titles / Rabbit Punches by Jason Ockert
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July/August 2006 - The Bloomsbury Review
If you are interested only in conventional, time-proven storytelling, then Rabbit Punches is not
for you. But if you like literary surprises, pleasantly weird characters, and plots that stand on
their heads and even cartwheel, then check out this short story collection.
One word to describe it? Kafkaesque. The 13 stories that comprise the collection are connected only by
their absurdity and perhaps by the fact that many of them take place in south Florida. They vary in length
but not in amusement. Two of them, “Shirtless Others” at one-and-a-half pages, and “Slight” at
two-and-a-half pages, can be classified as the darlings of the literary genre called flash fiction.
How about this tasty brief, this preview of what is awaiting the reader? A woman is launching balloons
with index cards stating her address and her desire to have a baby. A delivery boy wants to play Zorro to an
older woman dreaming of a naughty romance. A dictionary salesman engages in wordplay, making love
to his boss’ wife with “perfervidium ingenium,” until she kicks him out of the tree house. “Some Storm” and
“Mother May I” tell the same story from, respectively, brother’s and sister’s perspectives.
The rabbit hands on the cover of the book are not Jason Ockert’s hands, but the style is uniquely his.
The language of the book is solid throughout, the characters are punchy, and imagination takes flight
and is never grounded by either the weather or a sharp turn.
Follow the rabbit hole of this debut collection by an Ithaca College creative-writing professor, and you
will lose yourself in its depth. I profess that much.
Reviewed by Mark Budman
March 14, 2006 - Chicago Reader (Critic's Choice):
Reading Jason Ockert's debut collection, Rabbit Punches (Low Fidelity), is like getting lost on a road
trip: you start off fine, following your map, but still somehow wind up in a place you never saw coming.
Populated with earnest characters in mainly small-town and southern settings (Ockert was born in
Indiana and raised in Florida), the 13 stories are quirky and unsettling, full of unexpected turns. In
"Infants and Men" a dictionary salesman promoted to lexicographer has an affair with his boss's wife. He
gets amnesia after she kicks him out of a tree house but for decidedly base reasons remains in his boss's
family's care; the dialogue of the vocabulary-loving characters is especially funny. In "Some Storm" a
young man is trying to find a suitable husband for his pregnant sister. He figures whoever can knock him off
a hill in a fight would do, though those who show up to try leave plenty to be desired: "some fathers
already, a dog-catcher, a few haggard boys, alcoholics, Uncle Tim." Other stories involve a
peanut salesman who becomes a Bible hawker after arm wrestling "a man who may have been Jesus," a golf
course mower passing himself off as a toad photographer to land a National Geographic Society
gig, and an awkward boy acting on his infatuation with a girl at an annual scarecrow contest. Ockert's
characters seem to be longing for someone or something, and while you really pull for them to
attain it, they all fall...just...short. --Jerome Ludwig
March 27, 2006 - Publishers Weekly:
"Ockert's debut features 13 stories, a host of quirky characters and strange plots grounded in a reality that is as disturbing as it is whimsical. In one story, a young boy feeds ticks into a sleeping child's ear while a man prepares to arm wrestle Jesus. Though Ockert's voice is still developing, his beautiful and unexpected imagery make him a writer to be watched." Copyright © 1997-2005 Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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