By Patricia K. B. Manley

I have refrained from giving too many spoilers for the book, but of course all book discussions indeed require discussion of the book, so read at caution.

Rating: 5/5 Sails (Full Sail!!)

What is easily most enthralling about Updike as a writer is his fruitful, oftentimes over-assumptive prose. It shines most in Rabbit, Run, the start of a Greek-hero-esque series of our beloved mundanity, centered around Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, a once-great high school basketball player who, on a whim, decides to abandon his family in search of the romantic, sparkly life he feels he truly deserves. Updike’s prose contributes to the story not in the way that it makes the realism more bearable, but rather exposes its beauty–allowing the reader to see all the little complicated aspects of each of the characters’ lives where they bump against each other. Personally, I’ve always felt that Updike’s prose has the unique ability to capture exactly how “it” feels–in this book specifically, self-obsession, self-idolatry, and the more elemental emotions of grief and guilt–in words I never really thought to use before, but feel so perfect. His descriptions of concrete images are equally lush and relatable. 

Rabbit, Run is unsurprisingly a character-driven novel, and Updike’s characterization of Harry Angstrom is very fascinating: much to chew on. There’s many moments that open up the possibility for the reader to pity him, (despite all that he’s done) up until he opens his mouth, when we’re reminded what a man-child he is and how his resistance towards maturity affects everyone else negatively. It’s not true that Rabbit himself gets out scot free, however: he bears an equal (yet not proportional) share of the consequences of his actions, and despite not nearly being enough, it is a refreshing departure from the spoiled, staticky villains which can often occupy even the most acclaimed novels, especially as protagonists. Having the book taken in as a whole, it’s clear that Updike isn’t trying to depict good vs. bad, or, to fit in with my upcoming metaphor, white vs. black. The way I see it, it’s more light gray vs. dark gray, if anything. Janice, Rabbit’s wife, would be the light gray: she is a victim to her husband’s infidelity and largely a sympathetic and pitiful character–even Updike takes the moments to occupy her perspective and explore how she hurts (more on that in a second). However, Janice also causes an accident due to irresponsibility later in the book, acting as a sort of mock-justification for Rabbit’s actions (more on that in a second, too). This accident doesn’t explicitly excuse Rabbit’s actions, but it does make things more interesting as a result of complicating them.

About perspective and moral justifications: I think it could be easy to read through this book and come out the other side believing Rabbit was justified in abandoning his family, similar to how someone could come out with inaccurate interpretations of the meaning of Fight Club or American Psycho. I think if Rabbit, Run had received a movie adaptation, we’d have just as many people running around saying they’re “Rabbit-pilled” and other bullshit like that as we have people saying they’re “just like Tyler Durden.” The material’s all there: we get plenty of Rabbit’s perspective, a few of his likable qualities, (e.g. the fact that he is a fairly good father, abandonment relenting; and does seem to really love Ruth, his mistress, despite how ignorant and juvenile his form of love is) a narrative perspective that could be relatable to someone susceptible to misogynistic beliefs, and plenty of material to base a “blame-Janice” mindset on. Many characters in the book, Rabbit included, at least partially blame Janice for Rabbit abandoning her, suggesting that she drove him away with her apathy. The accident she causes, which is the second climactic event to occur in the book, (and mirrors the first climactic event in a pretty fascinating way) would be the final nail in the coffin for any readers who were developing a “blame-Janice” mindset. However, if they did so, they would be missing out on fully understanding the book. They wouldn’t be exemplified by it, not in the way that American Psycho does, but they just wouldn’t understand it. The book is setting up material that would suggest it wants us to sympathize with Harry, but it doesn’t want us to take the bait. I think what it actually wants us to understand is that things are more complicated than being able to completely blame one person in order to sympathize with the affronted party–hence the shifting theories on who is really responsible for the accident. 

Let’s shift gears a little bit and talk about one of my favorite characters, the Angstroms’ minister, Reverend Jack Eccles. He’s one of the perspectives that the book tends to peer into the most, second to Harry. Eccles, who I predict would read differently based on religious background and current beliefs, resonates, to me, as a morally light-gray character. His commitment to faith, conventional or not, often leads him to make decisions (or guide others into decisions) which are predictably bad. I do think he is ultimately altruistic, but acts on “doing the right thing” too often without really taking a closer look at what the “right thing” is, exactly. He’s very fascinating, as is the heart of Updike’s stories: fascinating people, not always by identity or circumstance, but by the very fact that they are people. It’s not necessarily optimistic–oftentimes that fascination comes from observing the bad things people do, but Updike, unlike the God which the book postulates may or may not attentively arch over the story, is not quick to dole out his judgment.

Overall, I think Updike has his finger on the pulse of what makes mundane life livable. (Which is often uncomfortable for the rest of us. If I have to read any more of Updike’s/Rabbit’s descriptions of teenage girls I think I might explode.) And, surprisingly, it’s much of the same things that make exhilarating lives livable: the story of people. Of course, there are broad differences between the story of an immature man who abandons his family and, for example, a young boy who finds out he’s a wizard, but in both, there’s the people they love, the people they hate, their experience in tasting something new, the dustiness of something tiredly familiar, and things which can’t simply have the label of “good” or “bad” slapped on them. The story of people is a story that makes you, the reader, think of what it means to be people, what it means to be good people, what it means to be bad people, and how you navigate from one to the other. Updike is simply taking all of that and saying, I don’t need magic or murder or high stakes to say this. All the excitement’s in there already.