Rabbit, Run

By: John Updike

Narrated by: Arthur Morey

Length: 12 hrs and 5 mins

Publisher's summary

Rabbit, Run is the book that established John Updike as one of the major American novelists of his - or any other - generation. Its hero is Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, a onetime high-school basketball star who on an impulse deserts his wife and son. He is 26 years old, a man-child caught in a struggle between instinct and thought, self and society, sexual gratification and family duty - even, in a sense, human hard-heartedness, and divine Grace. Though his flight from home traces a zigzag of evasion, he holds to the faith that he is on the right path, an invisible line toward his own salvation as straight as a ruler’s edge.

©1996 John Updike (P)2008 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

"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)

“A lacerating story of loss and of seeking, written in prose that is charged with emotion but is always held under impeccable control.” (Kansas City Star)

Strange story read by a strange narrator

I like the story, despite it having the most unlikable main character I think I’ve ever read. The quality of the writing is quite good, classic John Updike, but the pace drags in parts. I would’ve liked the listening experience far more with a different narrator; this narrator reads dialogue with sort of a weird false cheeriness in every voice.

Its Updike..

This is always some of the best American writing. Updike is so smart, so beautiful and honest. I first read Rabbit nearly 30 years ago and so wonderful to meet Rabbit, Janice and Ruth again. They are familiar old friends.

The narration was beautifully balanced and sensitive.

not what I expected

It takes a while to get into this & it never really takes you away. Certainly a dive into the way men think! Or at least, this man.

Small Town, Middle Class Male: Fight or Flight

Going Down the Cunicular Hole

Harry 'Rabbit' Angstrom, 26, Mt. Judge, PA, married with a two-year-old son, sells Magipeelers for a living. Not quite what he expected in his high school glory days as a basketball star. His wife Janice is expecting another child any day now as she quenches her alcoholism beginning close to 5 each afternoon.

After a typical argument with Janice one night, Rabbit snaps, experiencing an existential crisis, feeling trapped by the loveless and lifeless monogamy imposed upon him by the societal institution of marriage, and choked in a meaningless job. So, he runs, to 'escape' his personal frustrations and make sense of his life--his 'fight or flight' quest for meaning.

This novel follows three months of Rabbit's life in 1959, from the night he runs, to his visit to his high school basketball coach, an affair with Ruth (who feels 'right' in a sexual way as long as she doesn't wear a 'flying saucer'), and the birth of his daughter.

Updike chose the name Angstrom (meaning 'stream of angst') which was inspired from reading Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. In creating the novel (from which flowed three sequels), Updike thought of Kerouac's On the Road, in imagining what might happen if a small-town, middle-class WASP family man hit the road, and who would be hurt.

For his leading man, he chose a former high school basketball star because he was intrigued by the number of men he saw who had peaked in high school with athletics and were thereafter stuck in a downward spiral.

Rabbit is an immature, insecure male obsessed with sex, as an animalistic act, looking at potential partners for their sexual fit. He often refers to his being uncircumcised (his 'hooded cobra'), uncommon in the U.S., and insists one night that his mistress fellate him.

I didn't realize it, but Updike was groundbreaking in writing graphically about sex in well-regarded literature. Knopf required Updike to delete the sexually explicit passages prior to the 1960 publication, parts that he restored for Penguin's 1963 edition.

Updike said, 'About sex in general, by all means let's have it in fiction, as detailed as needs be, but real, real in its social and psychological connections. Let's take coitus out of the closet and off the altar and put it on the continuum of human behavior.'

It would be hard to imagine the novel not having sexually explicit passages when it follows three months in the life of a guy whose very identity as a man and human is tied to sex and thoughts of sex and thoughts of things in life as they relate to sex.

This is especially so with Updike's use of the present tense, a brilliant choice. Of employing the present tense, Updike observed:

'In Rabbit, Run, I liked writing in the present tense. You can move between minds, between thoughts and objects and events with a curious ease not available to the past tense. I don't know if it is clear to the reader as it is to the person writing, but there are kinds of poetry, kinds of music you can strike off in the present tense.'

Until reading this, I didn't realize the many things a writer can do with the present tense. It has a sense of immediacy and a flow that involves one in a story that seems more realistic.

Rabbits flaws

Rabbit was doomed to be the victim of his own success. As if his high school experienced stunted any future growth and he failed to recognize the effects of his words and actions. No one was real to him.

Chilling. Dark. Fascinating.

Don't let the seemingly banal subject matter fool you: This is a dark book. More noir than period piece fiction, this is a raw and honest look at how selfishness and unchecked ego can run roughshod over the lives around someone.

Spectacular book. Feels as poignant now as it did when it was written. Maybe even more so.

Some dialogue confusion

Narrator sometimes used the wrong voice for speaking characters, or would change the voice of characters together, so I couldn’t always trust his first reading of dialogue.

4.09 stars........Updike keeps it real

This is the first book in a series of four novels. While this isn't a favorite novel of mine, Updike does enough in this first installment to cause me to pick up Book 2 at some point in the future. Since this is the first book in a series, I would only recommend it to those who are interested in the series as a whole. It is a good listen, but not a great one. However, Updike won two Pultizer Prizes for his later works in this series, so maybe the next books improve on this already above average recording. The narrator is the perfect choice for a book like this.

Overall rating: 4.09

Why is it a classic?

Very well written and performed, but a mundane story about an uninteresting protagonist who is not likeable. Not sure why it is such a well liked and reviewed book.

Wow

A devastating, blistering, painful and brutal tragedy. A train wreck of a main character who blithely bruises and ruins the lives of those he touches as he stumbles like an oaf through adulthood no more aware of his impact than a blind bull. A cutting look at men, marriage and meaning --- pretty timeless in its tale and painful to listen to. Superb narration. An unforgettable book that haunts me long afterward. One of the best Audible listens. I could not stop listening and looked forward to this book like few others.