#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.”

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.…

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…