Rabbit, Run
by John Updike
Summary
Former high school basketball star Harry Rabbit Angstrom, trapped in a disappointing marriage and a dead end sales job, abandons his pregnant wife and young son on a restless, directionless flight from the suburban life closing in around him. Updike writes in a lush, closely observed present tense that captures both the sensory pleasures and the moral cowardice of Rabbit's escape, opening a sequence that would follow the character across four decades. The novel established Updike as one of the era's most precise chroniclers of American middle class desire.
Historical Context & Significance
The 1961 Pulitzer for fiction went to Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird instead. Updike would eventually win two Pulitzers for later installments in the Rabbit series, but this first and formally boldest volume received no prize of its own.