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Rabbit, Run (Rabbit Angstrom #1)

3.54 of 5 stars 3.54 · rating details · 21,677 ratings · 1,465 reviews

Rabbit, Run is the book that established John Updike as one of the major American novelists of his—or any other—generation. Its hero is Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, a onetime high-school basketball star who on an impulse deserts his wife and son. He is twenty-six years old, a man-child caught in a struggle between instinct and thought, self and society, sexual gratification an...more

Paperback, 264 pages

Published August 27th 1996 by Random House Trade Paperbacks (first published 1960)

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Apr 30, 2013 Richard rated it 2 of 5 stars

Get over it! Pull up your socks and get on with it! Sheez.

Book Circle Reads 96

Rating: 2.5* of five

The Book Description: Penguin's bumf--Rabbit, Run is the book that established John Updike as one of the major American novelists of his — or any other — generation. Its hero is Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, a onetime high-school basketball star who on an impulse deserts his wife and son. He is twenty-six years old, a man-child caught in a struggle between instinct and thought, self and society, sexual g...more

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Nov 24, 2008 brian rated it 4 of 5 stars

bellow's writing blows my mind but rarely touches my heart. a handful of mailer's essays and novels are essential, but it's his guts and brain and balls and heart and the ferocity with which he lived life that's the real inspiration. roth? well, i've made my views on roth very well known in bookface world. and the few updike short stories i've read only convinced me that his elegant & writerly style really bugs the shit out of me.

all of 'em (bellow, mailer, roth, updike) found themselves as...more bellow's writing blows my mind but rarely touches my heart. a handful of mailer's essays and novels are essential, but it's his guts and brain and balls and heart and the ferocity with which he lived life that's the real inspiration. roth? well, i've made my views on roth very well known in bookface world. and the few updike short stories i've read only convinced me that his elegant & writerly style really bugs the shit out of me.

all of 'em (bellow, mailer, roth, updike) found themselves as the right people at the right time: white dudes in america when america was the shit and white dudes were kings of the shit. but they knew that their kingdom of shit, of course, owed much to the disenfranchisement of non-dudes and non-whites. and fools have always found 'em to be racist and/or sexist, not realizing that a post-war examination of racism and sexism was much of the point; that this conflict, that life as 'guilty royalty', lies at the heart of much of their work. i've always found mailer and roth to be -- wait for it, wait for it -- amongst the most compassionate of any and all writers. and they're hardasses. they accept no preconceived notions. they want to know, they NEED to know, even if they find themselves branded self-loathing jews or repressed homosexuals or shouted down by an angry panel of feminists...

well nobody catches more shit than updike and nobody gets more sucked off. and i, of course, found myself in the former camp. and digging it. updike, from my not-having-read-much-of-his-stuff perspective always kinda came off as some dull & smiling yuppie dick. and that obsession with the perfect, elegant, adjective-heavy sentence makes me wanna diarrhea. updike seemed kinda like the literary equivalent of billy joel sitting down for a lunch of kraft cheese and mayonnaise on wonder bread. and so i started the first Rabbit and my suspicions were immediately confirmed. i mean, those first two sentences:

Boys are playing basketball around a telephone pole with a backboard bolted to it. Legs, shouts.

aaaarrrggghh! horrible. the kind of shit to make a writing teacher come in his/her jeans. and he uses all those writerly terms that don't really correspond to anything in real life. people talking are 'clucking' or 'chirping'; 'crisp' to describe a pair of slacks; or 'lumpy' to describe people or words or ideas or anything the hell else.

and it's not just, as many people have pointed out, that Rabbit is a dickhead -- it's that he's an uninteresting dickhead. and updike sets an uninteresting dickhead against a symbolically charged tapestry meant to represent a kind of microcosmic america. and it's dull and obvious and schematic and, again, writerly.

and then 1/2way through the book, neck deep in boredom and fury, something happened. rabbit and ruth (the tragic town slut he's shacked up with) run into rabbit's sister, who's headed down the same road as ruth... and it resonated. and as the events of the second half unfolded, i HATED updike even more as i realized that the bastard was fucking with me. and it was working. it had worked. and all that junk in the first half is suddenly given new significance by the events of the latter half and i was, yes, blown away by updike's compassion and understanding and skill.

so updike. my first book. made me cry. i'm not talking misty eyed and lump in the throat, but, like, tears running down my cheeks. not bad. and i feel okay upgrading updike from 'smiling yuppie dick' to 'subject of unfortunately cheery author photo'. and i just bought the second Rabbit book. we'll see.(less)

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Mar 17, 2009 Ben rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2009, feminism-and-or-gender-related, romantic-love-and-hate, memorable-characters, important-message, families

On the surface, Rabbit, Run is about a guy who runs around on his son and pregnant wife, and ends up living with a prostitute. Real interesting, right? Actually, yes. Because the characters come to life and they’re struggling with their own moral weaknesses and existential problems -- their problems and interactions are truly believable. So this is an interesting story, because Updike can write, and he pulls it off.

