Why Rabbit?

Why Rabbit? Why pick a seemingly insignificant man to write a tetralogy about America from the late 1950s to the end of the 80s? Why not pick another one of your characters, Updike? Why not the novelist Bech or the builder Hanema? Harold “Rabbit” Angstrom, US Army veteran of Mt. Judge, Pennsylvaina, former basketball star and father to Nelson and the deceased Rebecca was a man of no great courage. He was not the man to become anything. His glory began and ended before he ever got married or earned a paycheck. In Rabbit Redux he is a union linotyper working alongside his father until he is laid off. He lives at first with his wife Janice and son Nelson in a new development outside of Brewer at Penn Villas, your typical middle-class-ranch-home-Ford-in-the-driveway-conservative-roast-beef-eating subdivision. This home ends in fire, which will be discussed more later. But, the fact is this; Rabbit Angstrom was the ideal candidate on which to write not one but multiple novels.

Page 4, “The small nose and slightly lifted upper lip that once made the nickname Rabbit fit now seem, along with the thick waist and cautious stoop bred into him by a decade of the Linotyper’s trade, clues to weakness, a weakness verging on anonymity… years have pass since anyone has called him Rabbit.” Rabbit was for the time a shape shifter. Any one reading this novel set in 1969 could form Rabbit to be themselves or anyone they knew. A weak, former athlete listing sluggishly and slovenly into an overweight middle age was almost the calling card of the White, blue collar American male of the day. Everyone was Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite. These men wore blue pants, drank beer from a can, toiled in rough union jobs, drove a Ford and would pay dearly for the privilege to live such a life. Updike chose Rabbit and made him who he was because of his malleability. When you read this novel, you can think of someone like Rabbit. A man who can stand on his own feet, but financially barely so; and physically hasn’t seen his feet since he was feeling up girls in his dad’s car on Friday nights after playing fullback for his high school.

Rabbit is like this. He has no future that we can see, and this is the second book that he is featured in. His marriage is in tatters within 50 pages of the start; Janice, having decided she liked the company of lecherous old Charlie Stavros, a salesman at her father’s dealership, moves out. She leaves Rabbit and Nelson alone in their split level eating TV dinners and watching Laugh In. To add insult to injury, and though she works at her father’s Toyota dealership, she takes Rabbit’s trusty Ford Falcon with her. Rabbit is forced to ride the bus across town, sitting with old ladies and black kids that he despises.

The point is this: everything that happens to Rabbit just happens. Because of his attitude it is largely outside of his control. These events, the death of a child, the breakup of a family and a house burning down can happen to anyone. Updike wrapped all of this up and made it happen to the one, the only, the Everyman, Harry ”Rabbit” Angstrom. 

An Affair, and Why You Should Support the NHL Players

Before she says it, you can tell that Janice is sleeping with Charlie Stavros and not Rabbit. Why? What drives people to do what they do? I don’t know, maybe a better question borrowed from Ayn Rand is: “Who is John Galt?” Janice sleeps around not only because she likes the feeling and the excitement but too it is a rejection of Harry. Her husband after the tragic drowning of his daughter Rebecca, has decreed that he will father no more children. Further their marriage is hollow with the loss of sex. Rabbit works all day and spends his evenings alone with Nelson while Janice holds up the pretenses of a job at her father’s car lot while she bangs Stavros on the side.

