Updike's Rabbit series kept me interested, reading about characters unlike people I'd had experience with. ( )

I found this a slightly frustrating book because a bit like a second-rate school band, although it occasionally threatened to become something beautiful, at each chance it failed to hold the note. The two main problems are a protagonist who is hard to relate to, and the unhelpful passage of years. I guess the author can only be blamed for the former, but it's a big problem.

Rabbit Angstrom's motivations are never clear or interesting, and he never confronts his problems with any kind of energy or intellect. His obvious over-attachment to his successful school days quickly becomes annoying, as he is totally unable to even acknowledge it and begin the path toward building a life.

I guess, in a way, this might relate to the fact that the book hasn't dated well. There was a time when the mere suggestions that the American Dream wasn't quite enough for some people was heretical enough to gain an author a reputation as a literary figure. However, time has provided much sharper critiques of the American Dream, and revealed that even in the early sixties more insight could be found in the work of, for instance, the Beats or Richard Yates than in this novel.

However, the novel is well written, with a confident style and some beautiful observations, such as in this passage, which refers to Rabbit revisiting the streets he grew up in, "The houses, many of them no longer lived in by the people whose faces he all knew, are like the houses in a town you see from the train, their brick faces stern in posing the riddle, Why does anyone live here?" It is also occasionally overwritten, particularly in the breathless passages that try to emulate a stream of consciousness.

Overall, it's promising enough to make me want to read more by Updike, considering his reputation, but not quite my cup of tea in the end.

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I'm figuring this book would hit different if I read it in 1962 or even 1992, but 2022 it was. So I guess, a lot of details in describing the town and the plot, so it was easy to envision the characters and plot, but not exactly a bunch of folks distinguishing themselves.

"The truth is you're monstrously selfish. You're a coward. You don't care about right or wrong; you worship nothing but your own worst instincts."

Rabbit Run appears on many 20th Century American literature lists. Published in 1960, the book has some prominent and explicit sex scenes. Nevertheless, I found it to be pretty bleak, dripping with melancholy and hopelessness. Rabbit Angstrom is a 20-something guy who walks out on his pregnant and alcoholic wife, Janice, and begins an affair with Ruth, a woman who, shall we say, has a reputation for getting around.

I found some of the text focused and clear, while other parts were disjointed, particularly at times dialogue between the characters. Nevertheless, the book is well written, and every so often Updike's prose hits an astonishing high. The author does a great job getting in the minds of many of us post-modern folks who have at least once have thought: what if I just ran away... dropped all my responsibilities and took to the hills, so to speak (but literally in this classic)? Whether it be to get away from a dead-end job, or a lousy family life, just go. Blink, and off on a new horizon.

The world from the 1950s/60s was better and worse in a lot of ways that today. In the sense of being self-absorbed, acting only almost only on feeling, and absconding on your loved ones and responsibilities, Rabbit was apparently (and in several ways lamentably) a trendsetter. It was pausing to read by the scenes of pregnant women drinking and everyone smoking all the time. I found similarly remarkable how much effort the characters had to make to get in touch with one another, and how when Rabbit leaves town at the beginning of the book, he is just able to disappear. Today it not readily possible to go dark or start up a new life. ( )

I really liked the writing, I just kind of hated the main character, Rabbit. But then, who's likable when they're going through a quarter-life crisis? I still want to finish the rest of the Rabbit series someday. And also someday, I want to write this story from Rabbit's wife's perspective, which is what I was really interested in while reading this book. ( )