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"Rabbit, Run" is the first in a series of novels in which John Updike chronicles the dead-end life of a middle-class salesman in a dying Pennsylvania town in the 1960s. Three more novels follow Rabbit's life; and together, these books stand as a towering achievement in modern realistic fiction.

Through Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, Updike evokes America's malaise and its socioeconomic barriers, and how these can squeeze the life out of a person. Rabbit hit his peak in high school as a basketball star (hence the nickname "Rabbit"), but at the time of "Rabbit Run," he's in his mid-20s and struggling. He's married unhappily, and he has a 2-year-old child and a pregnant wife who's going to seed and drinking too much. Rabbit has an affair that amounts to nothing, and he and his wife (Janice) bumble through the stresses of not having enough money, having minimal prospects, and seeing decades of the same ahead.

But the special twist that Updike gives to the character of Rabbit is that he understands at some level that he's wasting his precious time on earth. Rabbit is not a philosopher or even particularly smart - he's a regular guy - but when he was a basketball star he had a taste of greatness, a participation in something that transcended himself and everyday life. He wants to find that again, but of course, life rarely provides those opportunities (especially in dead-end towns and dead-end sales jobs). So while Rabbit retains the energy and determination of a successful athlete, but he can't sustain any effort or enthusiasm. He starts and quits jobs, exercise, relationships (with women and children), etc. He drifts through life - tragically, drifting while unable to do anything about it.

One final note. In my conversations about the Rabbit series, it seems that Updike's novels "speak" more directly to men than to women. Rabbit is an athlete, crude, cruel, and sexist. Women don't seem to enjoy the books as much as men; women say that Rabbit isn't a sympathetic character, and they have trouble identifying with him.

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