This loss, and the news on the tv in the background, makes me think of the current losses on both sides of the new NHL lockout. Both sides are wrong and right at the same time. Janice wants children and excitement but can’t see that she is not a good mother or a good wife. She is flighty and unprepared for the world. Rabbit, while wrong to hold out from his wife the opportunity to bear more children, is too grounded. He makes no attempt to piece together his life after the loss of his child, nor does he appreciate the joys of the son he has left. So, hockey. Owners feel the squeeze because of rising player salaries and more costs in running a team. Players, whose talent diminishes in value every day they grow older and every time they step on the ice, feel the squeeze because of bad ownership and declining opportunity. I side with the players because unlike regular wage laborers who have decades to make their money, have but the short time between the draft and injury/retirement/unsigned free agency to make their money. Think about it. If I promised you a salary of $50,000 for thirty years guaranteed, or the chance to make $10,000,000 in the space of a few years in your 20s, which is the more secure choice? Hockey players have little job security. One bad season, one injury or one bad owner can force you out. And then where are you? In your 20s with little or no real world training and you have to survive until your death knowing that your greatest times are behind you, that’s where. The players are a product of an entertainment economy and rely on the largesse of the American economy for a paycheck and a brief few moments of glory. Rabbit Angstrom felt this in high school with basketball.

Maybe that’s why Janice wants excitement; she never had her basketball moment. She went from high school to marriage to losing a child to middle aged boredom in the blink of an eye. Never did she feel the eyes on her, the people hanging their emotions on her performance in an arbitrary event, nor did she feel the post-game glory and warmth of the loving fans who appreciated her efforts. I would advocate that everyone go enjoy themselves and feel proud of themselves and that hockey fans support the players against the owners in this new lockout.

Go Red Wings. 

MG cars and Vespa scooters

In Couples the people described are different. Not in their houses, which are large and well appointed, and not in their clothing which is standard fare for wealthy Massachusetts residents of 1962; especially Piet’s often mentioned apricot windbreaker jacket, no the difference lies in their automobiles. Their cars, that everlasting symbol of American freedom and prosperity, are not American and they are not main stream. These people, in an air of superiority and conspicuous consumption, drive foreign autos which are not only expensive to purchase, but expensive to maintain.

In an effort of full disclosure and transparency, your author must state the following: I am an ardent believer in American cars. I love American car companies and the vehicles they have made and make today. No Asian or European car, to me, has the passion or power or beauty that a proud American car has. They might build some models here, and might employ some non-union workers, but they will never be as iconic as the great nameplates that are home grown. Further, I am a Chrysler fan boy. From the original 1920’s Chrysler Six, to the 1955 Chrysler 300, to the 1971 Plymouth ‘Cuda, to the original Dodge Caravan that saved the company to the 1993 Jeep Grand Cherokee that I spent much of my childhood in, to the small block Hemi powered cars and trucks today I love them all. Chrysler, regardless of Italian and UAW ownership, is an American company. They build Ram trucks in Warren, Michigan, brand new 300 horsepower Pentastar V-6 engines in Trenton, Michigan, new high tech transmissions in Kokomo, Indiana and Jeep Wranglers in Toledo, Ohio. I am proud to support such a great company that at one time was the tenth largest corporation in the United States. However, being a social elite, the Hanemas, the Thornes and the Whitmans do not share my sentiments,

Unlike the “workingman” Piet, who drives a green Chevrolet truck, all of the vehicles mentioned in the novel are foreign, specifically European. Angela Hanema drives a Peugeot, a French sedan; Foxy Whitman drives a MG, a British sports car, and in the greatest mockery of American automotive might, Freddy Thorne drives a Vespa! A grown man, tooling around a Massachusetts town on an Italian scooter, I would be aghast if one of my parents’ friends rode a scooter as his daily driver. But, more perspective is in order.

This novel is set in 1962. According to the automotive historian at ateupwithmotor.com, during this time 1 out of every 9 new cars sold in the US was not only a Chevrolet, but was a specific Chevy model. That’s right. 11% of all new car sales were Chevy Impalas. GM held so much market share in the early sixties that they pulled factory tech support for every level of auto racing, NASCAR and NHRA drag racing included, in the fear that they would sell too many cars and be hit with anti-monopoly charges by the US government. I am sure that GM would love to have that problem today. Toyota didn’t come over until 1957, Honda in 1969. And until the gas crisis of 1973 these cars were largely an afterthought. Small and unrefined, powered by dinky four cylinder engines and lacking the luxury and panache of American cars, these Japanese cars were not strong sellers. Even the European cars, like MG sportsters and Mercedes-Benz were overshadowed by American Corvettes and Cadillacs. Further, many of these models were only available in right-hand drive, their producers being unable to federalize and put the driver in the correct seat. These cars did not have the dealer support either. Parts for repair had to be shipped from Europe, a costly and time consuming affair. Owning a European car at this time was not only socially awkward, but expensive and capricious too.

