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Rabbit Punches: Stories
Riotously funny, beautifully written, and charged with emotional intelligence, this well-crafted debut investigates the world from the fringe through characters who stray so far from convention they seem to inhabit another universe. Whether it's Alston Goldstein ferrying drugs around Florida on his yellow moped, a young man fighting his entire neighborhood to find a suitable husband for his pregnant sister, or a man preparing to arm wrestle Jesus, these 13 stories hinge on the interplay between middle-class normality and capricious heroes, transporting readers to a tenderly evoked world where the real and the absurd at last make peace. This fictional masterpiece is for readers who love Americana, root for the underdog, and delight in the approach of the next great voice in southern eccentricity.
184 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published April 1, 2006
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
February 27, 2019
The stories in this collection are offbeat, quirky, and weird. Engaging, although the fabulist bent is not really to my taste.
September 18, 2012
Jason Ockert’s debut, Rabbit Punches, is a loosely connected collection of thirteen short stories. Set primarily in a rural Florida, the volume is reminiscent of Russell Banks’ Trailer Park in that some of the characters and actions span multiples stories. There are a few satisfying pieces of flash fiction (particularly “Slight,” in which a character goes to a hardware store to buy a length of rope and is asked, “Is this rope for hanging?”), but the collection’s strongest pieces are its’ four duologies, in which one story serves as a prelude to another.
The two best linked pairs flesh out the narrative by changing point of view in the second story. In “Some Storm,” for example, a teenage boy named Davey Blandford begins his narration, “My sister is pregnant and I am on the hill fighting to find her a suitable husband.” He throws down the gauntlet to any man who “even thought about rutting with my sister,” under the theory that anyone tough enough to defeat him would make a good husband and father. His sister, May-Renee, spends the story chained to the radiator in the basement while Davey fights her suitors one by one. In the follow-up tale, “Mother May I” (which initially appeared in McSweeney’s), the point of view shifts to third person and we gain access to May-Renee’s inner thoughts. We find that she has gotten pregnant on purpose because she wants her Alzheimer’s-stricken mother to meet her grandchild before she dies. “Some Storm,” with its humorous underlying premise and oddball cast of characters, is the more entertaining half, while “Mother May I” delves into more serious issues and gives us greater insight into its characters’ vulnerabilities. The two stories differ stylistically and emotionally, and taken together, they offer a more complete understanding of the fascinating family dynamics at play.
Similarly, ”Leaving” is told from the point of view of a dishonest teenage boy named Hodge, who feels his grandfather, Old Hodge, is driving a wedge between him and his beloved little sister, Polly. Old Hodge points out that Hodge’s dishonesty comes from his philandering father, Dan Meanus, who serves as the narrator in “Des.” In that story, Dan struggles to keep a hold on his family, and feels that volunteering as the pirate mascot for Hodge’s football game will help him do that. Dan suffers a very public breakdown while dressed in the pirate suit, which results in him pleading to his loved ones over the public address system and impotently firing his pretend cannon at an irate father. The use of two different narrators here is especially effective because the father and son are so distant from one another; without shifting points of view, we wouldn’t be able to understand both characters.
There are a number of themes running through these stories. The characters’ lives are often shaped by the absence of a parent. Laura-Leigh, the mother in “Some Storm” and “Mother May I,” is in a retirement community, and her alcoholic husband is not around when May-Renee reveals her pregnancy. Davey feels obligated to take action because his parents are not there to do something. Likewise, in “Scarecrowed” and “Horseshoes,” Scottie, a seventeen-year-old high school dropout, must care for his stroke-paralyzed mother because his father “left but sends money every month in cards that explain his love.” Again a boy is forced to lead a family because of his parents’ inability or unwillingness to do so.
