Five. Rabbit, Run by John Updike (and a few words about the David Bowie Book Club)
1960, Penguin Books, 336 pages. Written in English, read in English.
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Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, the protagonist of this novel, comes back home from work after an impromptu street ball game, to remind him of his younger days as a basketball star, and finds his alcoholic wife mindlessly watching a television show, and that he needs to retrieve his son, who is in one of their parents’ house, and his car, which is parked in front of another’s. He decides to pick up the car first and when he climbs into the car, a spontaneous decision leads him to take an all night trip to a different state, and to a complete change in his life.
It’s the beginning of a set of bad decisions, made by a person who’s extremely full of faults and is very much immature, incapable of rising up to the basic responsibility required by him as a husband and father, but we are trapped in the car with him, forced to see the world from his point of view for almost the entire duration of the book, because he is the protagonist.
The first few decades of the 21st century have brought us, in various forms of popular art, the concept of the anti-hero, the flawed protagonist whom we are rooting for, despite his (it’s usually a man) misgivings, because we can see our imperfections in the character. This novel was written in 1960, and I don’t believe this concept was fully fleshed out at that point yet. Therefore, Updike’s character, who is revisited in three additional novels that I haven’t read yet, is still not someone I can relate to. I have been reading this novel with the mental equivalent of peaking through my fingers, covering my eyes, feeling guilt and shame at what I was allowing “Rabbit” Angstrom, as a reader, to continue doing to the people in his life. Every time it appeared that he was going to straighten out and become a more responsible member of society, another turn of events happens and leaves everybody, including every single character and reader who have still held belief in him, stranded in the dust.
This wasn’t an enjoyable book. I’ve read it for the second time now, and throughout the reading experience I remembered that I also did not enjoy it the first time around, for the same reasons. Over the time that had passed I have grown and become a more responsible and sensible human being, and therefore Angstrom’s actions feel more immature and selfish than they have felt the first time I’ve read the novel. But I think this is the point of the book. It’s not meant to be enjoyable, and those who find it enjoyable or instructive, those who root through “Rabbit” wherever he goes and whatever he does, may want to check themselves and see if their mindset towards life may lead them to the same tragic results that Angstrom’s run has brought him in this novel, and whether their constant resolution in dealing with similar events, like “Rabbit”’s, is just to continue running, whatever the cost.
Several months ago, Duncan Jones, who is David Bowie’s firstborn son and a great filmmaker in his own right, decided to commemorate his father’s recent death with a twitter based book club, drawing from the list his father has provided to the Guardian once as his list of favourite 100 books. A few months and a few books in, the project appears to have fizzled out due to Jones’ added responsibilities, being a new father and preparing to direct another intriguing movie. But my sister and I, great fans of both David Bowie and books, decided to continue with the book club. For the purpose, we will just draw another book from the list at random every month. The book for the month of August is going to be Before the Deluge: A Portrait of Berlin in the 1920’s by Otto Friedrich. I will also post my review of it at the end of August.