But first, I must explain why my rating is only 3 stars (or, 3 and a half, really...more

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Jul 21, 2011 Shovelmonkey1 rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: anyone who wants to see teenage angst plus ten years

Recommended to Shovelmonkey1 by: 1001 books list but not Kemper

Shelves: 1001-books, bookcrossing-books, read-in-2011, so-right-but-so-wrong

I'm sorry I think I might have to pause before the start of this review and scream discretely into a pillow:

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Phew, that's better, very cathartic. This is yet another book from the 1001 books list which has made me question whether or not the people who write the list actually like people who read books or if they are really secretly intent on torturing us all for their own amusement?

The review w...more I'm sorry I think I might have to pause before the start of this review and scream discretely into a pillow:

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Phew, that's better, very cathartic. This is yet another book from the 1001 books list which has made me question whether or not the people who write the list actually like people who read books or if they are really secretly intent on torturing us all for their own amusement?

The review will now proceed in the style of Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom...

Hello everyone, I'm Harry Angstrom, but you can call me "Rabbit". The name is totally applicable in two ways - in high school basket ball games (I was a sporting ace don'tcha know?) a rabbit is a runner who sets the pace, and since leaving high school I appear to be breeding in a way which is prolific and almost rabbit like too. Some might say I also have a tendency to bounce from thing to thing without really thinking about it. No twitchy nose or whiskers though.

So I had this girl since high school, Janice Springer, and I knocked her up and well, damn it, I'm a fan of the idea of domesticity so I made an honest woman of her and her old man hooked us up with an OK place to live and all and no one was too suspect when little Nelson was born 7 months after the wedding. After all, I'm Rabbit, I'm a breeder... that's what we do!

But y'know how it is. Maybe I'm just not ready to be tied down. Janice drinks, man oh man she drinks and she can be a misery. Nowadays she's so busy looking after the kid she's not interested in me (ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME), not like she should be. I mean, I'm great... a regular swell, the cats pyjamas sewn up around the bees knees. I'm a catch and any woman would be lucky to have me.

So one day I decided that rather than go home to my pregnant wife and two year old kid ,I could pretend that I was still the Rabbit of old, and set out to remove myself a suitable distance from adult responsibility. Turns out that a suitable distance involves moving about ten blocks away in the same town and setting up home with a retired hooker with chunky ankles, while reacquainting myself with a load of people who thought I was great ten years ago. When alls said and done its a nice little ego boost! Don't get me wrong, I think I love her. I mean I am pretty sure I do and she lets me talk about myself a whole lot. Plenty in fact and really that's what it boils down to - self indulgence on a grand scale. I'm a bit uncertain about my direction in life, possibly because of an immature, shallow perspective which doesn't allow me to appreciate other peoples outlooks - maybe I'm a Sociopath? I have no empathy. I like to please myself. End of.

Obviously poor old Janice went and had the baby and man, did it cut me up to think that I might miss out on a whole extra helping of double domesticity so off I went back to Janice without a thought for chunky ankles and my newest domestic set up. After one short night I realised that when the going gets tough then rabbit gets going and promptly bailed again, this time with disastrous consequences. Still I manned up and came home to face what was coming to me, but really I didn't enjoy that much and now I've strapped on my running shoes and am sprinting off into the sunset again as fast as my lucky rabbits feet can carry me. You can catch me in the sequels Rabbit Redux and Rabbit is Rich if you feel like playing with the boundaries of your own sanity, but the subtext will always be that I'm a selfish loser with low self esteem and the attention span of a kitten filled with e-numbers.(less)

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Jan 23, 2008 Alan rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: most-liked-review

I discovered Rabbit Angstrom and John Updike while sitting in the Intensive Care Waiting Room at a local hospital. My mother languished in a coma for one month before she finally found peace, and I spent most of those days and many of my nights in that waiting room. During much of that time I'd blown through typical waiting room crap like books with plots about overthrowing the government, stories about detectives who were psychoanalysts, stories about psychoanalysts who were detectives, etc. O...more

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Apr 11, 2007 Rebecca Waller rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Writers looking for writing inspiration