Aside from May-Renee in “Mother May I” and Dan Meanus in “Des,” all of the protagonists are young men or boys who are attracted to sexually-experienced and often older women. In “Infants and Men,” Deet, a dictionary salesman, has an affair with the wife of the owner of Causeway Dictionaries, whose vocabulary has been enhanced by her husband’s vocation (“Can’t you understand that you’re still an adolescent chanticleer?” she asks). Ockert takes this to the extreme in “Deviated Septum,” when Alston Goldstein, an eighteen-year-old virgin, tries to seduce Izzy, a nearly-catatonic nursing home resident. Even where there is no age difference, the male characters are still more naïve then their love interests. In “Adrift and Distant,” Reg Reed contracts herpes from a librarian, before she leaves him for her one-legged ex-boyfriend. In “Scarecrowed,” Scottie is obsessed by the thought that his eighteen-year-old neighbor may have had an abortion before he reveals to her his ignorance of the female anatomy. While Deet is certainly burned by Mrs. Causeway in “Infants and Men,” the other protagonists are not exploited for their inexperience. Even Reg, who finds himself infected and neglected in “Adrift and Distant,” went into the relationship with eyes wide open. These are not cautionary tales, but merely stories built around characters with a sort of innocence that causes them to grope blindly in their individual quests for love.
Ockert’s heroes seldom get through these stories unscathed. Another recurring theme is their propensity for suffering physical injuries. Even the flash fiction pieces manage to describe a disemboweled shark (“Shirtless Others”), a suicide (“Slight”), and a pre-schooler who gets ticks blown in his ear with a straw (“Terrified by Raisins”). In the longer works, the main characters’ sustain minor injuries like a bike crash (“Leaving”) or a punch to the chin (“Des”), as well as more critical ones. In “Infants and Men,” Deet is paralyzed after his lover literally kicks him out, while Reg in “Adrift and Distant” receives an even harder kick from a rampaging elephant.
As in T.C. Boyle’s Tooth and Claw, animals play a significant role in these stories. The rampaging elephant even appears in two stories, first as a news item in “Deviated Septum,” but then more centrally in “Adrift and Distant.” Echoing Aesop’s “The Lion and the Mouse,” Reg discovers that the source of the elephant’s rage is a railroad spike driven into its foot. The elephant is less grateful than Aesop’s lion, however, and knocks Reg unconscious, although this is not to say Reg’s good deed goes unrewarded. Ockert plays around with folklore again in “Des,” where Dan’s daughter PieDoll crossed the path of a black cat who is later hit by a car; this convinces her that she herself is the source of bad luck. In “Leaving,” Young Hodge unsuccessfully attempts to nurse an injured squirrel back to health; his grandfather teases him by fishing the dead squirrel out of the garbage and sewing its tail onto a baseball cap. In the opening story, “Infants and Men,” Deet wants to marry Mrs. Causeway and raise her daughter, Chauncey, but winds up paralyzed. In the collection’s final story, “Milkweed,” we find out Deet doesn’t get a wife or daughter, but he did wind up with the Causeway’s dog, Ray, “the mutt who encouraged me to walk again.” After Ray gets sprayed by a skunk, Deet hesitates before showing the dog affection; this failure to return his unconditional love causes Ray to leave him in the middle of the night and then “the difference between Ray and God is that God’s still around.”
Ockert’s characters also idealize the innocence of young girls. In “Infants and Men,” the Causeway’s daughter is always “angel Chauncey,” even though we get the feeling she is more worldly than Deet realizes. In “Des,” Dan’s daughter PieDoll is the member of his family he most admires, even though she “is smarter than me, she’s over my head” and has started ridiculing him. Ockert’s characters also are frequently disturbed by the lack of innocence in older girls. In “Some Storm,” Davey’s description of sex with his sister as “rutting” paints the act as savage and animalistic. Similarly, in “Scarecrowed,” Scottie feels compelled to find out who may have impregnated his neighbor, although the neighborhood rumors clearly send him down the wrong path.
Each story in Rabbit Punches exists in its own world while simultaneously inhabiting the collection’s larger universe. The characters are all richly drawn and quirky, both lovable and despicable all at once. It is hard not to cheer for these oddballs on their unusual quests. Ockert has a way of making the fantastic seem plausible, even inevitable, and he blends pathos and humor well. 'Rabbit Punches' is an extraordinary first effort by an exciting young talent, and I’m looking forward to his second collection due out next year.
