Rabbit, Run (Rabbit Angstrom, #1) in Around the Year in 52 Books

Mar 10, 2021 Ron rated it really liked it

Harry ("Rabbit") Angstrom is a 26-year old small-town Pennsylvania man who impulsively drives away from his banal job, his alcoholic pregnant wife, and their cute two-year-old son.

He doesn't get far.

This is a cynical expose of American ennui and the drudgery of near-poverty in 1950's Pennsylvania. Updike alternates normal prose with a poetic stream of consciousness style that is so strong and invigorating in its verbiage that the words smash their way free of any punctuation and you are reminded ...more

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Jul 20, 2017 Maggie rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: boxall-1001, fiction, general-fiction, guardian-1000, series, usa

Link to Shmoop summary

I don’t like Rabbit. I don’t think anybody does. He just doesn’t seem to get it, does he? He runs away from home, has sex with another woman, feels guilty, runs away and goes back home, decides he will settle down with his wife. And just when you think he has learnt his lesson, he gets tired of her, and the cycle is repeated. He’s a totally dysfunctional and irresponsible adult. He’s trapped in his college ideas of basketball fame, and his mind with its childish ideas just Link to Shmoop summary

I don’t like Rabbit. I don’t think anybody does. He just doesn’t seem to get it, does he? He runs away from home, has sex with another woman, feels guilty, runs away and goes back home, decides he will settle down with his wife. And just when you think he has learnt his lesson, he gets tired of her, and the cycle is repeated. He’s a totally dysfunctional and irresponsible adult. He’s trapped in his college ideas of basketball fame, and his mind with its childish ideas just can’t grow to inhabit his adult frame. The worst part is, he doesn’t seem to change. I mean, he tries to learn, and he tries to be a good Christian, but he just falls back into the same sins.

Which is perhaps indicative of all of us. This is typical Romans 7:15 behaviour: “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” At the end of the book, Rabbit is still on the run, but at least now he runs with he burden of responsibility towards his son Nelson weighing heavily on his mind. People do not change overnight. We often struggle with our sins a long time before we do. Perhaps Updike, who was known as both a Christian and a serial adulterer, felt the same way. I don’t know if he intended to write the remaining three books of the Rabbit omnibus when he embarked on this book, but knowing that there are more allows for hope that Rabbit does eventually change, and in a time frame that is humanly realistic.

Perhaps that is why despite absolutely hating this book at the start, I found myself being slowly drawn in. Yes, I was disappointed when Rabbit reverted to his old sins. But a seed of hope had been planted, and I do want to read the next three books to see how this seed grows.

I am also not entirely sure what this book says about Christianity. Updike paints Christianity and Eccles and Rabbit’s saving grace – and then breaks it down completely. And why make Eccles’ wife such a temptress? For a while, I thought that perhaps Updike was one of those Christians who are anti-church, but no, he was apparently a churchgoing Christian all his life. Maybe he just realised that pastors are humans, and humans aren’t black and white. Pastors and churches have their flaws, and righteousness and salvation are not won overnight.

Also, it’s an interesting portrait of 1950s America that Updike paints here. He depicts steamy adultery, moral degradation, irresponsible parenthood, and meaningless work, yet while these fight against a backdrop of religion and conservativeness, they never quite topple it. Was this America true generally, or only for Updike? ...more

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Feb 19, 2016 Jesse rated it liked it · review of another edition

Maybe 2 stars for the story and 4 stars for the writing. My first Updike novel left me wondering: is he always this dismal? The overall impression is one of miserable people leading miserable lives and a protagonist who has no sense of responsibility for his actions. Some of the imagery Updike uses is very good, and I can appreciate that, but not my favorite story overall.

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