Product Description

Harry Angstrom was a star basketball player in high school and that was the best time of his life. Now in his mid-20s, his work is unfulfilling, his marriage is moribund, and he tries to find happiness with another woman. But happiness is more elusive than a medal, and Harry must continue to run--from his wife, his life, and from himself, until he reaches the end of the road and has to turn back....

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9279 in Books
• Published on: 1996-08-27
• Released on: 1996-08-27
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780449911655
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Review
"Brilliant and poignant...By his compassion, clarity of insight and crystal-bright prose, he makes Rabbit's sorrow his and our own."
--The Washington Post -- Review

Review
"Brilliant and poignant...By his compassion, clarity of insight and crystal-bright prose, he makes Rabbit's sorrow his and our own."
--The Washington Post

From the Publisher
I read Rabbit, Run when I was in high school (and it wasn't even a school assignment!). Twenty years later (at least!), three very vivid scenes from that book still pop into my head from time to time. The first is the used-car lot, where Rabbit Angstrom, the former basketball star, works for his father-in-law. The second scene is in a very red Chinese restaurant that had changed over from a French restaurant only the week before. Rabbit is there with his old coach and two women that are not their wives, and they drink daiquiris and whiskey sours. This restaurant could have been (and was) in my small town. The third scene is the most harrowing, and I've repeated it as a cautionary tale to young mothers for years, telling the story as if it had happened to someone I know. Janice, Rabbit's wife, who slugs alcohol throughout her pregnancy, is drunk and bathing her newborn baby when something terrible happens. I won't ruin it by telling you more. I read hundreds of books a year, both for my job and for pleasure, so the fact that parts of this book are so indelibly etched in my mind is a testament to the talent and genius of John Updike.
P.S. all of the other books in the Rabbit series are equally unforgettable.
--Maureen O'Neal

Customer Reviews

Anti-Hero Trapped in Unhappy Marriage? Run!
Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom was a high school superstar only a handful of years ago. Now he is a young married father, trapped in the suburban 60's, unhappy with a cluttered house, a drunken wife, and a son who will never be the athlete he was. Will this former basketball star find a way to make his life better, or will he run like a rabbit? The title says it all and Harry Angstrom does indeed run whenever things don't go his way.

Leaving the house to pick up his son, he impulsively drives from his Pennsylvania home to West Viriginia. He wants to run to the sunny shores of Florida to live the life he feels he deserves. Surely a man like Rabbit deserves more in life, or so he imagines. Unable to complete this journey, he runs to his former coach, a tired and washed-up man who introduces him to a part-time prostitute. Rabbit moves in with Ruth that very night and they begin a relationship they flaunt and thus humiliate his very pregnant wife and both sets of parents.

Is there an ounce of unselfishness in Rabbit? The reader may think so when he returns to his wife the night she goes into labor. Their reunion is bittersweet and because in large part of Rabbit's inability to see beyond his own needs, their reunion burst apart in a senseless tragedy that is horrific but so beautifully written the reader is glued to the page hoping against hope this terrible thing is not happening.

Will Rabbit be able to grow up and realize he is no longer the high school hero? Will he be able to comfort his wife, to provide a home for her and his children? Will he forsake Ruth, the hooker who accepts him as he is but is now pregnant with his child? In which direction will Rabbit run this time?

In addition to the novel's main character, Updike gives us as fine an array of secondary characters as can be found anywhere. He elevates Janice and Ruth so that they are not stereotypical "bad wife" and "good-time girl" but sympathetic characters the reader can relate to. Most notable among the secondary characters is the minister, Jack Eccles, who takes upon himself the task of saving Rabbit. He becomes Rabbit's friend and marvels at the paradox of this character. For example, after spending the first night with Ruth, Rabbit has the need to go home and get clean clothes as he cannot function unless his wardrobe is clean and pressed. The minister inquires, "Why cling to that decency if trampling on the others is so easy?" Thus lies the paradox of this restless anti-hero, one the reader cannot admire but cannot help but root for and not turn away from. It is this same minister who so succintly sums up the essence of Rabbit when he lambasts him later by saying, "The truth is you're monstrously selfish. You're a coward. You don't care about right or wrong; you worship nothing except your own worst instincts." And therein lies the crux of Rabbit's character.

The novel's second half is quite intense and on finishing it there is no way I could leave Rabbit and the supporting characters behind. I had to know what happened, so immediately began the sequel RABBIT REDUX, the second in the four-part Rabbit series. I admit that had I read this when it was first published I would have been let-down by the ending since I like tidy conclusions. Waiting 11 years to find out what happened to Rabbit would have been an eternity. I could barely wait 11 seconds, so I'm glad I discovered these books and Updike only recently.

