Rabbit, Run

I had wanted to read Rabbit, Run for years, and I finally got around to it this past summer. I found the book to be a bit laborious to get through the first time around and I've not reread it for this post, so let this serve as a disclaimer that my plot synopsis may not be spot on.

Rabbit, Run is the first in a quartet of novels about an erstwhile small town high school basketball star, Rabbit Angstrom, and his personal struggles with the confines of middle class American family life. One day, Rabbit is driving home from his job selling kitchen utensils when he realizes that he can't stand his life anymore. He decides that his wife is a dolt, his young child is obnoxious, his in-laws are jerks and his life is just unbearable overall. With this in mind, and little else, he keeps driving past his house, onto the Pennsylvania highway and beyond. His road trip is brief and it fails to satiate his itch for change, so he eventually makes his way back towards his hometown where he seeks out his old basketball coach, Marty Tothero, who now lives at the YMCA.

As is evident from his living arrangements, Coach Tothero isn't doing very well for himself and definitely shouldn't be looked to for guidance and advice, but that is exactly what Rabbit does. Soon, Rabbit and Coach Tothero double date (with prostitutes we later learn) at a local Chinese restaurant. Despite his date's caked-on makeup and rotund figure, Rabbit is smitten and makes a series of very strange sexual advances seeking validation, conquest and adventure from an ugly prostitute. Well played Mr. Angstrom.

For several weeks, Rabbit actually shacks up with Ms. Unattractive Prostitute lady (her name is Ruth) and, ironically, they live life like a married couple. This goes on for a while and Rabbit tries to coerce his concubine into performing certain sexual acts. Her reluctance is somewhat odd considering she is a prostitute. Well, Rabbit finally gets what he wants (spoiler: it's a blow job) and then learns that his wife is having their second baby, so he rushes to the hospital to be with her.

Rabbit is accepted back into his former life by his dimwitted wife and snooty in-laws who are mostly just concerned about how embarrassing this whole ordeal has been. Rabbit sticks around for a while but eventually runs back to Ruth. His wife, who thinks he's left her for good, gets roaring drunk and accidentally drowns their infant baby in the bathtub. Rabbit returns home, believing that the death of his daughter was in no way his fault. Oh, and then he finds out that Ruth is pregnant and she wants him to either file for divorce or else she'll have an abortion. The novel ends with Rabbit running again. For like, the third time.

Alright, that was a glib plot overview, but in my mind there are a few important points to be made about Rabbit, Run.

Style

Rabbit, Run is a gorgeous piece of writing; a 300 page clinic on rich, highly descriptive storytelling. However, the price of such detailed exposition is tedium, and throughout Rabbit, Run, you can't help but think that Updike could have described a scene in one page instead of five.

Updike

When a literary legend passes away, you can always count on an abundance of terrific essays and retrospectives to appear. My favorite piece on Updike appeared in New York Magazine. It was short, simple and focused on the two words that best describe the man (you could also include "misogynist", but these pieces tend to be very kind when dealing with the departed¹).

1) Prolific

The man wrote three pages a day, five days a week for 50 years. I probably write more than three pages of email per day, but this man cranked out thousands of words of elegant, timeless, Pulitzer Prize winning prose. In his lifetime, he published over "twenty-five novels and more than a dozen short story collections, as well as poetry, art criticism, literary criticism and children's books."

2) Belletrist

I had to look this word up when I was reading the New York Magazine piece, and after I learned the etymology and definition, I can see why it was used several times to describe John Updike.

belletrist

1. literature regarded as a fine art, esp. as having a purely aesthetic function.
2. light and elegant literature, esp. that which is excessively refined, characterized by aestheticism, and minor in subject, substance, or scope.
Origin: belles-lettres; French: fine letters.

Updike is a master of observation and Rabbit, Run reads like a stream-of-consciousness novel in many ways because the descriptions of people, places and feelings are so copious. No minutiae is spared from Updike's elegant treatment and the weight of these observations can sometimes be crushing. At time it can feel like we're privy to too much narration and inner monologue and the story can get bogged down a bit. Ultimately, this is a small price to pay for some of the finest American writing of the twentieth century. The man was a virtuoso wordsmith.

Morals

A man leaves his pregnant wife and young child to shack up with a shady prostitute.

This would appear to be a black and white case of unscrupulous behavior, yet Updike manages to insert all sorts of shades of grey into this tale, and actually paints Rabbit as a somewhat tragic figure.

Aside from the excellent descriptive writing, I think this is the most incredible aspect of Rabbit, Run. What should be a clear cut ethical transgression is somehow transformed into an interesting debate about the stifling confines of middle America and the "American dream." Is Rabbit's philandering and restlessness a heroic rebuke of the shackles of small town American family life? Perhaps Rabbit is a tragic character because he is true to himself, albeit in a grotesquely irresponsible way. There's something loveable about this man even though there almost certainly shouldn't be.

Conclusion

Read Rabbit, Run because it's a classic, but don't expect a page-turner. It takes some work to get through this dense novel, and it's easy to let your mind wander, but try to be mindful of the richness of the descriptions and the power of Updike's observations.


1. I'm basing this off of a terrific essay by David Foster Wallace. And yes, the use of a footnote here is itself an homage to DFW.