Second to the professor who taught his work, John Updike is our #1 on the list of Men We Hate. This was the first English class Alyssa and I had together, so, naturally, we sat together so we could chatter like little school girls over the 1960s Contemporary Literature we read.
Sure, shit-talking a dead (thank Jesus) writer isn't the classiest thing to do. Especially in front of a professor who --and I will frame this as delicately as possible -- definitely masturbates to The Maple Family series. It's petty, it doesn't accomplish anything, I'm disrespectful, I need stronger grounds for an argument against Updike beyond the notion that the man who taught Rabbit, Run failed to anticipate our objection of a text that so vulgarly painted women in the oil paint sludge of their sexual employment for men.
As the upcoming series director, Andrew Davies, notes: "Some of the things have been a bit difficult for young intelligent females to cope with... but I think [Updike's] insight into both men and women is just so extraordinary"
In contrast, I think that Updike had insight equal to putting your penis in a toaster.
I did not finish reading Rabbit, Run.
It is one of few books I've abandoned, period, and perhaps one of two that I did not finish reading in college. Apparently, the baby drowns.
So let's address what information I barely remember from that penny dreadful: the novel was a thinly veiled recount of Updike's own extramarital affairs with seemingly no plot or continued conflict beyond what Rabbit created for himself. Oh no, making love to two women is hard, which one do I dispose? Why do I still feel like an empty, wrinkled scrotum? Things were so much easier when all that was expect of me was to literally run away from my problems.
I could go fish through my college notebooks for the page-by-page summary I created for it, or the contextual notes I jotted down, or how redemption and Kierkegaard's philosophy shape Updike's writing. Except, if I did all of that, I'd probably induce a brain aneurism.
So instead, let's come up with the two most ridiculous notions of Updike's writing that I've failed to appreciate:
1. Rabbit's existentialism as an excuse for his reckless actions and vulgar thoughts
2. Rabbit's disrespect for, manipulation of, and disposal of women [this might lack parallelism, so ad hominem me and sue me]
Kierkegaard, known as "The Father of Existentialism" in philosophy, is the thundering bass guitar of this self-indulgent cacophony. Who knows, maybe there is some redemption to his beliefs, but certainly not as they serve Rabbit, Run. Rabbit's existentialism is the average mid-life crisis: I'm old (he's 26) , life is ephemeral, my wife doesn't look hot anymore. The "spiritual enlightenment" path that Rabbit takes to redeem his soul from God's alienation is to ditch his pregnant wife, have a months long extramarital affair, and move in with that younger woman.
From my recollection, our class stopped at analyzing Kierkegaard after assigning passages of the text with different stages of existential crisis, thereby downplaying the fact that Rabbit alienated himself by zigzagging back & forth between his wife, Janice, and his side-chick, Ruth. "Zigzagging", specifically, because that is what a rabbit does when distressed to escape death, as my classmates and professor noted. As though between each zig and zag, a rabbit has sex with the zig, gets tired, goes for the zag, who rejects him, then back again to the zig.
Alienation through self-destructive behavior is not uncommon - ask my depression. It happens - but it is not excusable. If you drink to forget that you're upset, and you... I don't know, accidentally drown your baby...whether or not you blackout, it's socially expected to show remorse for "what you could not control" Because it starts with that first choice: that reaction to despair. "My ennui made me cheat on you" or "It's not my fault that you felt morose and drank to forget that I cheated on you and then accidentally drowned our baby" is the equivalent of Albert Camus' "The sun made me do it" No, bird brains: your narcissism, impulsivity, and -10 Ability Score in Kohlberg's Morality made you do it.
Updike said that this novel was an exploration of "the everyman" in middle class 1950s and his conflicting feelings about sex, religion,, death, sex, identity...sex.
It's difficult for me to identify Updike's tone - it's certainly not condemnation... maybe complacency, this exploration of this changing era that somehow tolerates marital and extramarital sexual assault. My regrettable experiences on Tinder & other "dating apps" take me back to Rabbit, Run, to this man who is the protagonist of everyone's world, who launch into phrases like "please tell me you're here for the ass-eats (heart eyes emoji) " or "well f--k you, b---h" when faced with rejection, or abandons you before you can abandon them (ghosting)
It makes me wonder if Updike, had he his own moral compass, could have written Rabbit, Run with more than ennui. Imagine if his tale of the everyman was a story of The Everyman, a character traveling through sins and refining his soul before physical or spiritual death... but maybe I've spent too much time with my tarot deck.
What does this text say of men of the past and of men of the present? What does this say about their viewpoints of women, or how women really react to these cave man brains and primal dicks? What discussions could our primarily female class have had about this text if our voices weren't reactionary to our male professor's, but instead interpersonal, as though he weren't in the room? What viewpoints could we have exchanged, or what realization could I have come to about this text? What could I have felt beyond disrespect, beyond objectification... what was my existentialism?
I don't know. I cannot speak. I'm simply a walking vagina.
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