Rabbit, Run (Rabbit Angstrom, #1) in Boxall's 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die

May 02, 2014 Casey rated it did not like it

Shelves: the-serious-lit, your-book-sucked, 1001-books, i-don-t-get-the-hype

Most books are bad, not because they're actively terrible, but simply because they're not good. These types of books are easy to dislike, but difficult to despise: it's hard to find the will to hate something that never really stirred up a strong emotion in the first place. Rabbit, Run is not this kind of bad book. No, it's a carefully crafted, well written piece of misogynistic wish-fulfillment that's so unlikeable and so offensive that its status as a beloved American classic is, to this reade Most books are bad, not because they're actively terrible, but simply because they're not good. These types of books are easy to dislike, but difficult to despise: it's hard to find the will to hate something that never really stirred up a strong emotion in the first place. Rabbit, Run is not this kind of bad book. No, it's a carefully crafted, well written piece of misogynistic wish-fulfillment that's so unlikeable and so offensive that its status as a beloved American classic is, to this reader, inexplicable.

Does this review make me sound overly vitriolic? Well, consider this example: (view spoiler)

This is the kind of book that made me look up from my Kindle and say to reading "You know, we've had a long run, but this whole reading thing just isn't working out for me. It's not anything either of us did, it's just the way this book has been making me feel recently. I think I'm going to have to sit on the couch, watch some tv, and think things through."

To which reading replied "I'm not ready to give up on you. We've had so many good times together. Remember when we sat in the park and gasped over plot twists in The Count of Monte Cristo? Remember reading Anna Karenina over and over again? Think about all the good things we have ahead of us: think about the George Eliot novels you haven't read, not the mention the Dickens. You haven't even finished Les Miserables yet! We promised we would do that together."

And, while reading was right, my intense dislike of Rabbit, Run caused us to go through something of a trial separation. Luckily, nothing can stop true love.

Anyway, I still feel terribly conflicted, because I wanted to like Rabbit, Run. The schadenfreude-rooted story that I had been told as bookish teenager with more angst than friends, was that the basketball stars and homecoming queens would be miserable, that they would peak in high school. In some versions of the story, they ended up fat, working late shifts at sleazy bars; in other versions, they ended up working for me. Importantly, in all versions of this story, they end up miserable.

Rabbit is supposed to be the miserable type: he's supposed to realize there's more to life than having 2.5 kids, and he's supposed to decide that he wants more than that. Rabbit, Run is supposed to be a cautionary story that tells those high school basketball types to wake up and get out. But, you know what, that story is just an untrue as the stories I was told. Because those insufferable high school kids have turned into insufferable adults with lovely homes and nice jobs and adorable families. I wouldn't trade my life for a second, but that doesn't stop me from occasionally lusting after their in-home washer and dryers.

And so it is, too, for Rabbit. For Rabbit, despite the running, despite understanding that there's more out there, never really changes anything, just bounces around and gets upset that he never quite has exactly what he thinks he deserves (spoiler alert: what he thinks he deserves is a lot of kinky sex with a wide array of women, and for everyone to fawn over him because he used to be okay at basketball in high school).

Rabbit, Run is surely important as a chronicle of the type of sexual and emotional abuse that women were expected to suffer with during the 1950's and 60's, all the while wearing a girdle and a smile and asking whether they can make their husbands a sandwich. I sighed with disgust when (view spoiler) ...more

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