John Updike has a very non-traditional interpretation of redemption, and you find that in his main character, Harry Angstrom, also known as Rabbit. In this first Rabbit novel, he is 26, and he finds himself in crisis about where his life is headed. I found myself loving Rabbit and sympathizing with him (mostly), but also hating him and hating his choices. As a friend once put it to me, "He is Holden Caulfield grown up." It is a painful and powerful book. The writing is delicious, and I have neve...more

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Jul 16, 2009 Kemper rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 100, plain-old-fiction, classic-lit

God, do I hate Rabbit Angstrom! How much do I hate him? If I was in a room with Hannibal Lector, the Judge from Blood Meridian, the Joker from Batman, and Rabbit Angstrom, and someone handed me a gun with only 3 bullets, I'd shoot Rabbit three times.

This is the first book by Updike I've read, and his reputation as a writer was well-earned. I'd had a vague idea that this story was about a former hot shot basketball player struggling to adjust to a regular life. I was completely unprepared for th...more

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Jun 23, 2008 Yulia added it

Shelves: repelled-by

Damn Updike, I wanted to find an immediate reason to dislike this, but he's so smooth in his text, I have no excuse to not continue reading it: it's very frustrating for us curmudgeons.

*********************************************************

Okay, that didn't last long. I refuse to finish this book. I find the prose self-indulgent, the understanding of human nature self-serving, and the protagonist impossible to empathize with. Would reading this book help me understand individuals I find narci...more

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Apr 17, 2008 dead letter office rated it 1 of 5 stars

oh boy, i have issues with john updike. he has all the goody-goody provincialism that drives me crazy about john irving, without the (debatable) benefit of the quirky plots. check out his motivation for writing Rabbit, Run: "Jack Kerouac’s On the Road came out in 1957 and, without reading it, I resented its apparent instruction to cut loose; Rabbit, Run was meant to be a realistic demonstration of what happens when a young American family man goes on the road – the people left behind get hurt."...more

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Jun 08, 2011 Joel rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: classics, did-not-finish, 30-day-book-challenge

You know what would be nice, is if there was a wikipedia for life, and every time you met someone, you could just give it a glance and see if, you know, you really want to be associated with that person.

Sure, it would backfire, it would reveal your prejudices and narrow-mindedness, your circle of friends might become a lot less varied and interesting. On the other hand, you'd never have to fake a conversation about football again, and you could easily avoid the total assholes like Rabbit Angstr...more You know what would be nice, is if there was a wikipedia for life, and every time you met someone, you could just give it a glance and see if, you know, you really want to be associated with that person.

Sure, it would backfire, it would reveal your prejudices and narrow-mindedness, your circle of friends might become a lot less varied and interesting. On the other hand, you'd never have to fake a conversation about football again, and you could easily avoid the total assholes like Rabbit Angstrom.

I didn't finish this book. I read 30 or 40 pages and I can't even remember the writing because never before have I hated a character so much. I am someone who never notices the annoying characters in books or movies; mostly, you have to reach a Bella Swan-level of idiocy before I'll start hating you. Rabbit did it within a few pages. I can decide what it was: was it when he berated his wife for being too fat and unkempt after giving birth to and caring for his child? Was it when he kept thinking about how dumb she was? Was it how he pulled that whole, "See you honey, I'm going to the store... forever!" trick, and ran off to sleep with his mistress and mope about his sad excuse for a life?

But this is an Important Book by a Famous Author, and who wants to admit defeat? So I went to wikipedia and I read the plot synopsis. Disgusted, I read about the rest of Rabbit Angstrom's life as told in Rabbit Redux, Rabbit is Rich and ~~Yay, Rabbit is Dead~~ Rabbit at Rest. Spoiler alert: he never stops being absolutely horrible for a single second. They say you shouldn't make snap judgments, but I'd wager running away from your wife and toddler son with nary a word is one of those times where basing your opinion on a first impression is ok.

Please, go ahead and tell me I am wrong for reviewing this without finishing it, for not appreciating Updike's prose, for not seeing how he has humanized a hateful man, for failing to realize the way Rabbit's life works as a metaphor for the deconstruction of masculine identity in post-WWII America, or how erectile dysfunction is a really big deal, or the lie of hyper-consumerism, or the empty pursuit of middle-class ideals. Then I can go ahead and make a snap judgment about you too (for clarity: JUST KIDDING!).

Sometimes you just don't want to read a nasty, ugly book about someone horrible. Let alone fucking four of them. This one's for you, wikipedia.

Facebook 30 Day Book Challenge Day 2: Least favorite book.(less)

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Nov 09, 2008 Scoobs rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"Everybody who tells you how to act has whisky on their breath."

