Rabbit, Run (Rabbit Angstrom, #1)

Author: John Updike

Rating: ⭐ 1/5

Date Read: 2014/07/04

Pages: 325

Most books are bad, not because they’re actively terrible, but simply because they’re not good. These types of books are easy to dislike, but difficult to despise: it’s hard to find the will to hate something that never really stirred up a strong emotion in the first place. Rabbit, Run is not this kind of bad book. No, it’s a carefully crafted, well written piece of misogynistic wish-fulfillment that’s so unlikeable and so offensive that its status as a beloved American classic is, to this reader, inexplicable.

Does this review make me sound overly vitriolic? Well, consider this example: Rabbit manipulates a “fat” woman into sleeping with him by giving her enough money to pay her rent. He insists that she cannot wear her diaphragm while they have sex, and goes so far as to make her leave the door to the restroom open so that he can watch her as she pees so he can make sure that she doesn’t slip it in there. He then forcibly washes off her makeup, despite her clear protests. Somehow, in Updike’s world, she has the best orgasm she’s ever had.

This is the kind of book that made me look up from my Kindle and say to reading “You know, we’ve had a long run, but this whole reading thing just isn’t working out for me. It’s not anything either of us did, it’s just the way this book has been making me feel recently. I think I’m going to have to sit on the couch, watch some tv, and think things through.”

To which reading replied “I’m not ready to give up on you. We’ve had so many good times together. Remember when we sat in the park and gasped over plot twists in The Count of Monte Cristo? Remember reading Anna Karenina over and over again? Think about all the good things we have ahead of us: think about the George Eliot novels you haven’t read, not the mention the Dickens. You haven’t even finished Les Miserables yet! We promised we would do that together.”

And, while reading was right, my intense dislike of Rabbit, Run caused us to go through something of a trial separation. Luckily, nothing can stop true love.

Anyway, I still feel terribly conflicted, because I wanted to like Rabbit, Run. The schadenfreude-rooted story that I had been told as bookish teenager with more angst than friends, was that the basketball stars and homecoming queens would be miserable, that they would peak in high school. In some versions of the story, they ended up fat, working late shifts at sleazy bars; in other versions, they ended up working for me. Importantly, in all versions of this story, they end up miserable.

Rabbit is supposed to be the miserable type: he’s supposed to realize there’s more to life than having 2.5 kids, and he’s supposed to decide that he wants more than that. Rabbit, Run is supposed to be a cautionary story that tells those high school basketball types to wake up and get out. But, you know what, that story is just an untrue as the stories I was told. Because those insufferable high school kids have turned into insufferable adults with lovely homes and nice jobs and adorable families. I wouldn’t trade my life for a second, but that doesn’t stop me from occasionally lusting after their in-home washer and dryers.

And so it is, too, for Rabbit. For Rabbit, despite the running, despite understanding that there’s more out there, never really changes anything, just bounces around and gets upset that he never quite has exactly what he thinks he deserves (spoiler alert: what he thinks he deserves is a lot of kinky sex with a wide array of women, and for everyone to fawn over him because he used to be okay at basketball in high school).

Rabbit, Run is surely important as a chronicle of the type of sexual and emotional abuse that women were expected to suffer with during the 1950’s and 60’s, all the while wearing a girdle and a smile and asking whether they can make their husbands a sandwich. I sighed with disgust when Rabbit shames Ruth for having given other men blow jobs, then demands that he give her one (despite her clear “no”), then shames her again for not enjoying it. I quote “Listen. Tonight you turned against me. I need to see you on your knees. I need you to” - he still can’t say it - “do it.” (emphasis mine). Followed by this thought from Rabbit “IF she didn’t want to, if it would spoil him for her, why didn’t she say No?” She did, you asshole.

But, if I thought that was difficult, I cried for poor Janice when Rabbit forces himself on her right after she has his baby. He feels that he deserves sex, because he has “turned down” the perceived sexual advances of another women. Janice loudly says no, but of course that doesn’t stop Rabbit. However, when she continues to say no, he turns her over and anally rapes her. Understandably, this sends her into a breakdown.

I can’t, in good faith, recommend this book except as an example of how women were treated like second class citizens in recent history. That Rabbit, Run is still given a place in the literary canon is just another example of male hegemony at work. And I’m not the type to throw around phrases like “male hegemony” lightly. I don’t expect my protagonists to be relatable and my plot lines to be filled with rainbows and unicorns; far from it. However, I also don’t expect to find that an acclaimed novel should actually come with a trigger warning. So, skip this, unless you want to feel disgusted.