60 Years Ago: “Rabbit, Run”
Today in 1960, John Updike published the first novel in his Rabbit series
When John Updike died in 2009, this quote, from a Life magazine interview, was repeated across his many obits and memorials, like an unofficial epitaph:
I like middles. It is in middles that extremes clash, where ambiguity restlessly rules.
The boundaries of the middle, for Updike, were rather unambiguous. He was obsessed with one specific demographic: WASPs. The first in a series of works defining that creamy nougat middle filling debuted 60 years ago today, with the publication of Rabbit, Run.
The plot is familiar and easy to summarize: A former high school athlete, Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, cannot recapture his prior greatness so he flees his marriage and responsibilities. The character is essentially a stand-in for post-war America, but today, he seems an awful lot like the precursor to white-guy self-loathing. (If it’s not clear, the lead character’s nickname is Rabbit, because he ran. His last name is Angstrom, because he… angsts.)
Updike would publish 60 books, but this novel, and the other works that make up the Rabbit tetralogy that followed, would become his primary legacy.
Did you know? Eminem’s character in 8 Mile is nicknamed “B-Rabbit,” after Rabbit Angstrom. The epigraph at the front of the film is also a quote from the novel: “If you have the guts to be yourself… other people’ll pay your price.”
MORE ANNIVERSARIES
30 Years Ago Today: Prince released Graffiti Bridge, his other movie set in the ’80s Minneapolis music scene. It would be nominated for several Raspberry Awards.
30 Years Ago Today: Jacob’s Ladder, a horror movie starring Tim Robbins and directed by Adrian Lyne, was released.
60 Years Ago Today: Penguin Books published Lady Chatterley's Lover, unexpurgated for the first time, decades after it was banned for obscenity.
100 Years Ago Today: Warren G. Harding was elected president. He died of cardiac arrest two years later.
140 Years Ago Today: James Garfield was elected president. He was assassinated ten months later.