The two best linked pairs flesh out the narrative by changing point of view in the second story. In “Some Storm,” for example, a teenage boy named Davey Blandford begins his narration, “My sister is pregnant and I am on the hill fighting to find her a suitable husband.” He throws down the gauntlet to any man who “even thought about rutting with my sister,” under the theory that anyone tough enough to defeat him would make a good husband and father. His sister, May-Renee, spends the story chained to the radiator in the basement while Davey fights her suitors one by one. In the follow-up tale, “Mother May I” (which initially appeared in McSweeney’s), the point of view shifts to third person and we gain access to May-Renee’s inner thoughts. We find that she has gotten pregnant on purpose because she wants her Alzheimer’s-stricken mother to meet her grandchild before she dies. “Some Storm,” with its humorous underlying premise and oddball cast of characters, is the more entertaining half, while “Mother May I” delves into more serious issues and gives us greater insight into its characters’ vulnerabilities. The two stories differ stylistically and emotionally, and taken together, they offer a more complete understanding of the fascinating family dynamics at play.
Similarly, ”Leaving” is told from the point of view of a dishonest teenage boy named Hodge, who feels his grandfather, Old Hodge, is driving a wedge between him and his beloved little sister, Polly. Old Hodge points out that Hodge’s dishonesty comes from his philandering father, Dan Meanus, who serves as the narrator in “Des.” In that story, Dan struggles to keep a hold on his family, and feels that volunteering as the pirate mascot for Hodge’s football game will help him do that. Dan suffers a very public breakdown while dressed in the pirate suit, which results in him pleading to his loved ones over the public address system and impotently firing his pretend cannon at an irate father. The use of two different narrators here is especially effective because the father and son are so distant from one another; without shifting points of view, we wouldn’t be able to understand both characters.
There are a number of themes running through these stories. The characters’ lives are often shaped by the absence of a parent. Laura-Leigh, the mother in “Some Storm” and “Mother May I,” is in a retirement community, and her alcoholic husband is not around when May-Renee reveals her pregnancy. Davey feels obligated to take action because his parents are not there to do something. Likewise, in “Scarecrowed” and “Horseshoes,” Scottie, a seventeen-year-old high school dropout, must care for his stroke-paralyzed mother because his father “left but sends money every month in cards that explain his love.” Again a boy is forced to lead a family because of his parents’ inability or unwillingness to do so.
Aside from May-Renee in “Mother May I” and Dan Meanus in “Des,” all of the protagonists are young men or boys who are attracted to sexually-experienced and often older women. In “Infants and Men,” Deet, a dictionary salesman, has an affair with the wife of the owner of Causeway Dictionaries, whose vocabulary has been enhanced by her husband’s vocation (“Can’t you understand that you’re still an adolescent chanticleer?” she asks). Ockert takes this to the extreme in “Deviated Septum,” when Alston Goldstein, an eighteen-year-old virgin, tries to seduce Izzy, a nearly-catatonic nursing home resident. Even where there is no age difference, the male characters are still more naïve then their love interests. In “Adrift and Distant,” Reg Reed contracts herpes from a librarian, before she leaves him for her one-legged ex-boyfriend. In “Scarecrowed,” Scottie is obsessed by the thought that his eighteen-year-old neighbor may have had an abortion before he reveals to her his ignorance of the female anatomy. While Deet is certainly burned by Mrs. Causeway in “Infants and Men,” the other protagonists are not exploited for their inexperience. Even Reg, who finds himself infected and neglected in “Adrift and Distant,” went into the relationship with eyes wide open. These are not cautionary tales, but merely stories built around characters with a sort of innocence that causes them to grope blindly in their individual quests for love.
