inherently gloomy (dreary, "dung" colored apartment buildings which smell of "cabbage cooking" or "something soft decaying," a deserted ice plant with "rotting wooden skids on the fallen loading porch," etc.). People are mainly unhappy, or trapped, or scared, or confused, or looking for a little excitement to brighten up their dreary existences, or all of the above. So why read such a depressing book? Here are just a few reasons: to learn, to experience the world through the eyes of a great artist (Updike), to challenge yourself, to enjoy the sheer beauty of top-notch writing. Finally, a philosophical question: is the point of reading (or any other activity) simply "pleasure?" Should we run, like a rabbit perhaps, from anything that might scare us, or threaten us, or even depress us? Or should we stand our ground, look those things straight in the eye, and - unlike Rabbit Angstrom - NOT run. Personally, I vote for the latter option! Top of FormNow at 53 years old I was what you would call a "mature reader". I've read a lot of books & I know the difference between reading a book to build character and reading it for enjoyment. Rabbit Run did neither. I'd heard John Updike interviewed on a public radio program & he sounded like an interesting & intelligent guy, so it was about time I tried him out. But I was not inspired to find out more about Rabbit in the other books--he is way too ordinary & unappealing & shallow. And John Updike may get an "A" from his writing teacher, where form is more important than substance, but I challenge anyone to make sense of this quote--granted, it's out of context, but you'd have to have a strange imagination to dream up a context for it. Here goes: "And further inside, so ghostly it comes to him last, hangs a jagged cloud, the star of an explosion, whose center is uncertain in refraction but whose arms fly from the core of pallor as straight as long eraser-marks diagonally into all planes of the cube." If...
