Rabbit, Run Introduction

Rabbit, Run Introduction

"Who likes Rabbit, apart from his author?" Hermione Lee asks in The New Republic.

Sexist, dumb, lazy, illiterate (he spends the whole
novel not finishing a book on American history), a
terrible father . . . an inadequate husband, an unreliable
lover, a tiresome lecher, a failing businessman,
a cowardly patient, a typically "territorial" male:
What kind of moral vantage point is this?

But, she writes, "What redeems Rabbit is that, inside his brutish exterior, he is tender, feminine, and empathetic."

Set in Brewer, Pennsylvania, a fictional counterpart of the real-life city of Reading, Rabbit, Run examines the experiences of a young man who is trapped in an unfulfilling life and his equally unfulfilling attempts to leave his family and find a new life. When the book was first published, it shocked many readers with its explicit descriptions of sexuality, and according to Robert Detweiler in ...
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