Rabbit, run / John Updike

It is difficult to believe that “Rabbit, Run” (1960) was only John Updike’s second novel. From the first sentence, he, very unusually in fiction, employs the present tense but such immediacy is combined with a narrative point of view in which Harry (Rabbit) Angstrom’s views are not necessarily Updike’s and Updike’s views are not necessarily Rabbit’s. The views from these blended perspectives do not appear profound, leading the critic, Harold Bloom’s pronouncement that Updike has a major style (which became even more remarkable in the fiction to come over a long career) but a minor subject. Set against this is a view that I’ve heard expressed by readers I know and respect, and who have read the whole run of four Rabbit novels, together with one long story, “Rabbit Remembered”, that Rabbit Angstrom is one of the great American characters, especially in “Rabbit Redux”, to be set alongside Huckleberry Finn, Isobel Archer, Jay Gatsby, Augie March, and so on. Updike, in this version, tell