5. Did the book seem dated, of an era?

[Kristel]

Updike wrote this in the 60s. Does it seem dated to you. do you think young males go through similar changes and challenges in today's world? Is it universal or just a Western thing?

[Kristel]

It is dated; but the concepts are not.

[Tracy]

I think that Rabbit's running away is still what many young men and women who are faced with the responsibilities of work and family want to do, and some still do run away from them.
The language is dated, and I'm pretty sure that if any man asked a woman how much she weighed on a blind date nowadays, he'd possibly get slapped, and definitely get told where to put the complimentary breadsticks, before getting left to dine alone.

[Lynn]

I think some of this book is dated. I do not know any women like Janice or Ruth. My adult daughters or myself would not associate with a man as immature as Rabbit except on a superficial level.

This book supports that females need to have options...a way of supporting themselves and their children. At the end of the novel Rabbit has one son and another child on the way...with two different women. That type of a person is not behaving in a responsible manner. His past does not speak well for the future of his children. He seemed to lack any significant emotional connection to anyone.

[Pip]

The book was actually written in 1959 and published in 1960 (I listened to an interview with Updike). I thought it sounded as though it had been written at least a decade earlier, particularly about the childbirth sequence, as I have mentioned already. Some things tickled my fancy, like a 1952 car being considered an old jalopy (in New Zealand at the time there was a three year waiting list for a new car so everyone drove cars decades old). The intrusion of the clergyman into people's lives, the wearing of hats and gloves to church and Rabbit's relationship with his son seemed very old-fashioned. There was hardly any intrusion of current events into the story. Just a mention of the Dalai Lama having gone missing, from memory. It struck a chord as was very popular, I seem to remember, so it probably was more accurate than I think of a particular time and place.