“The End of the Road” by John Barth

I don’t even know what to think about this book.

Jacob "Jake" Horner has been under the care of a doctor for Remobilization Therapy for the past two years. (What is Remobilization Therapy, you may ask? It is intended to resolve Jake's inability to make a decision, which is severe enough that it rendered him practically catatonic in a train station for more than a day.) Now twenty-eight, and having floated between temporary jobs throughout his therapy, his doctor has told him to take a teaching position at Wicomico State Teacher's College in Maryland. So he does. 

There Jake meets fellow teacher Joe Morgan and his wife Rennie. Joe and Jake are both highly intelligent, but beyond that they are opposites: married vs single, a parent vs childless, but most importantly, their ways of thinking are diametrically opposed. Joe is decisive and opinionated, sees everything in black and white, and wants everything defined and discussed. He has a very strong (if strange) identity. Whereas for Jake, all of life is a gray area. He avoids making decisions, is impossible to pin down in a debate because he has no strongly-held beliefs, and when asked what he thinks about something, his most frequent answer is "I don't know"--not because he finds it difficult to express what he thinks, but because he just doesn't think about that thing. He has an almost complete absence of identity.

I usually try to avoid spoilers in my blog posts, but I'm just going to lay it all out for this one, partly because it was written decades ago so it's not likely that you've been waiting all this time for just the right moment to read this book, and partly because I'm a bit baffled and maybe I'll figure something out as I type. So here we go. Jake, Joe and Rennie become close friends, spending a lot of time together and having deep philosophical conversations that mostly just flew right over my head. Then one night when Joe is out of town, with no preamble or even much of a hint of sexual tension, Jake and Rennie end up in bed together--Jake because he's just going with the flow and not making any decisions, and Rennie because--well, I don't know that she ever gives a reason, but afterwards she's definitely regretful. After a few agonizing days, she confesses to Joe, who reacts in a very Joe way and wants to understand the motives behind their betrayal. He obviously finds it very unsatisfying that Jake can't provide any explanation. So Joe basically decides to force Jake and Rennie to continue their affair until they can come up with an explanation . . . and after a month or so, Rennie ends up pregnant, but there's no way to know who the father is . . . and she ends up dying from aspiration of vomit while under ether for an abortion performed by Jake's Remobilization Therapist. And I was left thinking, WTF was all of that? I feel sure it was rife with symbolism and allegory, but I'm not sure what the hidden meaning was. The whole thing left me feeling a bit unsettled and off balance. And (if you're ready for an embarrassing confession) it didn't help that throughout most of the book I had conflated John Barth with Roland Barthes. 

So I'll wrap up with a thought about the ending. While abortion is not what this book is about, it's obviously a major plot point, and it portrays a horrifying experience that leaves a woman dead. Here's what I find interesting: I know that some people would read this and say, see, this is why women shouldn’t be allowed to have abortions. But others would read this and say, see, this is why abortion should be legal . . . so that it can safely be performed by a trained doctor rather than a Remobilization Therapist.