Why then? Why did the couples own such odd cars? Because they could; it’s that simple. They didn’t have to drive a Ford. They didn’t need a reliable, large automobile. If the rest of their lives are so different, their cars should be too. When dealing with consumers as these, they were not tethered to reason. I hope that I am never in a position to choose European cars over American, simply because they are different. And God help me if any of my friends ride sccoters.

There goes the neighborhood

My biggest fan, and harshest critic, told me this morning that my most recent post was unsatisfactory. She also doubted my intimacy with the material; she told me that the audience can tell when I’m bluffing and not speaking from a point of authority. This conversation gave me pause. But once the pause was over and I thought once again I thought of intimacy. Couples is full of intimate moments, and the idea and practice is a central theme of the story.

To begin, I do not think that Updike, for all his wordiness and ability, truly can write an intimate scene. Unlike Philip Roth, and another of my favorites Joseph Heller, Updike’s sex scenes are lacking in the truly descriptive and frankly raunchy adjectives that readers of the genre are looking for. When Piet takes Foxy to bed, readers want to know more than Updike can deliver on. We want to feel their extramarital passion, see the depths of her desire in her eyes. We want Foxy, though she is pregnant and bloated, to seem as sexy and desirable as Piet sees her. Make her into the object of lust and wanton desire to the reader that the characters see her as. Updike sets out to write a sexy novel, but falls short in the sexy parts. This subject of promiscuity and extramarital affairs seems as foreign to Updike as open heart surgery would be to a dentist. While Updike is a great writer, and the dentist may be an expert at his profession, the subjects of sex and cardiology are foreign to these men in this extended metaphor. Similarly, you would never ask a Methodist minister to direct a skin flick, so one must ask: why did Updike undertake the effort?

John Updike saw around him a loss in spirituality. In America he saw people turning from the more established churches and thumbing their noses at the Congregational and Episcopal churches. The old orthodoxy of Catholicism was too harsh and what remains of the great Protestant churches doing less protesting and more pandering, these facts led to smaller congregations and fewer followers seeking the truth. Longing for the Puritan tradition that started the New World, and all of the societal connections that came with it, these people turned to empty sex to solve their problems. Piet Hanema is one of these people. A man of the Earth, a builder of houses and driver of a green Chevrolet truck, he is lost spiritually. In his home of Michigan, surrounded by his Dutch family and his Dutch Reformed faith, Piet had a clearer sense of self. He was the son of a gardener and a schoolboy. However, moving to Massachusetts and working with the horse-trader Matt Gallagher has made him a lost soul. He attends a Congregational church more concerned about his weekly tithe than his spiritual wealth and as a result he begins affairs with three different women outside of his marriage. Georgene Thorne, Bea Guerin and Foxy Whitman all separately find their way into his grasp. However, it takes two to tango. Not all of the fault lies with Piet.

In the fictional seaside town of Tarbox, there is this social group of ten couples who would have considered themselves in the old Puritan days an “elect”, chosen by God to intermingle with each other. Not finding solace and sexual excitement with their respective spouses they turn instead to other members of the social group to get their jollies. Why? How can there be so much sexual frustration and it be so large to encompass twenty people? Why did no one, especially the Jewish couple (Saltz) or the Catholics (Constantines) see that what they’re doing is against their respect doctrines? Because they have turned against the dogma and formed their own religion; this is where they replace God and Jesus with coitus and orgasms. Updike posits that the sexual revolution began not on a college campus and not in the great metropolitan centers like New York or Los Angeles. But that the great, glorious revolution began here: in a suburban Massachusetts town with a few couples that outwardly seemed well to do and mentally adjusted. Look at the professions of the men: general contractor, airline pilot, biologist, computer engineer, dentist, etc. And look at the women, all had borne children into this world and some were teachers and members of local government. These are not what you would categorize as “swingers”, these are the “normal” people. They drive nice cars and live in nice houses and are supposed to have nice, polite, unbecoming sex with their spouses. Never would the casual observer see these people as sexual deviants or miscreants. But instead this is the perfect cover, by being higher class and respectable people they formed a great camouflage for their deviant acts.

