Maybe once you could play basketball but you can't do anything now.

Rabbit, Run by John Updike

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary
Erstwhile local basketball star Harry (Rabbit) Angstrom starts this winner of a novel (oh sorry, am I editorializing already?) off by driving away from his life, his wife, his toddler son, and their baby on the way. He leaves ostensibly because his wife is an alcoholic and he feels trapped in their life. He returns for reasons which are not entirely clear and crashes with an old basketball coach, and then a new ladyfriend/mistress. One of the town's clergy tries to 'rehabilitate' Rabbit's marriage, and Rabbit himself, and when the baby is born, Janice (Rabbit's wife) takes him back with little battle.

Rabbit sticks around for a hot minute, but starts itching to leave again almost immediately. While Rabbit is out, trying to see his old mistress Ruth, Janice goes on a bender and accidentally drowns their new baby in the bathtub. (I know. Not nice!) Rabbit acts like a jerk and blames Janice alone for the incident, eventually heading back to Ruth and trying to convince her to keep THEIR unborn child which he finds out is also on the way. Ruth tells him she will consider keeping the child IF he divorces his wife. Rabbit is overwhelmed at first, but then says he'll do it.

Aaaaand, then he runs away. Again.
Spoiler Over: Continue Here

Well folks, I hated this book. And if you knew my grandmother and how she really felt it wasn't appropriate to use the word 'hate' unless you really really meant it, you'll know how seriously I mean it when I say it. I disliked it so much that I didn't even want to blob on it. And that's saying something. Because sometimes I at least enjoy a good rage-blob now and again. ;)

Here are some of the notes I took in my copy of this book, largely about Rabbit, but let's be honest, he couldn't be so convincing as a character if there wasn't a little of that in Updike, too: 

- Misogynist
- Sexist
- Sexual assaulter/borderline sexual predator
- Puts women in uncomfortable situations, both on an emotional and a physical level
- Wants all women, but his sister should be a saint and never interact with men.
- All women are sexual objects (except his sister. See note above.)
- Once women have children or become caretakers for their husbands, they become unsexy.

I also took a running tally of how often I wrote expressions of disgust on the text itself as I read, much like when I tallied Holden's references to being depressed in 'The Catcher in the Rye' (37.) Here's the tally from this book:

EW - 1
BARF - 8
UGH - 18
Inappropriate expletive - 2

Here are three moments that I think perfectly sum up everything I hated about Rabbit: 

(1) Rabbit: "There's something about her. She's a menace."
Ruth: "This poor wife you left? You're the menace, I'd say." Even his new mistress can tell he's the problem. I mean, why do you think Janice drinks in the first place, Rabbit? Ever think of that, huh didja didja?

(2) Ruth: "You're so smug, is what gets me. Don't you ever think you're going to have to pay a price?"
Rabbit: "If you have the guts to be yourself, other people'll pay your price." Yes, perfect, Rabbit. You ruin everything and then someone else will clean up your mess. GREAT attitude.

(3) "That his touch still lives in his hands elates him." This is a reference to Rabbit's former amazing record in basketball locally. This whole book felt like a treatise on why you should encourage athletes to pursue multiple interests so they don't spend their whole adult life feeling inadequate and lusting after their glory days.

Well, I believe it was Don Quixote who said that "There's no book so bad that it does not have something good in it."In that vein, here are three lines I actually liked: 

• He's safe inside his own skin, he doesn't want to come out.

• That 'her' is a forked word now startles him. After Rabbit learns his child with Ruth is a girl.

• Nelson (Rabbit's son, FYI) is having soup and raw carrots and a Lebanon baloney sandwich by himself at the table. LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL. Obviously I had to give a shout out to the Lebanon bologna reference (THOUGH IT'S BOLOGNA, NOT BALONEY, UPDIKE). I believe the only other Lebanon, PA, reference I've come across in all these works is a bizarre mention of it in 'The Red-Headed League', a Sherlock Holmes mystery. Gotta give Lebanon its props when it gets its (infrequent) moment in the spotlight!

Well folks, that's all I've got. I'll be hobbling off to the gym with my almost-healed sprained ankle for some low-key stationary biking, and I've already finished 'Giovanni's Room', so expect a blob on that soon. Read away! Keep each other safe. Keep faith. Good night.