Ockert’s heroes seldom get through these stories unscathed. Another recurring theme is their propensity for suffering physical injuries. Even the flash fiction pieces manage to describe a disemboweled shark (“Shirtless Others”), a suicide (“Slight”), and a pre-schooler who gets ticks blown in his ear with a straw (“Terrified by Raisins”). In the longer works, the main characters’ sustain minor injuries like a bike crash (“Leaving”) or a punch to the chin (“Des”), as well as more critical ones. In “Infants and Men,” Deet is paralyzed after his lover literally kicks him out, while Reg in “Adrift and Distant” receives an even harder kick from a rampaging elephant.
As in T.C. Boyle’s Tooth and Claw, animals play a significant role in these stories. The rampaging elephant even appears in two stories, first as a news item in “Deviated Septum,” but then more centrally in “Adrift and Distant.” Echoing Aesop’s “The Lion and the Mouse,” Reg discovers that the source of the elephant’s rage is a railroad spike driven into its foot. The elephant is less grateful than Aesop’s lion, however, and knocks Reg unconscious, although this is not to say Reg’s good deed goes unrewarded. Ockert plays around with folklore again in “Des,” where Dan’s daughter PieDoll crossed the path of a black cat who is later hit by a car; this convinces her that she herself is the source of bad luck. In “Leaving,” Young Hodge unsuccessfully attempts to nurse an injured squirrel back to health; his grandfather teases him by fishing the dead squirrel out of the garbage and sewing its tail onto a baseball cap. In the opening story, “Infants and Men,” Deet wants to marry Mrs. Causeway and raise her daughter, Chauncey, but winds up paralyzed. In the collection’s final story, “Milkweed,” we find out Deet doesn’t get a wife or daughter, but he did wind up with the Causeway’s dog, Ray, “the mutt who encouraged me to walk again.” After Ray gets sprayed by a skunk, Deet hesitates before showing the dog affection; this failure to return his unconditional love causes Ray to leave him in the middle of the night and then “the difference between Ray and God is that God’s still around.”
Ockert’s characters also idealize the innocence of young girls. In “Infants and Men,” the Causeway’s daughter is always “angel Chauncey,” even though we get the feeling she is more worldly than Deet realizes. In “Des,” Dan’s daughter PieDoll is the member of his family he most admires, even though she “is smarter than me, she’s over my head” and has started ridiculing him. Ockert’s characters also are frequently disturbed by the lack of innocence in older girls. In “Some Storm,” Davey’s description of sex with his sister as “rutting” paints the act as savage and animalistic. Similarly, in “Scarecrowed,” Scottie feels compelled to find out who may have impregnated his neighbor, although the neighborhood rumors clearly send him down the wrong path.
Each story in Rabbit Punches exists in its own world while simultaneously inhabiting the collection’s larger universe. The characters are all richly drawn and quirky, both lovable and despicable all at once. It is hard not to cheer for these oddballs on their unusual quests. Ockert has a way of making the fantastic seem plausible, even inevitable, and he blends pathos and humor well. 'Rabbit Punches' is an extraordinary first effort by an exciting young talent, and I’m looking forward to his second collection due out next year.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 8, 2022
This is one of those rare ones that will stick with me. The kind of book that has me ordering the author's entire works, desperately needing more. I can't actually afford to do that, but I'm going to do it anyways. That's how good Rabbit Punches is.
Resounding 5.
Resounding 5.
November 15, 2022
What a fantastic collection of short stories. One of the best I’ve ever read. Mix of humor and sadness that makes you want to hate and love these characters. I can’t wait to read his other collection - Shadowland
October 23, 2007
wonderfully crisp and passionate short stories
February 24, 2008
ockert is one part harry crews, one part flannery o'connor, and two parts his own damn original thing. and the boy has range. uncategorizable is pretty much all that needs to be said.
March 31, 2008
really great stories. very imaginative and poetic.
March 30, 2011
Great book for study.
July 20, 2012
Darkly funny.
March 7, 2011
Raw, funny, unique. A very distinctive voice and a great story writer.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews