by John Updike
1960 (reprinted 1993) • Fawcett Crest
284 pages / ISBN 0449205061 (paperback)
John Updike, at least in the opinion of his fans, made constructive use of a Guggenheim fellowship by writing Rabbit, Run, which grew into a four-novel series chronicling the life of an average American man. The series, much like Rabbit Angstrom, ran away with itself and became a landmark of the twentieth-century American novel. By the time of his death in 2009, Updike's Rabbit tetralogy was best-selling and the recipient of two Pulitzers.
First published in 1960, Rabbit, Run was the second novel of Updike's career and broke ground in ways similar to his Couples of 1968. Never one for self-censorship, he laced Rabbit, Run with an audacity and sexual frankness that writers such as Philip Roth, Norman Mailer, and William S. Burroughs also championed through the 1960s and 70s. Updike was certainly not alone in overcoming literary taboos, but he stands apart from his contemporaries in using a Protestant, middle-class perspective that combines issues of family, sexuality, and politics with bourgeois life and religion.Rabbit, Run, written by Updike in his mid-twenties, was a reaction to the social climate of America as it moved out of the 1950s, a decade marked by vast prosperity and, to many, extreme conformism. Updike made reference to Americans feeling 'stuck' in the 50s, when the United States advanced through early phases of the Cold War to become a military and economic superpower. His characters from this period, usually middle-class suburbanites, lack direction and personal fulfillment in a post-Second World War malaise that overshadowed the Eisenhower administration.
Set in the fictitious Pennsylvania town of Mt. Judge, Updike often uses the word 'net' to describe a late 1950s atmosphere that Harold 'Rabbit' Angstrom feels trapped in. Harry, once a star on his high school's basketball team, is now 26 years old. He is dabbling in the working world as a kitchen gadget salesman while caring for his pregnant, alcoholic wife Janice Springer and 2 ½-year-old son Nelson.
Harry, from the opening pages, is facing a mental and spiritual crisis. While swamped in an unhappy marriage, he deals with flak from his parents and in-laws to keep the Angstrom and Springer names unblemished, pressure from his Christian faith, and demands by society to have a chicken in the pot and two cars in the garage. Unable to cope much longer, he hops into his Ford and drives to the Mid-Atlantic states with no intention of returning.
Dogged by family obligations, Harry drives back to Mt. Judge and joins Marty Tothero, his old basketball coach who is living in the attic of a social hall. Harry always looked to Tothero for advice but finds his pep talks outdated and stale. Yet it is through Tothero that he meets Ruth Leonard, a heavy-set woman who seems to make ends meet through prostitution. A morbid affair, based on domination rather than love, begins and Rabbit finds himself more at odds with his conscience than ever. This guilt is heightened by Jack Eccles, an Episcopalian minister who has been asked by the Angstroms and Springers to 'convert' Rabbit back into family loyalty.
It does not take long to sense an absence of emotional depth in Harry, which causes his undoing in Rabbit, Run and over the three later novels. Still living on the glory of his basketball days, Rabbit seems to lack consideration for most anyone outside of himself. He has no patience in helping his drink-quaffing wife and is repulsed by her second pregnancy. Except for his son Nelson, he cannot seem to form any direct connection with another person's feelings; men are negative forces that pose threats and women are vessels for his rampant sexual desires.
His behavior is impulsive, almost animal, and the work of Eccles to steer him onto the righteous path seems hopeless. Yet Rabbit is himself aware of what is lacking. Unhappy with his life and clinging to what little of his Christian faith is available, Rabbit senses a reality beyond Mt. Judge but cannot find his way. Against a static backdrop where there is little hope of improvement, it is no wonder that Harry feels like skipping town. Updike asks whether our ties to other humans are truly strong enough for Rabbit to go back.
While an engaging, often funny, and ultimately painful book, Rabbit, Run is a product of the early Updike, the writer who has not fully set down his method. Like Updike through all periods, the novel is rich in detail and brings us to the heart of its protagonist, but it does not have the total balance and polish that his later fiction carries. Updike had published just one earlier novel, The Poorhouse Fair, in 1959 and was still a distance off from the pristine narrative and impeccable form of Rabbit is Rich, a superior, Pulitzer Prize-winning novel released in 1981.
As usual, Updike does not divide the novel into chapters but into loosely-based sections that run for dozens of pages. Rabbit, Run is told in third-person semi-omniscient, telling most of the story from Harry's point of view but stepping away to relate other characters' predicaments, such as those of Janice and Eccles. This keeps the reader fully aware of the developments. The book functions well as a unit, but Updike might have created a more suspenseful novel by revealing some of the events after they happened.
Updike, who thought of Rabbit, Run as a film on printed pages, admitted that the novel was written 'carelessly' in order to gain a narrative freedom. At times, his writing seems too free; besides detail-packed sentences that leave out punctuation to maintain flow, Updike tinkers with stream of consciousness to describe characters' innermost thoughts. This actually breaks the narrative rhythm more than it sheds light.
These problems are overridden whenever Updike gives meaning to drab, ordinary lives. Updike's characters and settings are unpleasantly real and cause us to think we've been in the exact situations before. While his narration is a bit too verbose, Updike's dialogue is some of the most beautifully conceived in American literature. A typically Updike combination of pleasure and pain, Rabbit, Run and its three successors make up a commentary that will remain popular for at least the near future.
Those interested in the social history of America should read at least one of the Rabbit novels, beginning with Rabbit, Run in 1960 and ending with Rabbit at Rest in 1990. A novelette based on the Rabbit series, Rabbit Remembered, was also published in Updike's 2001 collection Licks of Love. Rabbit is Rich and Rabbit at Rest won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1982 and 1991, respectively.
Rabbit, Run is in wide circulation at bookstores, libraries, and on the Internet, including as a 284-page Fawcett Crest paperback. The 1993 Fawcett printing has small but clear type and a cheerful blue cover. Earlier hardcover releases by Alfred A. Knopf with Updike's familiar jacket design are also available. Harold Angstrom has been the wellspring of Updike's fame during his lifetime and will almost certainly make up the bulk of posthumous fame that Updike enjoys.
