I once did something right. I played first-rate basketball. I really did. And after you’re first-rate at something, no matter what, it kind of takes the kick out of being second-rate.
Rabbit, Run
“Rabbit” is Harry Angstrom, a 26-year-old former high school basketball star who is now married to a twenty-year-old woman who has already born him a son and is pregnant again. Their marriage is crumbling, or has crumbled, to a point where any conversation degenerates into sniping and insults and where Janice is just withdrawn into alcohol and the television. Rabbit has a job demonstrating the MagiPeeler, a vegetable peeler for sale at the local five and dime store, a career roughly as fulfilling as his marriage. Faced with nothing rewarding in his life, Rabbit runs off, walking away from wife and job and falling into an affair with a slattern from the other side of town.
The fundamental problem with Rabbit, Run from my perspective is that Updike seems to be trying to present Rabbit as a sympathetic character: A young man suddenly realizing that he is trapped into a life of mediocrity and unhappiness, both in stark contrast to the small-world stardom he had in high school, who decides that the best option is to run, both physically and metaphorically. The truth is that Rabbit is a grade-A Asshole who mistreats his wife and then his mistress, refuses to take responsibility for his actions or to live up to the obligations of commitments he’s made (like, say, knocking up two women), or to just generally behave like an adult. Yes, his wife is a train-wreck, an alcoholic with hints of depression, but Rabbit at one point puts alcohol back in her hands when she is trying to give it up, because he can’t adjust to a reality of her sober and the commitment that that implies. But not only is his wife never depicted as “bad” enough for him to leave her, he has an innocent son, Nelson, who adores him as two-year-olds adore their parents, and on whom Rabbit runs out without any apparent pangs of remorse. I have a two-year-old, and I can’t imagine any situation in my marriage that would make me leave the house and not even try to see my daughter for over two months. Janice (Rabbit’s wife) tells her husband at one point after he has returned from his lost weekend about Nelson:
“Oh. Every day, ‘Daddy home day?’ until I could belt him, the poor saint. Don’t make me talk about it, it’s too depressing.”
It’s heartbreaking, and it makes Updike’s attempts to show some affection on Rabbit’s part towards the boy ring totally hollow. You have a clear two-way bond with your child by that age; if you can walk away from that for two months without making any attempt to see the kid, in all likelihood, you have no soul.
The craft of Rabbit, Run is strong. Updike’s prose is wonderful, as anyone familiar with his article on Ted Williams’ retirement knows. He’s also telling, or trying to tell, a larger story of the fears a person faces upon realizing that he has inextricably left his youth behind and has even made irreversible choices that dictate the path of the rest of his life. Rabbit is surrounded by people who symbolize hopes and fears and responsibilities, from the minister and his wife who represent faith and doubt, to the declining high school basketball coach who represents the past and ages and fades like memories, to the baby Janice bears, a metaphor for their marriage, briefly reborn as that, for whatever reason, is the event who finally brings Harry back home. But the fact that it’s well-written only made it an easier read, not a more compelling one, as my dislike for Rabbit only grew as the book went on and he failed to show any sign of maturity or simple recognition of the consequences his actions have on those around him.
Next up: A re-read of Catch-22
I read this as my senior term paper in high school and hated it. The main character was an Asshole, nobody learned anything, and I felt like after Rabbit’s daughter’s arc ended the book sort of lost momentum.
But then it got under my skin about 18 months later. I wasn’t even thinking about it, or reading anything like it, but it got to me. It was probably that idea of moving on from high school and the slow suffocation I could feel even then – but the book really, really got to me in the end.
To me now it’s less that Harry Angstrom (maybe one of the less clever punnish names) is an Asshole who runs out on every ounce of responsibility – its that a guy who was genuinely happy once got trapped by society and his own mistakes and never figured out how to live with it. I guess I looked at him less as a dislikable fellow and more as a tragic one?
Heartbreaking is a good word for it.
Only 3.5 more Rabbit books to go!
He can be an asshole and still feel like he needs sympathy. The sympathy doesn’t need to come from you, the reader.
I think the idea of the Rabbit books is that there are American men born when Rabbit was, who think like Rabbit does. Doesn’t mean Updike is condoning their thinking.
