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The Diary of a Rapist: A Novel
The story begins with the unhappy marriage of junior clerk Earl Summerfield to the much older Bianca. Feeling victimized by his cold wife and mocking superiors at work, Earl decides to keep a diary, a chronicle of his apparently crumbling marital relations, the paranoia and abuses he is seemingly forced to tolerate at work, and the world around him going to pieces in 1960’s San Francisco. What he sees, what he says, what he wants to say – everything swarms his head and consciousness, inciting and fueling fantasies of love, ambition, and avenging the violent crimes with which he was become obsessed. His angry and unstable mind alternates between feelings of apprehension and disgust, and exploring his own violent, sexual fantasies, and Earl takes action first by breaking into other peoples’ houses and then fixating on various women, before settling with utmost and troubling certainty on the local beauty queen, Mara St. John’s.
This unnerving work is a contemplation of the middle-class existence in a changing world, narrated by an unstable man held hostage by his deteriorating mental state.
This unnerving work is a contemplation of the middle-class existence in a changing world, narrated by an unstable man held hostage by his deteriorating mental state.
256 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1966
18 people are currently reading
1166 people want to read
About the author
Evan S. Connell
42 books153 followersEvan Shelby Connell Jr. (August 17, 1924 – January 10, 2013) was a U.S. novelist, poet, and short-story writer. His writing covered a variety of genres, although he published most frequently in fiction.
In 2009, Connell was nominated for the Man Booker International Prize, for lifetime achievement. On April 23, 2010, he was awarded a Los Angeles Times Book Prize: the Robert Kirsch Award, for "a living author with a substantial connection to the American West, whose contribution to American letters deserves special recognition."
Connell was born in Kansas City, Missouri, the only son of Evan S. Connell, Sr. (1890–1974), a physician, and Ruth Elton Connell. He had a sister Barbara (Mrs. Matthew Zimmermann) to whom he dedicated his novel Mrs. Bridge (1959). He graduated from Southwest High School in Kansas City in 1941. He started undergraduate work at Dartmouth College but joined the Navy in 1943 and became a pilot. After the end of World War II, he graduated from the University of Kansas in 1947, with a B.A. in English. He studied creative writing at Columbia University in New York and Stanford University in California. He never married, and lived and worked in Sausalito, California for decades.
(Wikipedia)
In 2009, Connell was nominated for the Man Booker International Prize, for lifetime achievement. On April 23, 2010, he was awarded a Los Angeles Times Book Prize: the Robert Kirsch Award, for "a living author with a substantial connection to the American West, whose contribution to American letters deserves special recognition."
Connell was born in Kansas City, Missouri, the only son of Evan S. Connell, Sr. (1890–1974), a physician, and Ruth Elton Connell. He had a sister Barbara (Mrs. Matthew Zimmermann) to whom he dedicated his novel Mrs. Bridge (1959). He graduated from Southwest High School in Kansas City in 1941. He started undergraduate work at Dartmouth College but joined the Navy in 1943 and became a pilot. After the end of World War II, he graduated from the University of Kansas in 1947, with a B.A. in English. He studied creative writing at Columbia University in New York and Stanford University in California. He never married, and lived and worked in Sausalito, California for decades.
(Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 86 reviews
February 22, 2008
This book makes for great subway reading because no one will sit next to you if they notice the title.
January 16, 2012
This epistolary noir confessional is most definitely an acquired taste, like marmite and Heston Blumenthal’s mince pies.
And, it encumbers me to digress and consider such housekeeping points as how is it possible to give it four stars : the same four stars I gave Anna Karenina. They are each worth four stars to me yet there can be no question of comparison. I’m beset now with thoughts about stars for different categories, in which case delineations of high and low church reading arise, which is one remove from unacceptable literary snobbery, but then on the other hand, a Tolstoi star just can’t be equivalent to a Connell star, meaning the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, but on the other, other hand, a four star experience is just that, regardless how it was derived: haute or naught, but on the other, other, other hand, if it’s a question of the journey rather than the destination (i.e. the four star outcome), then surely the whole could be less than the sum of its parts for at least one of those novels. But on the other, other, other, other hand……bloody hell, I’ve used up my Kali allowance.
I think its becoming clear we are talking low brow, sordid, essence de lowest common denominator literature here. Earl Summerfield is a 26 year old corporate apparatchik in 1960’s San Francisco and life seems to be passing him by.
Now, here is how things are going to pan out in terms of readership appreciation for Earl. For those entrepreneurial spirits who criss -cross states, oceans and continents following, nay, creating life opportunities, changing careers (not just jobs) as the Calling beckons, cultivating hobbies and accreting club/organisational affiliations, Earl can’t seem to be a real character: surely he must be some exaggerated, overblown fictional caricature created to justify Connell’s perverse inclinations.
But many others will understand exactly who and what Earl is: a mediocre man straightjacketed in a bland but cushy government job without the courage, inspiration, ambition, imagination or ability to either get the internal coveted promotion or switch jobs/pursue some other career. Earl, however, is not a loser; he is to some extent ‘everyman’: seduced by a secure, if boring job, locked-in risk averse mode, unable to contemplate change, yet fully aware of the futility of his own life: just not able to do a thing about it, and vacillating from feelings of inadequacy to feelings of grandeur (perhaps hes bipolar?)
The problem of course, is that this self awareness of the minutiae of life creates an emotional impasse which needs release of some kind. For some it might be the impetus necessary to make life changes: in terms of a partner, or a job. Earl, unable to manipulate the factors of his ‘real life’, including his distant wife, Bianca, creates an outlay for all this pent up frustration through a hazy ‘second life’ where he may, or may not actually have raped a local beauty queen.
The subtlety of this novel is that one is never sure what, if anything Earl recounts, is real. Certainly as the diary evolves it appears as if though Earl is descending into madness, although it is perfectly possible that he is as mad as a hatter from the very beginning, there are signs to corroborate both premises. In fact, one could even argue that Earl is not insane at all: just disillusioned and, isolated as he is from other people, developing a private world where the normative is rearranged. In particular, he decides that the woman he (allegedly) raped, actually enjoyed the experience and secretly wishes he would contact her again. Is this enough to label someone a madman? Earl is looking for a way to justify/excuse his behaviour (if indeed he did rape the woman) in his private world.
Its hard to actually recommend this gritty noir but it worked for me.
And, it encumbers me to digress and consider such housekeeping points as how is it possible to give it four stars : the same four stars I gave Anna Karenina. They are each worth four stars to me yet there can be no question of comparison. I’m beset now with thoughts about stars for different categories, in which case delineations of high and low church reading arise, which is one remove from unacceptable literary snobbery, but then on the other hand, a Tolstoi star just can’t be equivalent to a Connell star, meaning the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, but on the other, other hand, a four star experience is just that, regardless how it was derived: haute or naught, but on the other, other, other hand, if it’s a question of the journey rather than the destination (i.e. the four star outcome), then surely the whole could be less than the sum of its parts for at least one of those novels. But on the other, other, other, other hand……bloody hell, I’ve used up my Kali allowance.
I think its becoming clear we are talking low brow, sordid, essence de lowest common denominator literature here. Earl Summerfield is a 26 year old corporate apparatchik in 1960’s San Francisco and life seems to be passing him by.
Now, here is how things are going to pan out in terms of readership appreciation for Earl. For those entrepreneurial spirits who criss -cross states, oceans and continents following, nay, creating life opportunities, changing careers (not just jobs) as the Calling beckons, cultivating hobbies and accreting club/organisational affiliations, Earl can’t seem to be a real character: surely he must be some exaggerated, overblown fictional caricature created to justify Connell’s perverse inclinations.
But many others will understand exactly who and what Earl is: a mediocre man straightjacketed in a bland but cushy government job without the courage, inspiration, ambition, imagination or ability to either get the internal coveted promotion or switch jobs/pursue some other career. Earl, however, is not a loser; he is to some extent ‘everyman’: seduced by a secure, if boring job, locked-in risk averse mode, unable to contemplate change, yet fully aware of the futility of his own life: just not able to do a thing about it, and vacillating from feelings of inadequacy to feelings of grandeur (perhaps hes bipolar?)
The problem of course, is that this self awareness of the minutiae of life creates an emotional impasse which needs release of some kind. For some it might be the impetus necessary to make life changes: in terms of a partner, or a job. Earl, unable to manipulate the factors of his ‘real life’, including his distant wife, Bianca, creates an outlay for all this pent up frustration through a hazy ‘second life’ where he may, or may not actually have raped a local beauty queen.
The subtlety of this novel is that one is never sure what, if anything Earl recounts, is real. Certainly as the diary evolves it appears as if though Earl is descending into madness, although it is perfectly possible that he is as mad as a hatter from the very beginning, there are signs to corroborate both premises. In fact, one could even argue that Earl is not insane at all: just disillusioned and, isolated as he is from other people, developing a private world where the normative is rearranged. In particular, he decides that the woman he (allegedly) raped, actually enjoyed the experience and secretly wishes he would contact her again. Is this enough to label someone a madman? Earl is looking for a way to justify/excuse his behaviour (if indeed he did rape the woman) in his private world.
