Eudora Welty - In her review for Nine Stories in The New York Times April 5, 1953
2 days ago
After much consideration, Casey and I have decided on Nine Stories by JD Salinger for selection #4 of our book club. We have a long list of wants but this one seemed the right length to get through before the holiday chaos just around the corner. Also, neither of us have read Salinger in some time and we are ashamed of ourselves. Like a lot of you, Salinger holds a pretty lofty place in both of our hearts so we are looking forward to this one.
- Jon.
Rabbit, Run by John Updike
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf - New York
Date: November 12, 1960
You know, Casey and I are really echoing each other again here, but I had the same experience to start with this book. I thought Rabbit was a low-life. I wondered why he was doing the things he did. Updike kept me with him through his beautiful language alone for the first 50 pages. I may not have known where it was going, but it didn’t necessarily matter. Soon enough the story started to worm into my head and I was hooked.
Updike gives us Rabbit Angstrom, a man already past his prime at 26. He is juvenile and foolish, yet I still found him sympathetic in a way. He kept talking about being cornered, having limited options in his life, he felt stuck . David Foster Wallace made a commencement address a few years ago discussing how to avoid just that kind of life and how to think your way out of the mire. He says:
“The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day. That is real freedom…The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.”
Angstrom is on the “default setting” and he’s had enough. As good as he is at basketball, he is equally poor in dealing with, and explaining his own emotions to others. I can understand the frustrations that come along with being a new father and feeling stuck in a job that is rarely satisfying. Updike has made Rabbit an extreme case of that everyday mild discontentment we all have. He makes him act out on it and we meet him as he’s had enough, when he runs.
This is a great book. I’m glad Casey picked it, even though he is right when he said Updike put him through the ringer. I’m feeling that way too right now. We were worried about choosing this book and having the Rabbit Omnibus take over our lives for the next year. I don’t think that will happen. I’ll be taking a break from Rabbit Angstrom for a bit, but since his whole life is out there ready and waiting to be read, I’m sure we’ll get back to him soon enough.
- Jon
The AV Club reviewed Rabbit, Run by John Updike in their “Better Late Than Never?” section.
Check it out here.
- Jon
Book Review
Rabbit, Run by John Updike
When I read a novel I’m looking for a sense of attachment, be it good or bad I want to feel something. I’ve always been a stronger believer if you’re not moved by a book then what’s the point.
You can tell the minute you start reading Rabbit, Run you’re going to feel something by the end of it. In the beginning I couldn’t help but feel frustrated. I remember texting Jon early on saying something along the lines of “What the hell is this book all about, Rabbit just drove to West Virginia and back. What the hell for?” Updike can’t help but test the reader. Urging them to develop their own ideas about its main character.
Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom is someone you want to hate. He has a young son and a wife who is expecting. He walks out on them. Rabbit was a high school basketball star in his youth he now sells the MagiPeel Peeler in department stores. After leaving his wife and child he looks for his old coach, who he finds. Through the coach he is introduced to Ruth (my favorite character) a prostitute of sorts. He spends weeks with her before returning back to the life he left to be with his wife while she gives birth to their daughter. Going any further would ruin the book for others.
During the entire reading of Rabbit, Run you feel uncomfortable, pulled down, drained. Although the story is about a husband feeling trapped in a life he didn’t expect for himself. Updike pins you down with with this sense of gloom a darkness that won’t go away.
I put this book down last night and exhaled. I had begged for it to be over and I now understand why. Updike you put me through the ringer. Where this piece of work came from in you is scary, but I understand it. You’re missed. Rest in Peace.
Next up for the Bloomsbury Two will be rabbit run by John Updike. There’s only two members of this little group, so if you’re following along at home this would be my choice. This book was a close second the last two times. Made it to the top stop this go around.
Book Review
The Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
As Jon touched on in his review earlier this is my second attempt at this novel. The first time didn’t go so well. I didn’t know what I was getting into, I didn’t have my head on straight.
I’m really not sure what possessed Jon and I to pick this book for our little reading group. We both respect and love Cormac, but I don’t believe either one of us were prepared for this piece of work.
This book is tough to describe. In simple terms we start the novel following “the kid” a down on his luck young guy who falls in line with a group of scalp hunters. This group may be the worst people on the planet at that time. They kill, destroy, wreck everything they come across. Glanton is their leader but the story is about the Judge.
I talked to Jon on the phone last night. I said “You know who the Judge reminds me of, Marlon Brando from Apocalypse Now.” I can’t help but wonder if the Judge may be the worst character ever written about in modern literature. He never goes away, he’s always there, haunting the reader like a shadow. It’s amazing the Judge can be any worse then the rest of the characters in this book. He’s not only worse, he’s worse by a long shot. I hated the Judge, I hated Glanton, I disliked the Kid.
There is not a single redeemable thing about anyone in this book. Yet you read on. You can’t help yourself. Cormac knows his nature, he knows that natural world we live in like no other. He can describe a rock down to its last crack. At times daunting it provides a prose that tick tick ticks along. You have to have your reading shoes on for this one. You can’t half ass it.
In closing all I can say if you decide to read this novel be in the right head space. If you’re feeling down and blue, maybe skip it until you’re feeling sure of yourself. It will come at you hard and tough. There’s something in it that I can’t describe. Maybe if you read it you can tell me what that something is.
Blood Meridian, Or the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy
There is no way to get to the bottom of what McCarthy was trying to do in this book with my precious little capsule review here on tumblr. There were a few things I knew about this book before I started reading. Harold Bloom had put it down twice before finally finishing. Casey had done the same. And my brother, who I had lent this book to earlier this year, had done the same as well. I was given vague reasons why this was so - the extreme violence, and a character known as the judge. I had been warned.
This book is saturated with blood. We follow a young man, known only as ‘the kid’, until he joins up with a group of scalphunters lead by a man named Glanton and a mysterious judge named Holden. The Glanton Gang murder, torture, and burn just about everything they come across. McCarthy used the violence in the book as a part of the setting, just like the desert, or the horses. It was constant. The horror was constant. There is an underlying terror here as well. Things unsaid or alluded to that we just don’t want to admit we know. These allusions create the monster that is the judge.
We are shown a group of heinous, amoral men carrying out the worst crimes man can perform on one another. Then McCarthy shows us the judge, saying almost, “Look how terrible I have made this man. Look how he stands out amongst this group of evil men, even, as a purest evil.” The others have been swallowed up by the gang and have fallen in line. They are unthinking monsters. The judge is different, he is intelligent and can articulate what he is doing. He knows exactly what his actions mean, yet carries them out all the same. Scary, tough, tough read, but a must.
- Jon
Original NYT Review here.
