I read “Rabbit Run” when I was just starting to write seriously, piling up rejection slips from the Atlanta Monthly, Harper’s, the Hudson Review and Playboy. Sure, Rabbit Angstrom was a young middle class guy struggling with issues (angst?) a lot of young middle class guys go through. Not exactly the kind of epic struggles I wanted to write about, but John Updike could make his description of a piece of furniture seem epic, grand, pure poetry. The man was such a wonderful stylist it didn’t matter that he wrote about middle class America. I wanted to write like him. He was so good with words he made me feel forever inadequate as a writer.