Rabbit, Run was published by Alfred A. Knopf, New York, on 2 November 1960, in a first printing of approximately 10,000 copies priced at $4.00. The novel was Updike’s third book but his first major commercial and critical success, establishing the character of Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom — a figure Updike would revisit every decade for the rest of the century, producing one of the most sustained achievements in American literary fiction.
The Novel
Harry Angstrom is twenty-six years old, living in the fictional town of Brewer, Pennsylvania (modelled on Reading and the surrounding Berks County). He was once a high school basketball star — the best player his small town had ever seen. Now he sells a kitchen gadget called the MagiPeel, lives in a cramped apartment with his pregnant wife Janice and their toddler son Nelson, and drinks too much. One evening, coming home to find Janice drunk in front of the television, he simply leaves. He gets in his car and drives south with no plan, then turns around and comes back — not to Janice, but to Ruth Leonard, a part-time prostitute he meets through his old basketball coach, Tothero.
What follows is a study in irresponsibility that is also, disturbingly, a study in vitality. Rabbit is selfish, heedless, and careless with other people’s lives. He is also the only character in the novel who seems genuinely alive. Updike’s great formal innovation was to write the entire novel in the present tense — unusual in 1960 — giving it an immediacy and restlessness that mirrors Rabbit’s own inability to sit still. The prose is extraordinary: lush, sensual, attentive to every physical surface and sensation, and capable of moving from lyric beauty to coarse vulgarity within a single sentence.
The novel’s climax is devastating. Janice, alone and drunk, accidentally drowns their infant daughter Rebecca in the bathtub. The scene is rendered with excruciating precision — Updike refuses to look away, and the reader cannot either. Rabbit arrives at the funeral, tries to speak, blames Janice publicly, and then runs again. The novel ends with him running, a word that carries the full weight of the American mythology of escape.
Publication and Reception
The novel was controversial from the start. Its sexual frankness was extreme for 1960 — the British edition, published by André Deutsch in 1961, was significantly bowdlerised, and Alfred Knopf himself expressed discomfort with several passages. Norman Podhoretz attacked it in Show magazine; Orville Prescott dismissed it in the New York Times. But the critical establishment quickly rallied: David Boroff in the Times Book Review called it “a brilliant and poignant novel,” and over the next few years the book’s reputation only grew.
The unexpurgated text was not published in Britain until the Penguin edition of 1964. The novel sold steadily rather than spectacularly — it was Couples (1968) that made Updike a bestseller — but it remained in print continuously and became a staple of American literature courses.
The Rabbit Tetralogy
Updike returned to Rabbit Angstrom every decade: Rabbit Redux (1971) set against Vietnam and the counterculture; Rabbit Is Rich (1981, Pulitzer Prize), charting Rabbit’s unexpected prosperity during the energy crisis; and Rabbit at Rest (1990, Pulitzer Prize), following Rabbit into obesity, heart disease, and death. The four novels together form an unparalleled chronicle of American life across the second half of the twentieth century. A coda novella, Rabbit Remembered (2001), follows the aftermath of Rabbit’s death through his illegitimate daughter Annabelle.
Is Rabbit, Run a Good Investment? Collecting and Market Values
First edition (1960, Knopf): Approximately 10,000 copies, $4.00.
Identification points:
- “FIRST EDITION” stated on copyright page
- Price of $4.00 on front flap
- Black cloth binding with gold spine lettering
- Dust jacket with abstract pastel design by Paul Bacon
Approximate market values:
- Fine/Fine in dust jacket: $3,000–$8,000
- Near Fine/Very Good jacket: $1,500–$3,000
- Signed first edition: $5,000–$15,000
- Without jacket: $200–$500
Value trajectory: First editions in jacket have approximately tripled over the past decade. Updike’s death in 2009 drove initial appreciation; sustained scholarly attention and the tetralogy’s canonical status have maintained demand. The key is jacket condition — the pastel colours fade readily.
Why Does Rabbit Run?
The question at the heart of the novel — and the question every critic has tried to answer since 1960. Is Rabbit fleeing responsibility, or pursuing something authentic? Updike never resolves the tension. Rabbit is both a coward abandoning his family and a man seeking grace in a world that has no use for it. The novel’s epigraph, from Pascal (“The motions of Grace, the hardness of the heart; external circumstances”), sets the terms: Rabbit’s restlessness is simultaneously spiritual hunger and moral failure. This refusal to settle the question is what gives the novel its enduring power.