Rabbit, Run

A tragic story filled with weak, horrible people, but Updike's prose is so beautiful, hypnotic and insightful, I couldn't help but love it.

This has to be subtitled “Portrait of a Scumbag as a Young Man” or something like that, right? I cannot remember a protagonist I despised more than Harry Angstrom. And I guess that was the point, but it'd have been nice if we'd been given at least one character worth spending time with.

Updike is clearly attacking/critiquing several things there...love, God, the Chuch, family, marriage. I don't know, everything? Almost everything, anyway. He clearly likes the sound of his own voice (and female anatomy), but that's the only thing I can think of.

Miserable book filled with miserable people and I can't see why anyone would bother to read this in the first place, much less elevate it to the status it has in contemporary lit. The worst of it all is that I'm going to have to read more, just to see if I can understand what it is about this loser that inspired four sequels.

Obviously the point is that Rabbit sucks, but if the unlikable protagonist has no redeeming qualities and no real internal conflict, it's just not interesting. It's a shame the occasionally brilliant prose is in service of such indulgent Boomer bullshit.