#rabbit angstrom

[alanprobesucks]

how stupid, how frigging, fucking stupid he was

[bibliotherapist]

I fucking loathe Rabbit Angstrom

Which is very different from loathing the book or the author. I love Rabbit, Run. Updike does so well conjuring this passive-aggressive, self-pitying manchild that reading him is an almost visceral experience of immersing yourself to a point of horrified empathy.

While Updike had his issues with women (was it really necessary to describe at least one body part of Ruth’s as “fat” every time she enters a paragraph?), I remember reading that he wrote Rabbit as a reaction and counternarrative to adolescent rhapsodies like On the Road in which a young man achieves personal growth by running off and leaving his personal baggage behind him, somehow managing to retain a sense of entitlement toward the women in his life. Rabbit makes messes. And the messes are very messy indeed.

“If you have the guts to be yourself, other people'll pay your price.”

“I once did something right. I played first-rate basketball. I really did. And after you're first-rate at something, no matter what, it kind of takes the kick out of being second-rate.”

“With women, you keep bumping against them, because they want different things, they’re a different race. Either they give, like a plant, or scrape, like a stone. In all the green world nothing feels as good as a woman’s good nature.”

“Momentarily drained of lust, he stares at the remembered contortions to which it has driven him. His life seems a sequence of grotesque poses assumed to no purpose, a magic dance empty of belief. There is no God; Janice can die: the two thoughts come at once, in one slow wave. He feels underwater, caught in chains of transparent slime, ghosts of the urgent ejaculations he has spat into the mild bodies of women. His fingers on his knees pick at persistent threads.”

[drunkenliterature]

That's what you have, Harry: life. It's a strange gift and I don't know how we're supposed to use it but I know it's the only gift we get and it's a good one.

John Updike, Rabbit, Run

[leninsbody]

Opinion: Dying, With Nothing to Say

Opinion: Dying, With Nothing to Say

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Credit Margaux Othats

MY father died of a heart attack. He was with my mother, on his way home from a concert and dinner with friends, and he collapsed in the marble lobby of their building. There was no preparation. There were no last conversations.

In the weeks afterward, in early 2006, I found myself wanting that last conversation.…

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[socialstudiesmidway-blog]

Opinion: Dying, With Nothing to Say

Opinion: Dying, With Nothing to Say

[ad_1] Photo Credit Margaux Othats MY father died of a heart attack. He was with my mother, on his way home from a concert and dinner with friends, and he collapsed in the marble lobby of their building. There was no preparation. There were no last conversations. In the weeks afterward, in early 2006, I found myself wanting that last conversation. But what would it have consisted of? We didn’t…

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[drunkenliterature]

...old wounds opened like complicated flowers in the night.

John Updike (Rabbit, Run)

[erincisney]

We were all brought up to want things and maybe the world isn't big enough for all that wanting.

John Updike, Rabbit Redux

[asteroidproject]

He. She. Sleeps. O.K.?

John Updike, 'Rabbit Redux' (1971) A perfect and most beautiful ending to a troubling novel.