Rabbit, Run

Author: John Updike
Publisher: Penguin Modern Classics
Classification: Penguin Modern Classics, Rabbit

Rabbit, Run is the first in a series of books, all published as Penguin Modern Classics. The main protagonist, Harry ‘Rabbit’ Angstrom, loved basketball and was once a sports superstar. People knew him. Now he’s just a guy in a dead-end job, with a wife who drinks too much and a kid.

Their house is a dump with crap everywhere and overflowing ashtrays. His life and the constant feeling of hopelessness and claustrophobia becomes too much. Rabbit runs, and leaves everything behind. Wife, kid, job, everything.

On his travels he is befriended by the local Episcopal priest, Jack Eccles. Eccles decides to take Rabbit under his wing and tries to guide him through his troubles, and ultimately to reunite him with his wife. Inevitably Rabbit’s troubles are only about to get more complicated as his jilted wife is about to give birth to their second child.

after you’ve been first-rate at something, no matter what, it kind of takes the kick out of being second-rate

The story is really a simple one. It’s the life of an American athlete whose glory days are long gone, based on Updike’s own experiences when growing up. He lived in the Pennsylvania town of Shillington, and his father was a high-school teacher. As Updike states, he watched a lot of basketball when growing up, and inevitably the town became littered with ‘Rabbits’.

Although there’s not much cultural or political commentary in the book, it is reflective of what happens if a family man does cut loose. When you act selfishly, the people close to you get hurt.

These types of themes where characters are challenged in their religious beliefs, family obligations or marital affairs are very typical of Updike. These are of course explored further throughout the rest of the series.

Aside from recurring themes, Updike wrote with a very definite style, and one enhanced with his use of the present tense. Creating both immediacy and intimacy.

He obviously cared about his work (despite his prolific writing), and his craftsmanship shows through on every page. From short punchy sentences, to prose long enough to have become unwieldy if they were not treated with care. But then Updike is one of only three writers to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once.

Although the book courted some controversy from the censors in 1960, the sexual references read somewhat quaintly when compared to modern literature and cinema. But remember Lady Chatterley’s Lover had also only just been printed openly in the UK (the first printing in 1928 was issued privately in Italy). So naughty scenes and less than salubrious language were hard to get into print.

All in all this is a beautifully written book, and any fan of literature, I’m sure, will enjoy Updike’s prose, story telling and craftsmanship.

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