Rabbit, Run
by John Updike
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I HATE this book. I HATE Rabbit.
As I said before, "S." is the only Updike novel I enjoyed, really. It's from the point of view of a woman in a cult. She's crazy, but funny, so I love her.
As for the men in his novels, for the most part, I loathe them. In the first installment, Rabbit leaves his wife twice, his children twice, and his new pregnant lover (who he loved for her whore-ish-ness) twice. The only female he really LIKES is his sister--oh, she's so innocent. She hasn't l...more
As I said before, "S." is the only Updike novel I enjoyed, really. It's from the point of view of a woman in a cult. She's crazy, but funny, so I love her.
As for the men in his novels, for the most part, I loathe them. In the first installment, Rabbit leaves his wife twice, his children twice, and his new pregnant lover (who he loved for her whore-ish-ness) twice. The only female he really LIKES is his sister--oh, she's so innocent. She hasn't l...more
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Read in May, 2008
recommends it for:
writers
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 picki...more
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Read in August, 2007
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. T...more
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Read in May, 2008
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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...more
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Read in August, 2007
recommends it for:
John Updike fans
When I started reading this book, the first thing I thought about was how many baby boomers must be impaired in some way from all the smoking and drinking their mothers did when they were in the womb. Updike's pregnant female characters liberally partake of cigarettes and alcohol. The setting is 1960, so it was a-okay to get your drink on and get a little buzz while you were knocked up. Other than that and a couple other specific time references, the story itself is timeless. A coddled twenty-so...more
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recommends it for:
heels, adulterers, whores, bad husbands/fathers
Just about everyone who reviews this book makes this observation, so let me be the next: it's hard to like this powerful and stirring book because it's impossible to like the hero.
Not that I need to like the protagonist in order to like the work (I'm not my parents). However, Rabbit is not an antihero. He is a hero and I can tell that I am supposed to like him. But very few reviewers like him; I personally dislike him not just due to his reprehensible actions -- I have forgiven, and liked, c...more
Not that I need to like the protagonist in order to like the work (I'm not my parents). However, Rabbit is not an antihero. He is a hero and I can tell that I am supposed to like him. But very few reviewers like him; I personally dislike him not just due to his reprehensible actions -- I have forgiven, and liked, c...more
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Read in September, 2007
After continuing on through Updike's Rabbit series, I now find more significance in this book, the first installment in the life of Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom. However, at first read, it was frustrating, likely due to the fact that in being introduced to Rabbit's character, I didn't understand well enough yet how someone could be so disconnected, so cold, so apathetic -- in fact, often I just wanted to smack him. Then as the story evolved, I saw more clearly the source of Rabbit's frust...more
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This book is always in the running as being - the Great American Novel. I agree because the subject matter was right on - hate my wife, hate my kids, hate my job, hate being tied down. But as far as the writing goes I did not enjoy this book. I'm used to the minimilists who say - I drove to my my mothers house. It takes Updike 20 pages to describe Rabbit's trip to his Mother who lives 4 blocks away.
I thought Updike's wordiness would make for great sex passages. Wrong. The sex was so vanilla...more
I thought Updike's wordiness would make for great sex passages. Wrong. The sex was so vanilla...more
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Read in June, 2008
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.
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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...more
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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...more
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Read in February, 2008
recommends it for:
people who like reading about boring people
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 t...more
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Read in May, 2008
This book is about Rabbit Angstrom, a 26-year-old man who was a basketball hero in high school in his suburban town--and his life has never been heroic since. But he is a likable guy, which lets him get away with more than he should. However, when he leaves his pregnant wife even his good nature can't win over the people he has hurt. To explain any more about the book would be a spoiler, so suffice to say that there is basically a battle between doing right and doing what would make him happy...more
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My first book by Updike. I had read some of his poems here and there, but I had no idea he was such a great writer. I thought the pages that span over the period from when Harry leaves his wife for a second time until she accidentally drowns her baby was one of the best pieces of fiction writing that I’ve ever read. I think I’ll keep reading him.
Harry is not an asshole as some of the reviewers have mentioned. He’s all of us. He’s just foolish and brash enough to show and act upon his...more
Harry is not an asshole as some of the reviewers have mentioned. He’s all of us. He’s just foolish and brash enough to show and act upon his...more
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recommends it for:
mid-20 to 30-somethings
I thought this was the best of the four-part series. The series follows the life of an American man, Rabbit, throughout his thirty years of marriage. Updike wrote the books throughout his career, aging along with his main character. The books are on the whole a bittersweet, or even rather pessimistic, portrait of American life. Although the series may be viewed as intended for a masculine audience, (excerpts appeared as stories in Esquire and Playboy over the years) of those in the series, I...more
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Read in September, 2007
Still a great book. I'm rereading Rabbit, Run because I'm writing a boy whose father tells him to read the novel (my character hates both his father and Rabbit). I'd forgotten the wonderful Joycean stream-of-consciousness passages late in this novel. A master of narrative tempo, Updike writes terrific scenes, such as when the young Episcopalian minister Eccles meets the older Luther minister Kruppenbach and the pompous, didactic Kruppenback disparages Eccles, saying, "Do you think this i...more
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the rabbit books are about the evolution of a family over the course of the latter half of the twentieth century. they are also about, hold onto your hat, the nature of social identity and how it's evolved through periods of striving and idealism, wealth and cynicism, and how these characteristics are so strongly built into how we americans think of ourselves and our culture.
it's a story about everyday life and it builds each story of each character slowly and methodically and always throug...more
it's a story about everyday life and it builds each story of each character slowly and methodically and always throug...more
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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 g...more
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Read in January, 2008
I debated for a while whether to give this book two or three stars - anything more never a possibility. The final decision is two. And its not because I did or didnt like the protagonist. I appreciate the confused complexity of Rabbit - the innocent and the rogue - juxtaposed against family and responsibility. I cant give this book more than three stars because of the inconsistency of Updike's prose. I picked this up over several classics because the brilliant writing on the first few pages real...more
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Has a copy to sell/swap
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Read in February, 2008
recommended to Liz by:
Jim
Ahh, conflict. Makes any book a better book. This one is filled with it. I might say, though, that the feeling of guilt that is so desperately pushed against the protagonist is not necessarily good for a woman going through a divorce, regardless of how secure you are in your decision.
This is my first John Updike book and he's got a fabulous, flowery, descriptive style that ignores most the grammar rules. Given that, you'll spend some time to trying to truly understand some of what he writes...more
This is my first John Updike book and he's got a fabulous, flowery, descriptive style that ignores most the grammar rules. Given that, you'll spend some time to trying to truly understand some of what he writes...more
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Read in March, 2007
recommends it for:
a more mature and investigative audience
I hated this book at first. I read it for a history term paper assignment, expecting the 1960's time period to pertain to the blatant social turbulence of the time (think Vietnam, hippies, draft dodgers). But instead I found this book pertained to family life and its changing face, values, and gender roles. While writing my paper, I investigated the 50's and 60's household and social issues and I realized that this book foretold the issues thta many American families face today. After writing th...more
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book data (includes all editions)
avg rating (all editions): 3.59 (2427 ratings) avg rating (this edition): 3.60 (2248 ratings) number of reviews: 246popular shelves
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quote
"You do things and do things and nobody really has a clue."