However deviant his characters are, Updike still misses the true coup de grace. He could have made Couples one of the greatest novels of all time by including more intimate details of the lovemaking. Sex sells in advertisement and in novels. Rabbit could be but a footnote on his greatness if Updike had made his characters intimate. Make Piet desire these women not only because his wife is cold and distant, but because he is a healthy man and has healthy desires. I am not a fan of extramarital affairs, but if Angela won’t give Piet enough sugar, help the reader understand why he does what he does. Piet works as a contractor, and wants to return home the glorious breadwinner, snatching survival from the jaws of a cruel world. However, in seeking gratification he is snubbed by his capricious Angela. As a result, he takes his burning libido and manliness into strange beds. Updike needed to do more to show the dysfunction in the marriages and what drove his characters to sleeping around. Tell us and show us why Angela Hanema is cold in the sack and why Bea, Foxy and Georgene are so inviting to Piet. But too, tell me what has gone wrong in the women’s lives that drove them to Piet. Finally, make the sex sexier. I don’t want vague adjectives. This is one instance of “tell me, don’t show me.” Updike is too foreign to the sex scenes for a man who was married twice and fathered children.

I have enjoyed Couples but find Updike too polite in bed. He clearly was not a man enthralled or interested in sex and affairs and all of the trappings and baggage that come with such activities. Updike was correct to explore the advent of sexual liberation, but his ideas are lost in translation. Forty years past, this member of the millennial generation is searching for the real smut, and finding none relegates Couples to the back of the Updike collection, a shame too, because this book had so much promise and fell short.

This post is dedicated to my mom, Jennifer, who pushes me every day to be the best that I can be. I hope this writing showed more effort and intelligence on the work, mom.

"Just nod if you can hear me; is there anyone at home?"

Since reading Couples, I have found the narrative vibrant and interesting. This seaside Massachusetts town named Tarbox holds some nostalgia and warm feelings for me. I appreciate Updike’s images of nice homes and nice people. However, beneath the surface are people searching for answers to questions that religion and faith used to answer for them. However, being a new generation of individuals and humanists, the answers that satisfied their parents do not hold for them. Set in 1962, this novel is Updike’s attempt to explain where and how the sexual revolution started. Updike describes the lives of ten couples, all well to do people living in beautiful homes and driving expensive cars. The couples can be confusing to follow because the dialogue moves quickly and there is sometimes little mention of who is speaking to whom, especially when it comes to scenes of them in bed. So, here is the list of the married couples at the beginning of the novel:

Marcia & Harold Smith

Janet & Frank Appleby

Georgene & Freddy Thorne

Irene & Ben Saltz

Carol & Eddie Constantine

Angela & Piet Hanema

Foxy & Ken Whitman

Bernadette & John Ong

Terry & Matt Gallagher

Bea & Roger Guerin

Also, here are the affairs early on:

