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Rabbit, Run by John Updike
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Rabbit, Run (original 1960; edition 1996)

by John Updike

Series: "Rabbit" Series (1)

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6,1081111,599 (3.58)417
Fiction. Literature. HTML:??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

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 twenty-six 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 strai… (more)
Member:cmyers581
Title:Rabbit, Run
Authors:John Updike
Info:Ballantine Books (1996), Paperback, 272 pages
Collections:Your library
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Rabbit, Run by John Updike (1960)

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» See also 417 mentions

English (103)  Spanish (1)  Italian (1)  Hungarian (1)  German (1)  Dutch (1)  All languages (108)
Showing 1-5 of 103 (next | show all)
The writing is undoubtedly very sophisticated - perhaps overly mannered - and the subject - a failing marriage - was gloomy. My first Updike - not my last, but I won't rush to read the next one. ( )
  breathslow | Jan 27, 2024 |
Blech ( )
  nogomu | Oct 19, 2023 |
Updike's Rabbit series kept me interested, reading about characters unlike people I'd had experience with. ( )
  mykl-s | Aug 7, 2023 |
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.

( )
  robfwalter | Jul 31, 2023 |
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.
  Brio95 | May 31, 2023 |
Showing 1-5 of 103 (next | show all)
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» Add other authors (29 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Updike, Johnprimary authorall editionsconfirmed
Germeraad, R.Translatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Glaser, MiltonCover artistsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Oddera, BrunoTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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Epigraph
The motions of Grace,
the hardness of the heart;
external circumstances
-- Pascal, Pensee 507
Dedication
First words
Boys are playing basketball around a telephone pole with a backboard bolted to it.
Quotations
A serious shadow crosses her face that seems to remove her and Harry, who sees it, from the others, and takes them into that strange area of a million years ago from which they have wandered; a strange guilt pierces Harry at being here instead of there, where he never was. Ruth and Harrison across from them, touched by staccato red light, seem to smile from the heart of damnation. (p. 144, Penguin 1964 ed.)
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Wikipedia in English (1)

Fiction. Literature. HTML:??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

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 twenty-six 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 strai

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Penguin Australia

2 editions of this book were published by Penguin Australia.

Editions: 0141187832, 0141037520

 

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