John Updike (1932–2009)

Did I want to read Updike? I had a group who read him this month, and I had never read Updike before. So, I got myself excited to join. He can do prose, and he can drive a story.

John Updike turned 28 the year he published Rabbit, Run, his second novel, and first of his famous Rabbit quartet, each book from another decade. Updike had a short story collection and a well-regarded poetry collection already published. But Rabbit, oh Rabbit. Oh, fragile manhood. Rabbit is the star high school show more basketball player who doesn't know how to move on. He wants to keep playing. But he's married with a son and baby on the way. But Rabbit is impulsive, and only impulsive. He runs, or drives, and comes back again, and then what.

Why does anyone care about Rabbit? Well, first the prose is quite elegant, with alliterative sentences quietly and unobtrusively scattered in descriptions of suburbia, highways, bars and gardens. And second because he's exciting, and Updike ramps up the pace and intensity. Also, he's endearing, because he loves everyone and means it, at least in the moment. And it's either beautiful or entertaining. But mostly because we watch this wrecking ball swing in a state of horror-fascination. Can I call it gleeful horror? Sure, we must wonder why Rabbit runs. What's driving him? His manhood, his impulsiveness, his stodgy surroundings? Is Rabbit another rebel without a cause, or perhaps with one? (Updike has said he's partially modeled on Jack Kerouac). But also, 1950's comforts are no match for Rabbit's deeper impulse.

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Addendum: As Rabbit drove the Pennsylvania highways, abandoning his wife without saying anything, the parallel with a novel that came out this year, The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits, was wonderfully apparent. Markovits, who played professional basketball, wrote a homage, or perhaps an updated take on our confused concepts of masculinity. show less

There is a brief passage near the end of Rabbit Is Rich that does a wonderful job of underscoring one of the novel’s main themes: ”Life. Too much of it, and not enough. The fear that it will end some day, and the fear that tomorrow will be the same as yesterday.” Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, author John Updike’s irrepressible mid-20th century Everyman, has reached middle age, relatively unscathed by the travails of his earlier years. He and his wife Janice have settled into a routine show more that their relative affluence affords them in their Pennsylvania suburb in the late 1970s. But Rabbit finds himself still running—searching is probably a better word—for whatever it is he doesn’t have: improved business prospects, resolution about the status of a long-lost daughter, a better relationship with his son, more sex (especially with his friend’s much younger wife), and a more reliable golf swing. In short, he has reached the point in life where he has acquired much of what he wants, but remains unsatisfied with all that he has.

The third of four novels focusing on Angstrom, Rabbit is Rich is ultimately an unblinking character study of a man who has reached his 40s, with all the successes, failures, frustrated hopes, and dreams still to be realized that this age implies. When he is not fretting over selling Toyota automobiles—Harry’s day job, courtesy of his overbearing mother-in-law—he spends most of his time drinking and playing golf with his buddies, thinking about sex, worrying about current economic conditions, reminiscing about the past and contemplating death, or feuding with his son, who has his own secrets to protect. I found Updike’s prose to be precise, insightful, and often very funny. The author was a keen observer of what it meant to be both middle class and middle age during that era and the story he tells here is one that is both richly detailed and compelling. It is also a tale that is occasionally vulgar and profane, but never beyond the bounds of what befits the character. After reading this novel, you may not like Rabbit, in all his self-absorbed and clueless glory, but you will definitely have a better understanding of what makes him tick. show less

One of my favourite virtual friends at Goodreads has a very low opinion of John Updike, bracketing him in what she calls The Macho Era along with Roth, Bellow, Kerouac, and Salinger. She recognises that they were writers of their time but she's lost patience with their misogyny . I knew this before I started reading Rabbit, Run, which is listed in 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die and it made me think about why I haven't (yet) entirely lost patience with American writers whose books show more feature characters I would despise in real life.

I think the answer is that it's a window onto a world that my generation has largely escaped. This fiction shows vividly why we have books like Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (1963), The Second Sex (1949) by Simone de Beauvoir and The Female Eunuch (1970) by Germaine Greer. It's because Updike gives us an insight into how men thought about us in an era when there was no expectation that they might be better than that. The Australian variant is The Glass Canoe (1976) by David Ireland, equally evocative of an ugly version of masculinity, see my review.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2026/07/05/rabbit-run-1960-by-john-updike/ show less

Updike's verse offers a breezy read, but like Lewis Carroll or maybe Pynchon, there seems something thoughtful behind the lunacy and manic wordplay. The characteristic personality of these verses is play, but with a sincerity that belies any sense of frivolity or throw-away farce. I've been revisiting Monty Python's Flying Circus of late, and I recognise a similar stance of commentary on the human condition there as in Updike's poems --though Python are much more absurdist.

I'd love to have a show more few couplets memorised (like his description of an umbrella), but that never works for me. Instead, I should just pick this up from time to time: poems are short and immediately rewarding. show less