5/24/2023 0 Comments John updike rabbit redux![]() ![]() In Rabbit, Run, set during the twilight of the Eisenhower administration, author John Updike closed with a bit of a cliffhanger, leaving us uncertain whether Rabbit would ever stop running, whether he would return to his wife and child and home and responsibilities, and whether she would take him back if he did. When last we met Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, faded high school basketball star turned aimless young adult, he was doing what he did best: run from his problems. Ten years ago, wouldn’t she have laid them out? Wouldn’t her tongue have cut them down? They’ve told that Janice is running around. The news isn’t all in, a new combination might break it open, this stale peace… ‘Harry, the malice of people surpasses human understanding in my book, and the poor soul has no defenses against it, there she lies and has to listen. A hopeful coldness inside him grows, grips his wrists inside his cuffs. Harry is beginning, here in this cold bar with cactuses in plastic pots on the shelves beneath the mirrors and the little Schlitz spinner doing its polychrome parabola over and over, to feel the world turn. ‘Ten years ago,’ his father needlessly adds. You’ve taken Janice for granted ever since – the time.’ The time he left her. ![]()
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