"He wonders, is it just these people I'm outside or is it all America?"

"He wonders why there are so many signs coming back and so few going down."

Rabbit, Run has now taken a very special space on my pretty short list of Greatest American Novels. Pretty high up there. Perhaps if I wasn't raised in Salinas, John Updike may even eclipse John Steinbeck on my favorite author's list.

I have a feeling if I would have read this book at any o...more

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May 26, 2008 Rebecca rated it 1 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I'm debating between one and two stars here. The extra star would be for the prose style, which I found beautiful and imaginative. Otherwise, I had a hard time with this novel. Rabbit's irresponsibility has devastating consequences, yet not only does he escape these consequences but he doesn't even seem to have learned or grown from them. He's running at the beginning, he's running at the end, but he doesn't actually get anywhere. I don't really think the novel earns the tragedies that Rabbit's...more

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Jun 28, 2010 Sheila rated it 4 of 5 stars

I don't think I've ever read a book from which I've gained so much while loathing the main character. Usually books like this depress me; this one offers some sort of weird relief.

Instead of having the wherewithal to actually make the complete break with his former life and head down to the sun and the sand, Harry instead turns back to travel the edges of his home turf and trashes the lives of everyone close to him, without remorse; indeed, without a thought he should even FEEL remorse.

I don't...more

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Dec 05, 2011 Aubrey Tate rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: adult-fiction, book-clubs

Why I read it: Well I joined my parents little book club and it was my dad’s choice. He selected three books and told me to pick one of the three and that would be the one that my mom, dad, and I read. I chose this one merely based on the synopsis and hearing good things about Updike being a classic author.

Synopsis: Set in 1959, Rabbit Angstrom, 26 years old and a former basketball star, lives with his pregnant wife and young son. Yet his life and marriage is a melancholy one, one in which he is...more Why I read it: Well I joined my parents little book club and it was my dad’s choice. He selected three books and told me to pick one of the three and that would be the one that my mom, dad, and I read. I chose this one merely based on the synopsis and hearing good things about Updike being a classic author.

Synopsis: Set in 1959, Rabbit Angstrom, 26 years old and a former basketball star, lives with his pregnant wife and young son. Yet his life and marriage is a melancholy one, one in which he is not happy in. His wife smokes and drinks to deal with the stressors of having young kids. What does Rabbit do to deal? He runs. He leaves his pregnant wife and son and runs. From there the story unravels and tells what he does after he leaves.

Let me start by saying that when I read the first fifty pages of Rabbit, Run I was ready to put it down. Why? I had trouble reading it. Updike’s work is riddled with description after description. Heck there are words describing words describing words describing words. You get my point. He also has a very old fashioned writing style, in that he does not let the events speak for the work (as there are very few events in this book) but he lets the feelings speak for it. So instead of packing the book with event after event after event he fills it with feelings, sights and sounds. That is why it is a rather slow paced book. Yet that is also why the characters are very memorable. In fact Rabbit is said to be Updike’s most memorable character. Give me a few months and I’ll begin to forget names of characters I read but I will never forget Rabbit.

Particularly in the beginning, but also throughout, I struggled with the many descriptions. I felt like Updike would get carried away with his descriptions and page long paragraphs. He's also not a fan of chapters, which I had to adjust to. With that said, there were moments that made the book grow on me. It was a really odd relationship with this book because I felt no sympathy with the characters, particularly Rabbit and his wife Janice. I don’t think this has a thing to do with me not being a mom but the fact that they both made poor decisions and it’s hard for me to have sympathy for people who do that. Though I did not feel sympathy for them Updike did make me feel connected to them. It was hard not to be, due to the way he described things. I can see why many readers reference Updike as an inspiration to writers. Writers can learn a lot from his rambling descriptions, but more the way he constructs them. He’s very precise and poetic in his construction, and rather magical at times.

If anything this book is about the day to day struggles of life. That is possibly why it was boring on occasion because often times the things we do are boring. That was where I struggled with the book the most and yet admired Updike for it. He didn’t glamorize the writing with all kinds of events that likely would not happen in life. He kept it real and told stories that could relate to many people. That is what makes him a great writer because he wrote his sentences in a way that many would have trouble writing, when analyzing day to day life.

Dialogue was the one thing I felt was lacking. I think I’ve emphasized Updike’s love for descriptions, so that leaves little room for dialogue. He had dialogue sure, but it was interspersed in his long paragraphs and just minimal all together. I love dialogue and so I really missed that and craved more.

I gave this book three stars because I liked it, I appreciate Updike’s craft but only a three because I felt the descriptions sometimes got excessive to the point of boredom and left me no reason to care for the characters.

