#457. Rabbit, Run (4/1/20): 258 pages about a man on the run, literally. Full of regret, unable to commit to anything, and clinging to his past, Harry is a pathetic adult who throws away every positive opportunity and morsel of forgiveness that is thrown his way. If you met him in real life, he would be an unremarkable person you would either forget immediately, or pity in a contemptuous way. Yet under Updike's artful mastery of prose, it's all beautiful to read and you don't mind following him around for a while.
The end changes dramatically based on the idea of Rabbit, Run as a one-off book on its own vs one that's part of a continued story. The open end of his potential "choice" between two women/two futures (which ultimately, essentially, are the same thing) has an ominous yet freeing feeling to it, which quickly gets stifled in knowing that there's more to come. Knowing that Updike wrote the books with years in between, I imagine he didn't know for sure that there would be more to each story—and thus the reader at the time would have only felt the former—but I honestly don't know. '
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#361. (6/1/20) Rabbit Redux is, simply put, devastating. Compared to Run, there is a violent level of tragedy and heartbreak in comparison to the sudden, jarring event in the first book. Harry (and maybe Janice, too) is growing as a person, yet he and Janice stay ever the same, stuck where they are in perpetuity despite whatever chances they get. It's the American ethos that's everywhere and anywhere, though far from the American dream. It's what people really live (ok, maybe a tad more dramatic for the sake effect, but you see what I mean) and it comes down to one's motivations and choices and beliefs.
When I first started reading Redux, the characters seemed out of date in this day and age and at times, so hard to deal with due to Rabbit's initial southern/confederate racism and Janice's frequent misogynistic remarks about women. Laughably out of touch from what I perceived the world to be now—kind of like in that one episode of Mad Men where Betty throws all her garbage from her picnic blanket onto the grass in the park and walks away leaving a heap of trash in the middle of pretty nature. So absurd, like a joke, but also just so cringey and rage-inducing that you can't laugh.
But then, I realized that Rabbit actually isn't as "republican" as he seemed. He's open to experiences, and people of every race, and is simply looking for sincere relationships. Yes, he often speaks using incredibly offensive words and ideology, but you see that that's not him, deep down at the core of it...and maybe it's just a reflection of the times. He just needs his mind changed; he's open to it, if you have the patience to teach him. It's incredibly relevant now, amid Black Lives Matter and George Floyd. It's coming to light that things haven't changed all that much since the '60s, after all (heck, we just launched men into space again this week so I guess we truly are in the same place).
In the final pages, Harry remarks on a black bachelorette on The Dating Game choosing between a white, black, and asian man hidden behind a screen, pointing out that she can't see their skin colors and would have to distinguish them by voice, if she wanted. He seems curious, and open, and as if he's just discovered something. The moment passes quickly with Janice's dismissal, but it's powerful and beautiful, and really made me pause.
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#281. (8/29/20) Rabbit is Rich has so. much. sex. It's practically impossible to get through 8 pages without hitting some softcore sex scene, whether it be actual or imagined. Still, it maintains the quiet elegance of un-elegant people, just as the past 2 books did.
Rabbit is now older, and in a settled comfortable life. He has money, friends, and time to spare, and the social standing to pass judgment on others. He's settled into an easy, successful life that contrasts so starkly from the chaotic tragedies of the past books that the memory of all those incidents feel like they belong to someone else. Even when there is a jarring incident that affects a pregnant Pru in Rich, it ends in no harm done and one can go along with a sigh of confused relief, having expected the worst after the last two books.
What struck me the most in this round—especially echoing the current climate of America around me as I read it—was the idea that society don't change, no matter how many years pass. There's a conversation between Rabbit and Charlie that's absolutely true, yet still could be spoken today in the same exact way:
"The oil companies made us do it," Charlie says. "They said, Go ahead, burn it up like madmen, all these highways, the shopping malls, everything. People won't believe it in a hundred years, the sloppy way we lived."
We know our vices, but it's so difficult to change them. Why does it take so long to bring change? Why are people always making excuses for roadblocks, instead of moving toward the positive futures we know to be the right path? It's so American. Or maybe, it's just human nature in general.
