Review of John Updike’s ‘Rabbit, Run’

I finished reading John Updike’s ‘Rabbit, Run’. I disliked it more every page.
‘Dumb’, thinks Harry Angstrom, Rabbit, of his wife Janice. But Harry is dumb. As are all of the characters. They are inarticulate uneducated lumps. Is this how Updike sees Americans, or are they really like this? Everything Harry does is driven by his penis. It is a sad, sordid tale. I am not sure I see a drop of empathy by any of the characters for others. Every single person is one-hundred-percent self centered. And dumb as a fence post.
The writing has an articulate discussion of issues, but it is not experienced by the characters. It is an omnipresent author putting words into what the characters are incapable of feeling.
I am developing a theory of the novel, that a great novel stands on three legs, like a stool. Head or intellect, body or physicality, and heart or emotion. All three need to be present and in balance to be a great novel.
This novel has a lot of physicality. The scenes, the lust, the sex, sounds and textures. There is some wonderful descriptions and settings. That’s good. It falters a bit on intellect. The writer is smart and the prose is intelligent and articulate, but the characters are not. Whether Updike sees Americans as dumb and just moves them around the book is debatable. Is there not one character in this entire book who didn’t peak in High School? It has that same stifling ‘Jock World’ melancholy atmosphere which made High School so difficult to endure and so refreshing to escape. It is just sad.
But the failure is the lack of emotional elements in the book that made me dislike it. I didn’t feel any of the characters knew love, or empathy, or any kind of emotional connections to others. The wise-crack conversation hid more than they revealed. We see characters acting on this lack of connection. And there was no immersive element of experiencing with the characters that I so love in a good close third-person novel.
It is over sixty-five years old, so the style can be forgiven for being a bit dated. I have read critiques of Updike that he is misogynistic in his lack of empathy for women characters, but the truth is he is lacking in empathy for all of his characters, and all of the characters show a lack of empathy for each other.
I am glad I read it. Updike is one of those ‘Required Reading’ authors, so now I can honestly say I did, and will never read another.
May 13, 2025 at 5:19 PM

ISBN 978-0-449-91165-5
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