(less)

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Apr 14, 2009 Shane rated it 4 of 5 stars

Updike certainly turns out the anti-hero in Harry (Rabbit) Angstrom, a misogynistic 26-year old ex-basketball player who hasn't grown up. Love, for Harry, ebbs away with every ejaculation and is restored only when his reservoir’s fill up. Yet women fall for him, forgive him, hate him and hate themselves for their vulnerability, while Ha foil, the Rev Jack Eccles, who is truly on a mission to save souls, is despised by his wife Lucy. And yet it was the Eccles's of this world, the organizational m...more

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Jun 02, 2008 Laura rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: writers

Shelves: pulitzer-prize-project

For the three days since I've finished this book I've been going back and forth about whether this is 5 stars, or 4, or 3. Part of the problem is John Updike himself. Liking him as a writer somehow feels politically incorrect. Even mentioning him in mixed company gets glances, "you're reading HIM?" The Rabbit books have always had an aura of ho hum who cares to me. I'd hear Rabbit blah blah and tune it out like it's hockey. I knew Updike was competent, certainly anyone picking up a random issue...more For the three days since I've finished this book I've been going back and forth about whether this is 5 stars, or 4, or 3. Part of the problem is John Updike himself. Liking him as a writer somehow feels politically incorrect. Even mentioning him in mixed company gets glances, "you're reading HIM?" The Rabbit books have always had an aura of ho hum who cares to me. I'd hear Rabbit blah blah and tune it out like it's hockey. I knew Updike was competent, certainly anyone picking up a random issue of the New Yorker would be aware of that. But I honestly didn't think his books would speak to me.

I was wrong. I'm in a little bit of a post-novel haze, reminiscent of how I felt after finishing my first Fante novel, where I'm asking myself, why don't other writers speak of this person all the time and how is it that I haven't read him sooner? Seriously, Updike could be one of the most underrated overrated writers of all time. Everyone knows his name and yet contemporary writers rarely call him an inspiration. I always read everything on 2 levels: as a reader and as a writer. I can't help it. Sure, I can sit back and enjoy a book, but even then I'm picking it apart to try to understand WHY I'm enjoying it. So I'm sitting here now, for three days now, trying to figure out what he does and how he does it so well.

Since I was told I would hate John Updike because he's a racist misogynist, I wasn't prepared for the level of empathy and depth and real understanding of the human condition he presents. Truly brilliant the way he can jump heads and bodies and take the reader right along without a hitch. I'm trying to write this without spoilers but I just have to say I've never felt my heart break through any work of fiction or film or Kodak commercial the way this book broke my heart. Like real up-all-night can't control the sobs weeping because he's just that good. He manages to make you empathize with everyone, despised or not, and the course of events is both utterly tragic and completely logical. As a reader I probably would not feel the need to reread this book because it's not plot-heavy, not particularly complex. But as a writer I'd put it next to my other bibles and refer to it over and over as one of those magic texts that achieve what so few writers are able to achieve: Life. Truth. Depth on the page.

So I'm on a John Updike bender at the moment. I've heard the Rabbits go downhill, so we'll see. But for now I'm enjoying the ride.

(less)

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Jul 25, 2009 Miranda rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: book-project-101-readable-classics

I really did not like this book. I really disliked all the characters in this book (except maybe Nelson) and especially hated Rabbit. He started out as a loser and did not learn anything through the story- I hate books with no character growth or depth. The story was just not engaging in the least and felt it was a chore just to finish it (and I only finished it because it was for my book club). I will never read another book by Updike. The only positive thing I can think of is that there were a...more

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Jan 15, 2009 Scott rated it 4 of 5 stars

I wasn't quite sure what to expect with this, an early and famous Updike. I found it mostly quite powerful. The protagonist Rabbit Angstrom is a bit of a (mostly) lovable loser, bumbling his way into young adulthood. Many scenes are perfectly setup and described with fresh (even decades after its writing) turns of phrase that captured my attention without pulling me out of the book.