The first - a burst of intensity
I always find it interesting that in a lot of extended series of novels, the first book tends to be compact and to the point, while later novels tend to be more sprawling and expanded. Glancing over my line of Updike's Rabbit novels, of which this is the first, that seems to be the case, but time will tell whether those later books successfully trade the taut intensity of this novel for a more spacious feel. The Rabbit novels take up four books, all tracing the life of Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, a man growing up in the latter part of the twentieth century, with each book taking place in a different decade, highlighting not only the changes in Harry but the changes in the country itself as it winds through the crazy years of the 1900's. This book takes place in the early fifties or late sixties and introduces us to the man himself, Rabbit, who does his best to fulfill the verb embedded in the title and run as far as he can. Harry feels trapped in his marriage, with a three year old already present and his wife heavily pregnant and drinking all the time, he takes a look at his dreary life and wigs out, trying to drive as far away as he can before coming back and attempting to find himself, with increasingly flailing results. His quests lead him to encounter a priest, a prostitute, an old coach and his parents and in-laws, all of whom have advice and none of which seem to have the right advice. So Harry tries to forge his own way but that might not be right either. The book doesn't have so much of a plot as it consists of shifting stream of consciousness impressions, all told with Updike's carefully controlled prose, lunging from beautiful descriptions of the outside world and the people in it to searingly brutal internal monologues that are only matched by the terrible things people say to each other. There's hardly a likeable character in the entire novel and that's where the real truimph comes in because even when you have all these imperfect people you keep reading anyway, watching them trying to find meaning in their grey lives, with nobody really sure what to do. And in the center of it all runs Rabbit, serving to cause everything even as he's only reacting against what's happening to him. People throw the word "anti-hero" around when describing him and it's not too far off, he's selfish and hypocritical and impulsive and utterly self centered but yet there's a fascinating sincerity about him, a tragic sense that he's certain he's doing the right thing even as he brings it crumbling down even further. None of the characters are angelic, all hide their own motives and quirks and it only makes them more sympathetic because they're dealt flawed cards to begin with and sometimes in trying to make the best of it they only muck things up further. The latter half of the book is remarkably intense considering it's about suburban life and the pivotal moment goes by like a slow motion car wreck, a horror far worse than anything Stephen King ever crafted unfolding before you. You know what's going to happen about halfway through and you keep reading in the hopes that your intuition isn't true. Updike's words masterfully give voice to the numbness inside all of them and even if he's wordier than he should be at moments it doesn't matter because the sheer tide of his telling carries us through. The book depicts people who are alternatively saints and monsters and really none and so fall somewhere in between, just like any of us. Rabbit runs, but it gets him nowhere and with a character this rich, readers have to know that we'll eventually see what happens beyond the ending. And yes there are three more books. But even if you can only read one, this is enough. That there's three more waiting is just an afterthought, a way to see what happens in the movie after the credits stop rolling and everyone else has gone home. Regardless of anything else, here's where it starts.

Luminous Prose, Slight Story
Reading Updike's sentences is a breathtaking experience. He has a rare ability to transpose ordinary experiences into rarefied grounds without falsely heightening experiences themselves. Each sentence, each event in the novel is carefully considered and calibrated, so that no sentence or description seems wasteful. The technical facility of Updike is truly something to marvel at, even surpassing the lyricism of Cheever. The way he writes about sex, adultery and guilt in this book is unparalleled in 20th century American fiction, and I haven't seen any other writer come close.

Taken as an individual novel, however, it fails to rise to the status of a 'great american novel.' Although the writing is unsurpassingly beautiful, the plot is a bit thin, and ideas it expresses, commonplace. Minus the prose, the story tracks the wanderlust and guilt of Harry Angstrom, a man who still wants to hold on to his glorious boyhood, and seeks to escape his oncoming adulthood and life of ordinariness. It's a well-traveled premise for a novel, but executed and polished to a hilt.

As we see Rabbit Angstrom struggle to keep apace with his given life, we are meant to see the social milieu that he lives in. Readers do get an acute sense of time and place, but what of it? Not that all fiction should strive for the Meaning of Life (how dreadful would that be?!), but the feeling you get after reading 'Rabbit, Run' is that of caffeine rush which you know will fade. And it does.

I don't mean to slight Updike's legacy - he is one of the best writers we have in the States. And read as a tetralogy, the Rabbit books do encapsulate four decades of Americana with a sprawling and lyrical sweep. It truly is an accomplishment. As an individual novel, 'Rabbit, Run' is emotionally involving and a hell of a good read. But it moves us tantalizingly close to showing us what literary greatness is, then ultimately leaves us short.