter and quicker and quieter, he runs. Ah: runs. Runs.
“Rabbit, Run” by John Updike (1960)

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