Some years ago,when filling my car’s tank with gasoline, the attendant remarked that he had not seen me for a few weeks. I responded that I had been there when he had not, and a “very nice young man” had assisted me. “He’s my son,” the attendant said proudly, adding, “The year he was born, my wife gave birth to my daughter, and my girlfriend gave birth to my son, who you met here.”
A related development occurs in the life of the protagonist, 26-year-old Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, who is discontent with his menial job and repulsed by his now-unattractive, alcoholic wife, Janice, who is eight months pregnant with their second child. Harry, a former high school basketball star and a peacetime Army vet, had married Janice because she was pregnant. Janice, whose previous career was selling salted nuts in a department store, is unintelligent, incurious, dull, boring, unhappy, and currently alcoholic. The couple already has a two and a half year old son, Nelson. In his self-absorption, Harry forgets about Nelson and disregards his parental obligations. He dreams of escape, and absconds for several months, only returning to his young family when Janice delivers their ill-fated second child, a daughter. Luckily, Janice comes from a well-to-do, supportive family.
I had read this novel more than fifty years ago, and I was curious to see my reaction to Harry, now that I am so much beyond age 26. I do not like Harry, although I sympathize with his entrapment. He indulges his sexual whims at great cost to others around him. He has never gotten past his status as a high school basketball star, and is a strutting male peacock whose unwelcome marriage has restrained his plumage.
Escape comes first in a wild joyride from Pennsylvania to West Virginia, followed with a date with Ruth, a single woman his age, who has had extensive sexual experience, and who occasionally accepts money for her favors. She is not a prostitute, according to Harry, just an experienced woman, and he immediately moves into her apartment. A few months later, he detaches himself from Ruth when he learns that his wife, Janice, is about to give birth. Rabbit-style, Harry runs away without an explanation. In fact, he tells Ruth that he will be right back. He has also left Ruth pregnant, as he disdains birth control. He does not know of this pregnancy.
No one has any sympathy for Ruth, except an unexpected and surprising source – Harry’s mother.
An interesting side story is Harry’s new relationship with Janice’s pastor, Reverend Jack Eccles, whose personality is much like the Prefect, Mr. Conner, in the earlier novel, “The Poorhouse Fair.” The Reverend, a humanist and an idealist, is highly educated and well-meaning, but is a self-questioning and insecure man, married to a lively and secular wife, with two small children. The Rev. Eccles is determined to tap into the goodness in Harry, to bring him closer to God and to recognize his responsibilities to Janice and his kids. This will be accomplished through a weekly golf game. There is a comic scene between Rev. Eccles and the Angstrom family’s German-born Lutheran pastor, who tells Eccles, in blunt terms, that to help people, he must reject psychology and focus on Jesus. Eccles thinks that the Lutheran pastor has come from a butcher shop background into the ministry, and is ashamed of the thought.
Harry is pressured to attend Rev. Eccle’s church at least once. Seeing The Reverend Eccles attired in his robes as a caricature, Harry conducts a subtle flirtation with Mrs. Eccles, which further illustrates Harry’s degree of amour propre. The service curiously lacks the Eucharistic communion.
A little girl is born to Harry and Janice, but their reconciliation is frail. An argument at home sends Harry out all night, in search of Ruth, and in his absence, Janice consoles herself with whiskey and in a drunken haze, accidentally drowns their newborn baby.
The book ends with Harry learning that Ruth is pregnant by him. He is enthusiastic about the potential redemption of his lost baby daughter, but inwardly indecisive. Mouthing many empty promises to Ruth, we leave him running, running, running on the area’s mountain paths, trying to figure it all out.
I can hardly wait to re-read “Rabbit Redux,” to see Harry at an older age.