John Updike was a friend of mine. In fact, he was like a brother, a father, and a grand shaman wrapped up in one. He was my confessor, my priest and my Rasputin.
His most seminal work was his novel Rabbit Run, about a former high school athlete whose greatness is behind him, and how he may have peaked too early in his life-- I was that man!
When Updike wrote about Rabbit, he had me in mind. This story goes way back to the early sixties.
I was married, living in Scranton P A with a wife and three kids-- but, I was twenty six, young and had alot of wild oats to sow; and sow them I did. One day, while I was out buying milk for the family, I got this wild hair and decided to go on a soul searching trip to Florida.
Somewhere On The Road, in Wheeling West Virginia, I had the epiphany that I wanted to be a writer. This was followed by a dream I had while in a tormented, fitful, sleep that I was Stud's Turkel-- only I was a bull dog version of the literary giant.
Well, that's appropriate, because at this time I was a dog with a bone and I was chewing on it until my gums turned raw. That early morning, I woke up in an icy sweat an begin writing my first novel on a roll of toilet paper. This book would turn into to the great cult classic called On The Road And Frolicking Like A Jack Rabbit.
It was part long, snaky Beat poem and part guide through the underbelly that was rural America in the early sixties. The book is full of hallucinatory observations on the vexations of the human condition out in the hinterlands between the east an left coast of the USA.
When the book was eventually published, by Pinnacle Books, years later, it met with only minor success. But John Updike's agent picked it up one day, read it, and then handed the dog-eared and loved copy to the author. He read it, loved it and tracked me down through the use of a sleazy dime store PI. We have been friends ever since.
From then on I inhaled and John exhaled. He often quoted from On The Road And Frolicking Like A Jack Rabbit. It became his Bible, Torah and Koran bundled up like a Christmas present--he idolized me.
It must have been my hep cat cool-- the way I held my Virginia Slim in the cubic zirconium encrusted cigarette holder. Anybody could blow smoke through their nose--but not everybody could gag profusely while they were doing it!
Eventually, John began to dress like me and sported the same kind rakish floppy hat I wore in those days. Well one thing led to another, and he ended up writing Rabbit Run( the fact that he included "Rabbit" in his title was no accident).
You see the more Updike read On The Road And Frolicking Like A Jack Rabbit, the more he became obsessed with rabbits in general. He studied them. Their moving parts. Their scatological waste.
In a fit of method acting, he dressed up like a rabbit, dipped his fluffy little rabbit tail in paint, and set up an easel and canvas and did some contour painting-- you know just dabbing his tail here and there on the cloth? He tried to sell that painting to an art gallery in West Hollywood, but was roughly and curtly shown the door. Apparently the gallery owner saw the work of art and vomited all over some valuable Salvador Dali prints. Updike, understandably so, was devastated. But he came to terms with the fact that painting was not his calling and that only steeled his resolve to finish Rabbit Run-- and stole he did, there are practically verbatim passages in his book from On The Road And Frolicking Like A Jack Rabbit. But that's OK. I am happy to know that my book, part confessional, part bromance with the great rugged, individualistic Hemingway man that is America, was the spark that launched a very lucrative series for Mr. Updike.
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