Marcia Smith & Frank Appleby

Janet Appleby & Harold Smith

Georgene Thorne & Piet Hanema

Ben Saltz & Carol Constantine

Irene Saltz & Eddie Constantine

In Updike’s reckoning, these people in rural Massachusetts wanted religion; they wanted something larger than themselves in their lives. They were looking for more than just their own counsel. However, the options were limited. Being modern people they did not want the orthodoxy and dogma of the Catholic church, and the Congregational church was too light and easy on the soul. They wanted the middle ground, a non-orthodox church that made them accountable for their actions. If they had only lived a few centuries before, the Puritan church would have been more than happy to show them the way. Unfortunately for them, and their spouses, Massachusetts is a religious wasteland. Catholicism is too heavy and the Tarbox Congregational church too focused on making money and preserving the shell of a dying faith. Having no spiritual source of comfort, they turn to each other. Forming a new religious identity based on sex and sleeping around, it does not satisfy their souls but only deepens the chasm between their minds and their lives. Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb would be a fair assessment of how these people feel during their affairs. The comfort and intimacy provides a temporary shield which protects them from the emptiness they feel in marriage and suburban living.

Because of this vacuum of tangible faith, and their belief in a "Post-Pill Paradise" (the first tablet contraceptive Enovid was cleared by the US FDA in 1961) affairs are what pique their interest and this disenfranchisement from the societal norm makes them a social elect. Those lucky few who have affairs and live within that construct are set apart, living as couples in all shapes and forms. Married or sleeping around, these people live life as couples, constantly searching for in each other what they should find in thelselves.

Basketball

Continuing with Rabbit Angstrom, we will approach his interest in sports. Combining his love for basketball with the fact that many men of his generation played amateur sports tells me that America’s love for sport and competition ran high in the post-war years. Rabbit played basketball for his rural hometown of Mt. Judge, Pennsylvania. In his description of that time, some of the gyms they played in were so small that they had backboards mounted directly to the end walls. The crowds reached to the rafters to watch Rabbit shoot and score against the opposition. In the Rabbit books, Angstrom is what every boy aspires to be and what every man wants for his son. Rabbit, to the denizens of Mt. Judge, was Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant and Magic Johnson rolled into one player. He was their superstar, the leader and the man who got the ball on every possession. Most nights he would play well and score many baskets, but win or lose Rabbit would put up multiple shots a game. It’s like the present day Los Angeles Lakers, Whether Kobe goes 20/40 shooting or 7/40 shooting, he is going to put up all 40 shots every night and his teammates can learn to deal with it. In Mt. Judge, it was Rabbit’s team.

This point was much to the chagrin of Ronnie Harrison, Rabbit’s friend from the country club and the husband of Rabbit’s illicit lover Thelma. Ronnie played basketball with Rabbit and would be considered a grinder or a role player. While Rabbit was out front, draining shots and getting the credit, Ronnie was in the post and in the paint playing tough defense and rebounding. Throughout the books these two have a long and twisted relationship, but two metaphors come to my mind here: Ronnie is Newman to Rabbit’s Seinfeld, and if Rabbit is Jordan then Ronnie is Dennis Rodman (without the hair and piercings and women’s clothing). Ronnie did not receive the spotlight on the court, but talking heads on ESPN would value his contribution to the team. Some would even go so far as to say that Rabbit could not be the player he was without a Ronnie backing him up, pulling down boards and posting up on defense. These men are a microcosm of the larger world and America at the time. In the prime of both of their lives, Rabbit is a successful Toyota dealer, member of the country club and various civic organizations and makes a very comfortable living without trying very hard. This parallels his experience in high school and on the basketball court. Ronnie is a struggling insurance salesman, has to work hard every day to pay his bills and has to live knowing that Rabbit is sleeping with his wife. These men are characters of the world around them.

America has a great sporting past, and though the largest sport today is professional football, this wasn’t always the case. Boxing and baseball dominated the sporting world well into the 1960’s, hockey was (and is) a niche product for cold latitudes and basketball was just coming onto the scene in post-war America. Baseball captured American hearts in such a way that is curious. Of the stick-and-ball sports it is the most obtuse: the defense controls the ball, there is no clock and most positions outside of catcher and middle infield do not require real athletic talent. Baseball was the pinnacle of sporting entertainment to those post war suburbanites. They lived and breathed baseball at all levels, from Little League to MLB to old-man-slow-pitch-rec-league softball. Boxing too captivated their minds and spirits. Blood sport, handed down through history from ancient Greece all the way to the biggest names like Sonny Liston, Jake LaMotta and Sugar Ray Robinson. These men climbed into the ring and beat each other senseless all for the glory and honor of the crowds. While these sports are beautiful and successful in their own right, it makes sense that Rabbit Angstrom made his bones playing a different sport than them.

