Rabbit Reconsidered

This weekend I read Rabbit, Run by John Updike (I found it on the street in Park Slope along with The Words). Published in 1960, Rabbit, Run is the first entry in Updike's four-part (+ novella-coda) Rabbit-Cycle which describes the ups and downs of former basketball star Harrison "Rabbit" Angstrom's life.

Anyway, it was really good -- contestable, perhaps, in its social conclusions, and questionable, perhaps, in its stylistic decisions -- but nonetheless "good" for all that, and maybe even because of that -- i.e., "good" to the precise degree it is urgently contestable or provocatively questionable.

So I guess I feel like an idiot for dismissing Updike all these years. True, Terrorist (which I reviewed for the Nass) did suck, and it sucked hard, but even Terrorist, now that I think about it, had some moments of life.