The Diary of a Rapist. Evan S. Connell

      Two confessions: 1. A handsome first edition of this book sat on my bookshelf for years before I could bring myself to read it—the book arrived and I put it away, unopened, peculiarly disconcerted by what I feared I might find inside. 2. The current copy that I carry with me as I write this is a used paperback reissue from several years ago. It arrived with a paper EX LIBRIS bookplate decorated with three butterflies (a little too Nabokovian) and the mark of its previous owner, Courtney Biggs, in green ink. There is no sign of Courtney ever having cracked the spine. Did just the idea of The Diary of a Rapist—the title alone—put her off; was there something terrifying in the notion that a rapist might keep a diary, might now make us privy to his pervy thoughts? That was part of the problem for me—the fear of being overwhelmed at either extreme, icked out or seduced. What is the power of this book—how does it work on us? Does the writer, Evan S. Connell, know too much? And what exactly is that—too much? Something deep and dark about us as humans, something about American society, something about the twists our need for affection, validation, and power can take? Connell offers the reader a challenge, a chance to locate oneself in the notions his character posits—“...when that moment comes—that one instant when we’ve got the power either to love or hate, with nothing in between, how often do we hesitate?”

      On the surface what is unsettling about this book is how different it is from the author’s best-known books. Connell is a writer’s writer, author of eighteen books—the most well known of which, the Bridge novels and Son of the Morning Star, are remarkable for precise rendering of the delicate hues of the ordinary, the everyday, capturing subtle if sometimes strained exchanges, intercourse—in the way that our English teachers meant for the word to be used. He has delivered us the upper-middle-class Kansas City of his youth in the two Bridge novels, a historic and insightful rendering of General Custer in Son of the Morning Star, he has charmed us with his craftsmanship and artistry in his volumes of poems, short stories, and most recently a book on the life of eighteenth-century painter Francisco Goya.

      Throughout there is a glassy calm, a discrete breath-holding quietude that one hardly suspects could flip itself into the sharp, unapologetic, confrontational Diary of a Rapist. The Diary of a Rapist is about rage; rage lurking just beneath the surface, bubbling up, seeping out, staining us, poking at us, reminding us of what has happened, what might happen, what will happen if we don’t watch out.

      One reason this book might not be so well known is because it is uncharacteristic of the artist’s oeuvre. Then again, one of the things that has kept Connell less known than he should be is that his oeuvre isn’t easily described: his territory shifts with each volume, absenting him from categorization. Eccentric, idiosyncratic, he writes what he wants. Throughout his body of work there is a consistent clarity, an unblinking authorial eye that doesn’t render judgment but simply presents his characters real and imagined, writ large and small, leaving room for the reader to participate in the creation of the narrative.

      And while one likes to think of readers as smart souls who read not just to be entertained but to travel the mind’s eye, one is ever aware that we’ve devolved into a society that rushes to be entertained, made to feel happier, lighter, thinner, less depressed.

      The Diary of a Rapist is the dark and unpleasant story of Earl Summerfield, a civil servant in his twenties working as an interview officer in the State Unemployment Bureau, and his wife Bianca, a schoolteacher seven years his senior. It is a portrait of a man unraveling; like a spool of string being taken for a run by a kite, Earl is taken for a run by his fantasy life, slipping out of control as the string pulls in one inevitable direction. Early on Earl confesses, knowing the truth—his fear—that he is what he accuses others of being: boring. Summerfield is numbed by the narcotizing effect of routine, the petty politics of office life. “Wiggle my toes for amusement. Look down at my shoes to see if the leather’s got any new cracks.” His diary charts the minutiae of his existence; how he sleeps, what he eats, the weather, the passage of time, etc. With the same obsessive, cruel detail that he observes—and judges—everyone around him, Earl is on himself—at one moment filled with a nauseating self-loathing and the next applauding the superiority of his intellect. These emotional shifts become a series of stress fractures, allowing or forcing Earl to move away from reality and further into a fantasy life. But what is real and what is imagined? Hold that thought and play it against Earl’s increasing consumption of newspaper accounts of crimes—stories of men and women robbed, stabbed, beaten to death, throats slit, cut to pieces.

      These seemingly random attacks horrify him, make him wonder what kind of world we’re living in—he is “beginning to think we’ve gotten to be the most savage nation on earth. Not so peaceful and charitable and decent as we claim.” And as surprised and horrified as he is, there’s something more; Earl is eerily close to the impulses and information reported, like an arsonist returning to the scene. And though these crimes are not Earl’s doing, does reading about them not only infuriate him but on some level prompt him to believe there is a place in this world for such activity?

      As his obsession with crimes builds, so too does his interest in punishment, leading him to chart several criminals’ progress towards the death chamber. He also makes multiple references to Church and God, calling into question the power the Church holds over those who believe. And then there is Earl’s terribly troubled relationship to women and to his own sense of masculinity. He writes about Bianca plucking a hair from her chin, and wonders why she plucks it when she so clearly wants to be a man, and is more of a man than he. On Valentine’s Day he treats himself to a bath—wondering if he is more of a woman than his wife, liking this seemingly