Having said that, there were a few disjunctions, for me at least. One is [MINOR SPOILER:] that Rabbit's initial fle...more

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Jan 29, 2012 Vanessa rated it 2 of 5 stars

I've always hated the sort of "adult literary fiction" which deals with, mainly, unhappy marriages and adultery and gives a picture of a sort of two-dimensional world of unrelenting bleakness where no one is ever just decent to each other. This is the country where Rabbit, Run takes place, and it's always been an unrecognizable country to me, this place where "adult literary authors" live. Perhaps it's just my naturally cheerful and upbeat nature that makes such so-called darkness seem just sort...more

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Apr 21, 2009 Greg of A2 rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction-general, read-before-1990

This novel begins the great American story of Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom. It was the first Updike novel I ever read. I read this after reading his classic short story called "A&P" for a college lit course. I recall that the subject matter here was a little beyond my life experience but I was immediately drawn to his beautiful use of the English language. Nobody wrote like Updike. I would read and re-read his descriptions of say a widow's parlor or maybe the eighteenth hole of a local public gol...more

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Mar 25, 2009 Jeff rated it 4 of 5 stars

I didn't like this book when I first started reading it. If it hadn't been for the book club that chose this as its next read, I probably would not have gone past 100 pages, which is what I give a book before giving up on it. The language is glorious. "The cuticle moons on this fingernails are big." "His downstairs neighbor's door across the hall is shut like a hurt face." "Brewer spread(s) out below like a carpet, a red city, where they paint wood, tin, even red bricks red, an orange rose flowe...more I didn't like this book when I first started reading it. If it hadn't been for the book club that chose this as its next read, I probably would not have gone past 100 pages, which is what I give a book before giving up on it. The language is glorious. "The cuticle moons on this fingernails are big." "His downstairs neighbor's door across the hall is shut like a hurt face." "Brewer spread(s) out below like a carpet, a red city, where they paint wood, tin, even red bricks red, an orange rose flowerpot red that is unlike the color of any other city in the world yet to the children of the county is the only color of cities, the color all cities are." "Laws aren't ghosts in this country, they walk around with the smell of earth on them." What stopped me from liking the book from the beginning was the main character, Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, a self-absorbed, fatuous jerk who, in a fit of contempt for all his life has become, walks out on his pregnant wife and their young son. Runs, actually. It's difficult to like a man whose main action is that of a man on the run from all his responsibilities. He takes up with a sometime prostitute named Ruth whom he literally sweeps off her feet, treats her with respect (though he does pay her that first night) and makes her feel, for the first time in a long time, like a person worthy of respect. Just by the power of his being. It's too bad, because her affection for him only reaffirms for Rabbit his righteousness. The world he left is one of confinement, stifling conformity, where responsibility to others is more important than satisfying one's own desires and urges.

The book dragged for me, until Reverend Jack Eccles appeared on the scene. He is Rabbit's wife's family's pastor (whew) and he carries the burden of bringing Rabbit back to the fold of society. Eccles is a man of principle, a man of faith, who believes in the sanctity of marriage. "Even bad marriages," he tells his wife, admitting to her that the marriage Rabbit has with Janice is, indeed, a bad one, one that should not go on. No matter. For Eccles, saving Rabbit means saving some part of himself, some part of him that has started to believe, maybe just a little, that there are no values left worth saving in the world. His wife, Lucy, is a non-believer, goes to church because her husband is the pastor, because it is her responsibility to go to church. In essence, Eccles must save Rabbit in order to save his own family life, his own wife, himself. Eccles is the calm voice of reason. He doesn't tell Rabbit that what he's doing is wrong. He becomes Rabbit's friend, gets him a job, plays golf with him once a week. In the end, he believes, Rabbit will realize on his own the err of his ways. He will return to his wife because he believes that deep down Rabbit is a good man, Rabbit understands his place in society, Rabbit will conform to what is expected of him because that is what he is supposed to do.

Eccles gave me sympathy for Rabbit, an understanding that what he feels is what we all feel, in a way. That society lays down rules and sometimes those rules are hard to follow. Taking place in an America of the 1950s gives the book that much more punch. Rabbit is the conscience of an America that is about to rise against the norms, that is about to give birth to beat poetry and free love and the civil rights movement and ERA. Rabbit is a member of a society whose sun is setting. The metaphorical conflict between Rabbit and Eccles is that of tradition versus rebellion. Eccles represents society as it is. Rabbit, in his struggle to break free, represents a society that can be. But in order for the rebellion to occur, Rabbit must break free of it. Must escape from it. Must run.
I'm reminded as a write this of a 1970s science-fiction movie called Logan's Run, about a society that doesn't let anyone live past 30. When a person reaches this age, he or she is killed, promised that they will be reborn, their circle of life will continue. Logan 5 is himself both Eccles and Rabbit. He is charged by the powers that be with the task of uncovering a rebellion that threatens the stability of society, to find the underground movement known as Sanctity and destroy it. But in order to do this, he must himself become a runner, one who's time to die has come but who refuses to participate in the ritual and instead runs, attempts to escape the city and live outside. In the process of uncovering this Sanctity, he himself comes to believe that what society has told him all along may be wrong, that is is possible to live past thirty, that the norms and conformities that he has spent his life upholding may in fact be a lie. Logan 5 starts his story as Eccles, defending society, but in the end he becomes Rabbit, running because he realizes that the society in which he lives has no place for him. He must leave it in order to live.

