So...Rabbit, Run

Just finished it moments ago, and have taken in a few thoughts from everybody. So I'll start like this:

I find myself splitting the difference between John and Kyle in regards to identifying with Rabbit. Obviously there's a part of me that disregards the things I might find myself reacting to or identifying with initially, just because he's such a bastard. Objectively though, it's hard not to see in myself that impatience and lack of direction and making a choice because of what I feel opposed to what I think or know. But I don't think it's Rabbit's impulses that make him a bad guy. I think it's that he constantly allows himself to act on those impulses. Or maybe not even allows himself to act on them, but that he can't help but act on them. Maturity or adulthood seems very much determined by a person's ability to do what they said they would, or what they know they should do. I agree with Kyle in that there are decisions we make because others have already made those decisions for us, and we never questioned them, but second-guessing scholasticism as a sophomore in college is very different then second-guessing fatherhood with a wife, a two-year-old and another child on the way. Maybe it's even as simple as the equation changing once you become responsible to somebody else. For my part, you just can't run out on your kids. If a relationship doesn't work, fundamentally has problems, you reconsider, but you do it in the interest of your children.

Another aspect that I kept coming back to is the fact that this was written in a different time. I think that superficially the male and female relationships aren't that different, or at least aren't that startling. I think Rabbit slapping Mrs. Eccles on the ass is an interesting moment, in the same way it's interesting to watch an episode of Mad Men, but it doesn't shock me because it's the way I understand the male/female dynamic of this other era to be. However, it is very hard to empathize with the way sex is handled. I think Kyle's right in the way that it's a power thing, but I don't think it's the women who hold that power. It seems that here, men hold this power, and in Rabbit's case, what he has isn't enough. Again, the bj scene is a good example, as is the scene with Rabbit and Janice in bed after the birth. For Rabbit to approach these moments as though he's owed something just speaks to the larger sense of entitlement that he's pretty consistently walking around with. He can wrap it up in whatever kind of insecurity or neediness he wants to, but ultimately he's just an overgrown kid who wants what he wants.

The more I think about it, the more psychotic Rabbit seems to me. He's so sensitive to everything and there's something in every moment that could potentially invert his feelings about a person or place. The way that he can love a woman (Janice or Ruth) one moment and the next be repulsed by her facial expression to the point that he questions his entire opinion of her. He lives so much in each moment I suppose, that he can't help but act as erratically as he does, but it's still so off-putting. You can't really trust him from one moment to the next. Then again, I suppose that's the jumping off point of this entire story, so I shouldn't complain too much.

In the end I really did enjoy it. All the things that bothered me about the character motivated a really interested story. I will even admit that I enjoyed the run-on sentences for the most part. I think that type of writing is as close as I'll ever get to actually appreciating poetry. Also, I recently read American Pastoral by Philip Roth, and that dude's sentences go on for fucking ever. It was much more tedious in that case than here. Admittedly though, I don't really know what to make of the end. I guess he's running again?