Rabbit, Run by John Updike
"If you have the guts to be yourself," he says, "other people'll pay your price."That sentence is the heart of this book; Updike's taut novel is about a man struggling to reconcile his desires and his duties. The protagonist, Rabbit, is one of those inexplicably charming people that everyone likes at first, but in reality he's too self-centered to
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"I'm guessing that for the young educated adults of the 60's and 70's, for whom the ultimate horror was the hypocritical conformity and repression of their own parents' generation, Mr. Updike's evocation of the libidinous self appeared redemptive and even heroic. But the young educated adults of the 90's-who were, of course, the children of the same impassioned infidelities and divorces Mr. Updike wrote about so beautifully-got to watch all this brave new individualism and self-expression and sexual freedom deteriorate into the joyless and anomic self-indulgence of the Me Generation."
It's the only decent explanation I've heard yet for why people like Updike's work so much. It's nasty stuff, IMO.
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