Its hard to actually recommend this gritty noir but it worked for me.
October 4, 2014
Saturday, September 27
I used to pass by Half-Priced Books on the drive home from work and made a regular, weekly stop. Hence the pile on the desk and the shelf of To-Be-Reads. I no longer make that drive, but today, after a breakfast and book morning, I swung around and pulled up the potholed drive to HPB. Surely, there'd be some 'finds' after a two-week hiatus. And there were; although, I felt some sense of self-control at walking only four books up to the appropriately frumpy cashier. He looked through them and stopped at The Diary of a Rapist and said "Oh, this looks good. This is the guy who wrote ...." "The Custer book ....," I started. And together we said, "Son of the Morning Star." "You have to get past the title, of course," I said unnecessarily defensively, "but I like the author and the reviews I've read have been positive." "You know," Frumpy said, "I've read 35 books about Joseph Stalin. That doesn't make me an admirer." Such is the wisdom in a dialogue at HPB. I do not tell him that this is a first edition hardback and rare, as these things go, and that I am robbing him blind at $5.99. I don't say anything because this matters only to me and a handful of like-minded geeks and when I die there will be no unseemly fight between my heirs as to who gets this. I'm engrossed at the moment with Tove Jansson, so Mount TBR gets four books higher.
Sunday, September 28
Monday, September 29
Done with The True Deceiver and The Bone Clocks hasn't arrived yet, so time to choose. I'm drawn to the diary form and I like attempts to get inside a twisted mind; I've wanted to read Connell's fiction for some time; and it is on the top of the mountain....so it's January 1 and Earl Summerfield writes: Last night Bianca shook me awake and told me to stop grinding my teeth. Nothing gives her more satisfaction than to humiliate me. And off we go.
Tuesday, September 30
The cover of the first edition I'm reading (not listed in GR) is very cool: the first few diary entries are hand-written but forming a human face. It's a face without emotion, although the writing is certainly ardent. It looks like a goalie's mask. He writes: No man wants the deep purposes of his soul held up to study. A mask. And yet Connell surely intends to expose the Rapist's mind. Earl Summerfield? Who's that? Suicide or Counterfeit?
Wednesday, October 1
The Pirates lose 8-0 to the Giants in the Wild Card Game, humiliated. One and done. It will be a long Winter.
Thursday, October 2
Yes, when that moment comes--that one instant when we've got the power to either love or hate, with nothing in between, how often do we hesitate? I know the answer. Day after day we're humiliated, so why not seize the chance? Why not?
Connell is not talking about baseball.
I wondered, starting this, whether this would be one of those books where the author tries to place this villain close to an Everyman, where the reader would be made uncomfortable by seeing himself in the thoughts of an evil mind. But, no. Earl Summerfield is painted as caricature: paranoid, self-interested, whining, without remorse. Delusions of grandeur, while working as a clerk in the unemployment office. He despises women, the government, everyone but himself. He writes: Life begins to seem like a stone under water. So, whew.
Friday, October 3
The title of this book suggests that this will tell us how a Rapist thinks. The mistake would be thinking that there is one way all rapists think. I don't know if Connell intended that. At first, I thought so. I'm becoming less sure. If Earl Summerfield is actually a rapist (and you could argue he is just a twisted mind imagining he's a rapist), then he is the relatively rare type that plots his act, and one that attacks a stranger, one who is also a burglar. Of course, most rapists aren't like that. Most rapists know their victim(s). They are dates or boyfriends, husbands, fathers, uncles, grandfathers, teachers, coaches. The gnawing - and probably incorrect - thought by me that Connell was trying to channel all rapists through the voice of Earl Summerfield is doing the author a disservice.
Saturday, October 4
Summerfield's diary entries become more and more delusional. We will be left with the presaged question of whether our narrator is a Suicide or a Counterfeit. It became unimportant to me, which. Summerfield will never be Humbert Humbert. So much for my carefully purchased first-edition and the bounty of my estate.
This had moments though. On October 30, Summerfield wrote: There must be aspects of our nature that neither Faust nor the Devil could foresee. Imagine harboring such a chamber in your heart. Then opening a pristine Journal, on January 1, and trying to explain why you're grinding your teeth.
I used to pass by Half-Priced Books on the drive home from work and made a regular, weekly stop. Hence the pile on the desk and the shelf of To-Be-Reads. I no longer make that drive, but today, after a breakfast and book morning, I swung around and pulled up the potholed drive to HPB. Surely, there'd be some 'finds' after a two-week hiatus. And there were; although, I felt some sense of self-control at walking only four books up to the appropriately frumpy cashier. He looked through them and stopped at The Diary of a Rapist and said "Oh, this looks good. This is the guy who wrote ...." "The Custer book ....," I started. And together we said, "Son of the Morning Star." "You have to get past the title, of course," I said unnecessarily defensively, "but I like the author and the reviews I've read have been positive." "You know," Frumpy said, "I've read 35 books about Joseph Stalin. That doesn't make me an admirer." Such is the wisdom in a dialogue at HPB. I do not tell him that this is a first edition hardback and rare, as these things go, and that I am robbing him blind at $5.99. I don't say anything because this matters only to me and a handful of like-minded geeks and when I die there will be no unseemly fight between my heirs as to who gets this. I'm engrossed at the moment with Tove Jansson, so Mount TBR gets four books higher.
Sunday, September 28
Monday, September 29
Done with The True Deceiver and The Bone Clocks hasn't arrived yet, so time to choose. I'm drawn to the diary form and I like attempts to get inside a twisted mind; I've wanted to read Connell's fiction for some time; and it is on the top of the mountain....so it's January 1 and Earl Summerfield writes: Last night Bianca shook me awake and told me to stop grinding my teeth. Nothing gives her more satisfaction than to humiliate me. And off we go.
Tuesday, September 30
The cover of the first edition I'm reading (not listed in GR) is very cool: the first few diary entries are hand-written but forming a human face. It's a face without emotion, although the writing is certainly ardent. It looks like a goalie's mask. He writes: No man wants the deep purposes of his soul held up to study. A mask. And yet Connell surely intends to expose the Rapist's mind. Earl Summerfield? Who's that? Suicide or Counterfeit?
Wednesday, October 1
The Pirates lose 8-0 to the Giants in the Wild Card Game, humiliated. One and done. It will be a long Winter.
Thursday, October 2
Yes, when that moment comes--that one instant when we've got the power to either love or hate, with nothing in between, how often do we hesitate? I know the answer. Day after day we're humiliated, so why not seize the chance? Why not?
Connell is not talking about baseball.
I wondered, starting this, whether this would be one of those books where the author tries to place this villain close to an Everyman, where the reader would be made uncomfortable by seeing himself in the thoughts of an evil mind. But, no. Earl Summerfield is painted as caricature: paranoid, self-interested, whining, without remorse. Delusions of grandeur, while working as a clerk in the unemployment office. He despises women, the government, everyone but himself. He writes: Life begins to seem like a stone under water. So, whew.
Friday, October 3
The title of this book suggests that this will tell us how a Rapist thinks. The mistake would be thinking that there is one way all rapists think. I don't know if Connell intended that. At first, I thought so. I'm becoming less sure. If Earl Summerfield is actually a rapist (and you could argue he is just a twisted mind imagining he's a rapist), then he is the relatively rare type that plots his act, and one that attacks a stranger, one who is also a burglar. Of course, most rapists aren't like that. Most rapists know their victim(s). They are dates or boyfriends, husbands, fathers, uncles, grandfathers, teachers, coaches. The gnawing - and probably incorrect - thought by me that Connell was trying to channel all rapists through the voice of Earl Summerfield is doing the author a disservice.
Saturday, October 4
Summerfield's diary entries become more and more delusional. We will be left with the presaged question of whether our narrator is a Suicide or a Counterfeit. It became unimportant to me, which. Summerfield will never be Humbert Humbert. So much for my carefully purchased first-edition and the bounty of my estate.
This had moments though. On October 30, Summerfield wrote: There must be aspects of our nature that neither Faust nor the Devil could foresee. Imagine harboring such a chamber in your heart. Then opening a pristine Journal, on January 1, and trying to explain why you're grinding your teeth.
March 23, 2025
Probably not the best title to choose if you wanted to have a best seller, I don’t know how it would have been received in the 60’s when it was written but you would have to be in possession of a lot of self assurance to read this in public.
The title itself has shock value but is perhaps misleading. If it was written today it would probably be titled Diary of an Incel as it is the definition of the word that did not yet exist when it was written.
