Rabbit, Run

By John Updike

Rabbit Angstrom used to be the star of the high school basketball court. Now he is just another schmuck stuck in a boring job, married to a woman he doesn't really like, with a small son and a baby on the way. What he would really like to be is that high school kid again, sinking those winning baskets.
Coming home from work one day, and after a petty quarrel with his wife, Rabbit gets in his car, supposedly to run an errand, but ends up driving all night, headed to the southern sun and a warm ocean beach. When morning comes, he has second thoughts, and returns back to his home town where he contacts his old high school basketball coach. The coach hooks Rabbit up with a call girl and Rabbit ends up at the call girl's place, spending the night. After that night, Rabbit thinks he is in love with the girl and moves in with her.
Later, when his wife goes into labor, Rabbit returns home to take care of his family, abandoning Ruth, the call girl, who now pregnant with Rabbit's kid. Feeling romantic, Rabbit tries to talk his wife into having sex, even though she has just given birth a couple weeks ago. When she refuses, he goes off in a snit, leaving his wife to deal with the baby and their young son by herself, with dire consequences. Returning to deal with the aftermath, Rabbit once again shows his true colors and ends up running away again, back to Ruth who tries to talk him into making some kind of stand, but, of course, he can't.

It really hard to like a story about a person who is so despicable. This is what he says to his very pregnant wife when he hears she was trying on bathing suits in anticipation of the day when she can again fit into one.

"What the hell ails you? Other women like being pregnant. What's so damn fancy about you? Just tell me. What is so frigging fancy?"

Real nice guy, that Rabbit.
Once he moves in on the call girl, Ruth, he won't let her use a diaphragm because he doesn't like the way it feels, so naturally she gets pregnant. Later when he is back with his wife after she has given birth, he wants to have sex and she can't as she tries to explain to him:

"No I can't. Even if I wasn't all tired and confused from Rebecca's crying all day I can't. Not for six weeks. You know that....Why can't you try to imagine how I feel? I've just had a baby."
"I can. I can but I don't want to, it's not the thing, the thing is how I feel. And I feel like getting out. ... You can just lie there with your precious ass. Kiss it for me."

What a swell guy.
So, yeah, reading about this child in a man's body didn't have much appeal for me. In fact, if anyone should have died in this story, it should have been Rabbit. I think the only part of the story that I enjoyed was Rabbit's aborted drive south to the ocean, which called to mind the pleasure of driving just for fun of going somewhere.

New Words

Suntans: a type of pants; chinos. 'In frightened haste he takes clean Jockey pants, T-shirts, and socks from a drawer, three shirts in cellophane and blue cardboard from another, a pair of laundered suntans from a third, draws his two suits and a sports shirt from the closet, and wraps the smaller clothing in the suits to form a bundle he can carry.'

Exegetical: exegesis is an explanation or critical interpretation (especially of the Bible). 'To know him back in seminary you would never think he would take all this so seriously; he and his friends sitting in their drafty old rooms lined with handsome blue exegetical works made it all seem an elegant joke.'