it a lot, once I got into it.The "Rabbit" legend has been so inflated in American literature, perhaps it was impossible for Updike's novel to live up to my expectations. In any case, I finally got around to reading "Rabbit, Run" and was quite disappointed. As novels go, it's perfectly fine: a simple story of a young man itching to shed his ordinary, middle-class, suburban life for some nebulous nirvana of love and excitement. The problem: I found Rabbit remarkably irritating and shallow, and the supporting cast (Ruth excepted) one-dimensional and unremarkable. The prose, with occasional exceptions, is drab and lifeless--perhaps it was a stylistic choice made by Updike to complement his dreary story, but I doubt it. Suburban malaise, the restlessness of American Everyman, marital hypocrisy--all of it has been done, redone, and re-redone in American literature before (talk about redux), and often with far better results (check out Richard Yates' "Revolutionary Road" for a glimpse of an unusually brilliant example of this type of novel). Maybe "Rabbit, Run" was sharper when first published in 1960; but as a reader in 2002, I am unimpressed. There's nothing in particular wrong with this book; but in my opinion, there's nothing much extraordinary about it either.The novel is about a former high school basketball star, now married, with a family, who is finding his adult life claustrophobic. He misses his youth -- the adrenaline rush of sports, the sense that life is full of possibilities. He doesn't know what to do about it. He tries to make some kind of change, with what's left of his youthful energy. He's self-centered, but he's also a dreamer. The book is sad, in that it offers no "solution" to the frustration of leaving youth behind. But it's also reassuring and poignant, because the theme is so universal. Updike manages to keep this apparently ordinary story interesting without being philosophical or tedious. His vivid, compassionate de...
