Sources: Wiki, John Updike, Rabbit Angstrom A Tetralogy. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995.
In a later interview, John Updike stated that his Rabbit, Run was a response to Jack Kerouac's On the Road. However, critical analysis of this masterpiece and the beginning of a series of books that reflect late 20th century American life neglect to discuss the prominent place of the automobile in the novel, particularly during the first segment of the narrative. Critics of this book focus on sex, religion, responsibility (or not!), and the loss and hurt that inevitably accompany leaving. Rabbit is relentless but like his road trip, ultimately goes nowhere.
Rabbit Angstrom was a star basketball player in high school, but now eight years later is in a marriage with a woman he no longer loves. His wife is an alcoholic, frigid and dumb (and also pregnant with their second child). So he leaves, and he does so by driving off one night in a 1955 Ford that his father-in law sold him for $1,000, although he thought his 1939 Nash was good enough and needed only $80 dollars to repair. But his controlling in-laws could see their son-in -law driving such an old car. After all, Rabbit lives during the Golden Age of the Automobile in America, but when "he opens the car from the passenger side, wincing at the ping of the brittle door spring... he views "Beneath the knobs for lights and wipers the octagon of the ignition key tells in silhouette."
With the turning of the key, he begins a one evening road trip from his place other of Philadelphia to West Virginia and back, a remarkable road narrative that is as good as it gets from this reader's viewpoint. It features music from the radio, memories from Rabbit's past and thoughts of the future. Rabbit's start is to drive south to escape, "to become" but in the end the people left behind are hurt. In the 2002 American drama film 8 Mile the movie opens with a quote from the novel "If you have the guts to be yourself...other people will pay the price." In four Updike novels Rabbit's life unfolds. In this first one there is a line in a poster that was used to publicize the 1970 film based on the novel a tagline proclaims, "3 months ago Rabbit Angstrom ran out to buy his wife cigarettes. He hasn't come home yet."
Some quotes from Rabbit, Run to ponder.
p.24,26
Route 23 works west through tame country like Coventryville, Elverson, Morgantown.......he stops at a hardware store opposite with two gasoline pumps outside. ...[The farmer] "You don't want to go that way, do you now?"
"No," Rabbit answers, and walks to his car door. ...He's [the farmer] wearing glasses. a scholar. "The only way to get somewhere, you know, is to figure out where you are going before you go there."
Rabbit pulls out, going straight. Everybody who tells you how to act has whiskey on his breath.
p.31
He drives through a thickening night. The road unravels with infuriating slowness, its black wall weariless rising in front of his headlights no matter how they twist. The tar sucks his tires. He realizes that the heat on his cheeks is anger; he has been angry ever since he left that dinner filled with mermaids. So angry his cheeks feel parched inside his mouth and his nostrils water. He grinds his foot down as to squash this snake of a road, and nearly loses the car on a curve, as the two right wheels fall captive to the dirt shoulder. He brings them back but keeps the speedometer needle leaning to the right of the legal limit.
P. 32
The road is broad and confident for miles, but there is a sudden patched stretch, and after that it climbs and narrows. Narrows not so much by plan as naturally, the edges crumbling in the woods on each side crowding down. The road twists more and more wildly in its struggle to gain height and then without warning sheds its skin of asphalt and worms on in dirt.
No comments:
Post a Comment