Rabbit, Run
Rabbit, Run,novel by John Updike, published in 1960. The first in a series of four, it was considerably revised in text for the edition of 1964 and again for publication in 1970. The novel presents 26-year-old Harry Angstrom, whose nickname, Rabbit, comes from his glorious days as a high-school basketball champion in the small town of Brewer, Pa. Now, frustrated by the responsibilities of marriage to Janice (pregnant and an alcoholic) and fatherhood to three-year-old Nelson, and by an inconsequential job demonstrating the MagiPeel kitchen implement, he decides to run away. His former athletic coach, Tothero, bucks him up and introduces him to an appealing young woman, Ruth, who becomes pregnant by him. With tragic irony, his legitimate child is born but soon accidentally drowns when his drunken wife is bathing her.
Rabbit, Redux (1971) depicts the Angstrom household just ten years later, long after Harry's return to a marriage that is...
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