Basketball is cheap; it only requires one ball and two hoops. It also doesn’t require as many men as football or baseball. Since only five are needed per side, poor schools can afford to outfit a team more readily than if they played football or baseball (which to anyone who has seen Hoosiers makes sense because Hickory doesn’t have the cash for football, let alone enough boys). And, it is played in the winter. Farmers and farming communities are at their most idle when snow is on the ground and the crops are in the silo. Plus, small towns can more easily support a basketball team and fill a small gymnasium than they could fill a football stadium. For Mt. Judge, the poor rural town in Pennsylvania, basketball is as good as sporting gets. And for the time, Rabbit is the best they have ever seen. Young boys in town want to be him, and all of the girls want a piece of him. He swaggers and struts around the town because life is easy for him. He has no further responsibility or care in the world than to put the orange ball in the hoop.

In this period, sports glory matters more to the fathers and sons because life was boring. In sports there are glimmers of action and adrenaline. Hitting a line drive, or having one hit to you, is for a few seconds, almost as intense as the combat these men saw abroad. Pride was gained and lost based on the Friday night score and how the hometown team did. And for the few years that Rabbit Angstrom rained buckets for Mt. Judge, life was not bad. 

On Suburbia

 Starting this semester’s work, we commence with Updike’s 1960 novel, Rabbit, Run. One of his early works and the one that helped him win acclaim because it began the Rabbit series. One of the themes this novel deals with is suburbia; or more specifically how the 1950’s generation dealt with suburban living.

This topic requires some background, as the economy boomed after World War II, more and more middle class Americans moved away from cities and into suburban bedroom communities. They built single family homes on predetermined lots, had a lawn for their children to play within, and a garage to store the great chrome festooned Chrysler Newport or Ford Mainline that the family used for transportation. This type of lifestyle can seem idyllic to some. The peace, security and general comfort that a suburban home can provide is a pleasing quality to many people. Even your author, who saddled with a fair amount of college debt and a poor job market, would give a great amount to have his own home in Westerville or New Albany. Living in my own two story home and driving a new Chrysler or Jeep would seem just about perfect to me.  However, to Updike’s Rabbit Angstrom or Richard Yate’s Frank Wheeler in Revolutionary Road, suburban living and all of its trappings is something to be reviled and disdained.

One of the factors for this that Prof. Myers and I discussed is what I will call the “Traumatized Veteran Theory.” This premise considers that as a large majority of the men, both in fiction and real life, from the 1950’s were veterans of World War II. They won the glorious cause by beating Hitler and Tojo, sparked a manufacturing and research boom back home, and were touted as liberators and the most powerful military force in countries abroad.  Because of their wartime experience being adrenaline packed and stimulating to the senses, the minutiae of mowing the lawn, listening to the wife and playing with the kids is boring. It is so boring, that they yearn for more excitement in their lives. But these men are beholden to the trappings of middle class life that they wish to dispose of. If we consider the 1950’s as the “conformist decade” where everything and everyone in White middle class society was the same, men were not faced with hard choices. Their most pressing choices in life were Ford or GM and scotch or bourbon. Notwithstanding that with either choice the man will end up with a car or whiskey, his life was largely routine and bland. Coming from a world of vicious jungle combat or French whores or North African heat, these men were not stimulated by the comfortable lives with homemaker wives and sons playing Little League. Being affected by war makes these men disinterested in civilian living, but the facts that they won’t step outside of the norm and that they have a duty to their families to provide means that they will continue to lead lives of quiet desperation and fulfillment

I am attaching a link to Supertramp's song " Take The Long Way Home" as an accompanying piece to the desperation and sadness these men felt.