Knowing that Updike wrote many more books about Rabbit Angstrom, I'm now interested in reading more of them. Where does Rabbit go now? How does his story match the progression of America during the latter half of the 20th Century? Because in essence that is what the book, and Rabbit's life, is about. America in the 20th Century.(less)

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Mar 01, 2008 Clifford rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: people who like reading about boring people

Shelves: modern-fiction

I didn't like this book. I can honestly say I don't "get" Updike. There were lots of tersely poetic little sentences and very unique metaphors - I mean it's obvious the guy can write and has style, but his protagonist (Harry Angstrom) is just boring. If you want to read an interesting first-person account of a life then read The "Great Gatsby" or even Irving's epic "The World According to Garp" (Which by the way sports a fairly good does of sardonic humor for those of you who are so inclined).

Do...more

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Aug 25, 2007 Sarra rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: bookcrossing, 1001-books-to-read-before-you-die

Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom was a star basketball player in high school, now he's married to his high school sweetheart who he thinks is boring, they have one child and another on the way. His life is lackluster, he's a salesman for a kitchen gadget, certainly not what he expected when he was a star. One day after a particularly unsatisfying exchange with his wife, he decides to run away. After a brief meeting with his old coach, he ends up moving in with a good-time girl named Ruth. There he lives...more

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Mar 31, 2009 Doris rated it 3 of 5 stars

Missed this when it and its sequels first were published. Updike is a remarkable writer. His characters stay with you for better or worse. I'll get to the remaining books eventually. I want to find out what becomes of Rabbit and his friends and family.

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Sep 27, 2007 Robert rated it 5 of 5 stars

Since the first time I read this book years ago, I bet I haven't gone 24 hours without thinking about it in some way. It's not my favorite book in the series, but it's the emotionally rawest thing I've ever read. A recurring image in the book is that of things spilling over, appropriate for a novel in which the title character's frustration with his life can no longer be contained. Updike chronicles the caustic results caused by Rabbit's inner restlessness that surfaces, then boils over, when he...more

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Nov 15, 2011 Stella Dinielli rated it 4 of 5 stars

It's the year 1959 and Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom is only 26 years old but already finds himself in a dead-end life defined by sippy cups, bills, responsibility and is “immersed with hate”. He is married with a 2-year-old son and although they are hardly able to financially take care themselves as it is, they have another child due in a couple months. Rabbit finds the most joy out of going to the local basketball court and being included in the game by the local neighborhood boys. Eight years earli...more
It's the year 1959 and Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom is only 26 years old but already finds himself in a dead-end life defined by sippy cups, bills, responsibility and is “immersed with hate”. He is married with a 2-year-old son and although they are hardly able to financially take care themselves as it is, they have another child due in a couple months. Rabbit finds the most joy out of going to the local basketball court and being included in the game by the local neighborhood boys. Eight years earlier he had been the star of his high school team, and basketball was a promise of wealth and success, not just a leisure activity played at the community center. At the beginning of the story, Rabbit gets home and instead of finding his wife in an apron, tending the house and children like women were expected to at this time in America, his wife Janice is drunk (yes whilst pregnant) and watching television. He learns that his son is not in the house, but rather with his grandparents. He takes this opportunity to run for the hills and escape the constraints of his life and starts driving. He has decided to head south, completely abandoning his wife and toddler son. At first, Rabbit’s life was defined with endless thoughts such as “Is it just these people I’m outside or is it all America?”, but it is at this point in the story his life becomes defined by his impulses; he doesn’t ever look back on or contact the family he abandoned. Remember that this novel was published in the 1950’s, a time when American’s were used to the standard ‘father knows best’ type of plots, and with this novel Updike breaks the mold and writes a story of greed, selfishness (“If you have the guts to be yourself, other people will pay your price”) and ugliness. This was a time that American’s placed all their faith and beliefs in religion, so Updike confronting them with “Janice and Rabbit become unnaturally still; both are Christians. God’s name makes them feel guilty” induced a culture shock in readers at the time. “Rabbit, Run” is a novel written so well that the writing shines through enough for readers to put aside their disdain for the characters and their actions and still thoroughly enjoy it. John Updike knew that “Rabbit Run” would cause controversy and be immediately written off as scandalous garbage if he didn’t portray the story eloquently enough. And that’s exactly what he did; he presented his readers with an unattractive story attractively, and this is a lesson that can’t be learned enough for an up and coming writer as myself.
(less)