I’ve been picking up steam for another read of Catch-22 myself. After all, in these trying times it’s important to remember that “the business of government is business.” Now kinda literally, unfortunately.
Yes, heartbreaking is exactly the right word for it, and was the reason I never finished the book and why I swore off of Updike (whose works I had devoured during high school) for about fifteen years. I still haven’t read the other Rabbit novels. Rabbit, Run made me unutterably sad.
I agree with Tybalt. I read The Centaur a while back and it was very similar. Well written, a self pitying/self absorbed protagonist that wants to escape from his situation/life. Updike is a good writer in technical terms, but the themes he presents are too depressing, it makes you wonder what was going on with him.
Since you mentioned it in your chat, Keith, I felt I should give you a heads-up on future Rabbit books (without actually giving anything away) before you decide whether to take them on or not.
Rabbit, Run, like you said, is the tale of a character who begins an idiot and remains one. Like in the other Rabbit books, this is about the era in it was set. Rabbit, however you may judge him, was depicted as exceptional in his perception of his situation and his decision to run away from it. If one can’t really find anything interesting in that, fair enough, but it’s definitely the one book in the series that’s completely about Rabbit’s mindset.
Rabbit Redux takes place a decade later, and while Rabbit is still an idiot, he’s a different type. He’s less an immature man taking no responsibility for his family, and more a member of Nixon’s Silent Majority who’s struggling to come to grips with the changes that 1969 has brought to his town. The book is more about the the adventures he gets himself into with various characters than about what a bad person he might be.
Rabbit is Rich takes place another decade later. By this point, Rabbit’s idiocy is immaterial. He has no control over his own life anymore, as his family runs circles around him. This is probably the book where he’s least at fault for his own misfortune.
Rabbit at Rest is set another decade later, and Rabbit’s getting on in years. His faults by now have set into “crusty old man” patterns, and his struggles with loved ones continue. If it’s about anything, it’s about how the middle class man from middle America deals his family and his environment in advanced age.
The themes don’t really change. The characters do change a lot as they age, though. How could they not? A 35-year-old trainwreck is completely different from a 25-year-old one. And the world they all live in changes, too. Updike’s writing actually improves (it really takes off in the third and four volumes).
Keith, I used the same quote from Updike in a Bugs and Cranks post the day of his death. Don’t know if you visit our site, but it was good to see the quote again, though I think I liked RR much more than you. Maybe I’m a bad person, but I can relate to Rabbit.
They’re not in my cheeks, they’re in my hands.
Nice review, Keith. I read this last year and felt like maybe I was alone in thinking it was somewhat flawed. Updike’s great at crafting his prose, but Rabbit is such a repellent character that I really didn’t enjoy the experience at all. (And I don’t think that repellent characters necessarily make for bad fiction; O’Hara’s Appointment in Samarra is one of my very favorite novels.)
Sounds like finishing the series isn’t on your agenda, but I’d be interested to hear what you thought of the rest of them if you ever get around to reading one. The copy of Rabbit, Run I bought had the second book included, but I had absolutely no desire to slog through it.
Keith, couldn’t agree more on Rabbit. Of some interest as a reflection of its time and place I suppose. I’ve had no desire to read the later Rabbit books but appreciate Jake’s summaries.
I, too, feel compelled to comment. I’ve read the first three rabbit books because I bought this “Rabbit Angstrom” compendium and, while I didn’t, initially, like the first book, I felt compelled to read two and three because, well, because they were there.
Yes, I agree that Rabbit is a flawed a-hole; but, I think the point is, we’re all flawed a-holes. Rabbit was “special” in High School – the cream of the athletic crop in the late 1950s and there was a societal pressure put on him to succeed and he did; until he was out of high school, out on his own and not succeeding in the ways that he thought he was “supposed” to.
His attempts to run away are attempts to elude those expectations; but he discovers that those expectations aren’t external, they’re internal and can’t be escaped. In subsequent books, he doesn’t become any less of an a-hole. But, like Jake points out, he becomes more and more “average” despite the fact that he becomes “successful” by his younger standards (i.e., rich, handsome, kids, wife, lots of women on the side with no familial repurcussions, etc.).