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Dec 30, 2008 Mike rated it 3 of 5 stars

Updike is one of the few highly acclaimed post war writers I'd never read. Considering this was written when he was only 28, I can see why he has the reputation he does. Great prose. For me, the book is weakened however by the rather unsympathetic central character, who is a young man who - rejecting the stifling social mores of suburban America in the 1950s - sort of drifts in and out of others' lives based on what "feels right" to him at a particular moment, wreaking havoc on his family and ot...more

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Nov 24, 2008 Stephanie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Rabbit, Run, by John Updike, is the first of four books about Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom. Updike was eventually to win the Pulitzer for the last two Rabbit books. I read this book as a high-school senior, and the only memories that I brought with me to this re-reading were that Rabbit lived an almost unbearably seedy and depressing life.

Part of the danger in reviewing books on this site is that while I am reading a book, I am actually actively engaged in mentally composing my review. While reading...more

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May 07, 2013 Bjorn rated it 4 of 5 stars

Rabbit had a wife and kids in Pennsylvania, Jack
/:He went out for a ride, and then he went back
Then he went out for a ride, and then he went back:/ (da capo al fine)

Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom really is a spoiled little asshole, isn't he? Like a literary Al Bundy, still hung up on his brief turn as a high school star athlete, stuck in a dead-end sales job, watching his life go by as his wife expects her second child and is already slipping into permanent housewifeitis, afternoon TV and alcohol and a...more Rabbit had a wife and kids in Pennsylvania, Jack
/:He went out for a ride, and then he went back
Then he went out for a ride, and then he went back:/ (da capo al fine)

Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom really is a spoiled little asshole, isn't he? Like a literary Al Bundy, still hung up on his brief turn as a high school star athlete, stuck in a dead-end sales job, watching his life go by as his wife expects her second child and is already slipping into permanent housewifeitis, afternoon TV and alcohol and all. Had this been a few years later, I guess the soundtrack would have been the Stones' "Mother's Little Helper". Only there's no one to really help Janice; Rabbit runs.

And then it all starts to get complicated. Wonderfully complicated, at times; as a story, there's not much there, but Updike's prose is (for the most part) exhilarating to read (even in the somewhat clunky translation I read). It takes a lot to have a main protagonist like Rabbit and have him carry the novel - he's not really a BAD guy as such, just doesn't think things through, not to mention being a bit of a misogynist and still expecting things to work out if he can just find the right play like he used to do in baseball. Make a few substitutions, take the penalty shot, win the game. Everyone makes a big deal about him never fouling anyone on the court; off-court, it's a different matter - with no ref to stop the game when something goes wrong, Rabbit runs too far. He can never run too far.

Updike adds a lot of depth to a fairly mundane tale and characters; discussing religion, classes, the losing side of the American dream - the people in the book are several-generation immigrants, hard-working protestants, Swedes, Germans, Anglos, doing their duty and being thoroughly miserable for it. (Yes, I quoted Springsteen for a reason.) And that's really the main problem with the novel; it's almost quite literally hopeless, a drab story told in gaudy colours. You end up wincing at almost every exquisitely worded phrase, because it's never going to end well.

It's about responsibility, isn't it? Spouses to each other, parents to children, priests to parishioners, johns to whores, man to his fellow man etc. Or perhaps rather, the lack of it. The young reverend who thinks he can make a difference, the old one who chides him for being naive.

Updike can write. DAMN, can he write. I honestly don't see how he got three more novels out of Rabbit Angstrom, but I think I'm going to find out at some point; the good description of the bad far outweighs the bad of the well-described (is that a sentence?)(less)

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Apr 11, 2013 Stephen Thomas rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

STEWING IN HIS OWN JUICES

I’ve been meaning to read the “Rabbit” books for years and have finally made a start. I wasn’t disappointed, although I was a little surprised. I had an idea of the matters covered in these books but was expecting a wider canvas than the small domestic drama that is the story of Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom. Perhaps I had this preconception because one tends to expect a grandiose sweep from such lauded literature. But Updike deals with the American dream in a microcosmic way....more

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About John Updike

John Hoyer Updike (born March 18, 1932 in Shillington, Pennsylvania) was an American writer. Updike's most famous work is his Rabbit series (Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit Is Rich; Rabbit At Rest; and Rabbit Remembered). Rabbit is Rich and Rabbit at Rest both won Pulitzer Prizes for Updike. Describing his subject as "the American small town, Protestant middle class," Updike is well known for hi...more

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