Earl Summerfield is a man of 26 but one who feels life has nothing to offer him. He is in a loveless marriage to a woman he loathes, he is in a job that is dull and keeps overlooking him for promotion, he is disenchanted with his homeland. His impotence breeds resentment and bitterness and eventually hatred. It is easy to see his misogyny as simply that, his hatred and urge to hurt women, to inflict humiliation on them as just another woman-hater but I would suggest that the period the book was written means that it is examining the changing power dynamic between the sexes. He is of an age where he probably saw women keeping home and tending the breadwinner who by having that role was positioned as head of the house and the decision maker and now he has a female boss, what he considers his promotion goes to a woman, his wife pays little attention to him. He is not even the king of his own castle – he has to leave or hide when his wife has her students over for their tutorials and to add insult to injury he feels the disdain and mockery that teenage girls show to everyone who is not a member of their inner circle. None of this is intended to justify his behaviour, more to contextualise the time and if we are discussing the crisis of masculinity that is affecting men now after decades of women working and equal rights it can only be imagined how much more pronounced it was for the boys of men who had been war heroes and were the boss at home and at work. He feels invisible and unsure what his role in society is,
“Going to work thought I’d act polite, held open the door for a group of women. Not one of them mentioned it, not one bothered to look at me. I might just as well be a pile of shit on the sidewalk.”
He is a man floundering, adrift. His weekends he wastes doing nothing productive – he has given up physical activities and instead spends the free hours he has imagining what punishment he’d inflict on the women he perceives as having slighted him by ignoring him.
The other strong parallel with today is his disillusionment with the media and the belief that he is being lied to on every level,
“….but now I’ve learned how things really are. I can’t be fooled any longer. Believe very little that I’m told, investigate for myself. The government lies to me and people on the street lie to me.”
This is a man who was born for today’s Twitter. In fact he would be at home in the UK right now as we throw our hands up and despair of young make incels after a tv drama, the distrust of politicians of every hue and even more strangely coincidentally the increasing belief that we have a two tier justice system that punishes minor crimes more severely than serious ones,
“Seems to me that civilisation is spinning toward the Pit…Those big-shot corporation executives the other day convicted by federal Grand Jury of conspiring to violate some regulation or other – millions of dollars involved, brigades of lawyers from 5th Avenue or wherever they have those swank offices. What’s the penalty? Tap on the wrist. Judge gives them “stern warning.” That’s about what I expected… But let Earl Summerfield swipe an apple – oh oh! Convicted of theft, fined, put on close probation. If I took two dozen apples I’d rot in jail.”
As his mental health deteriorates and his anger at the world increases he 0becomes an amalgam of several serial killers. Like the night stalker he creeps out at night and breaks into people’s homes just for the thrill of it, like BTK he dresses up in his wife’s underwear which just increases his hatred of women and belief that they think they are superior to him. The hatred of what he feels is unattainable,
“Last night laced myself into one of Bianca’s girdles, then put on stockings, hat with a veil, and paraded before the mirror. No wonder they are so arrogant. Flesh, hair, perfume & flimsy rags. Saw my shadow on the wall and thought the whore of Babylon was in the room.”
Incredibly this was written long before the crimes of either killer was known.
This is not a palatable book to read, it is as uncomfortable as it needs to be but Connell has managed to drag into the light a series of issues that we are only now, 50 years late, starting to look at. Never mind Kier Starmer trying to debate and shape public policy around a Netflix drama, anyone who wants to understand what is being termed ‘the crisis of masculinity’, to understand why some men feel adrift and unsure of the rules of the modern world should start by reading this. You may not agree and you almost certainly wont sympathise but there is some explanation in this wise exploration of the sidelined male.
The title itself has shock value but is perhaps misleading. If it was written today it would probably be titled Diary of an Incel as it is the definition of the word that did not yet exist when it was written.
Earl Summerfield is a man of 26 but one who feels life has nothing to offer him. He is in a loveless marriage to a woman he loathes, he is in a job that is dull and keeps overlooking him for promotion, he is disenchanted with his homeland. His impotence breeds resentment and bitterness and eventually hatred. It is easy to see his misogyny as simply that, his hatred and urge to hurt women, to inflict humiliation on them as just another woman-hater but I would suggest that the period the book was written means that it is examining the changing power dynamic between the sexes. He is of an age where he probably saw women keeping home and tending the breadwinner who by having that role was positioned as head of the house and the decision maker and now he has a female boss, what he considers his promotion goes to a woman, his wife pays little attention to him. He is not even the king of his own castle – he has to leave or hide when his wife has her students over for their tutorials and to add insult to injury he feels the disdain and mockery that teenage girls show to everyone who is not a member of their inner circle. None of this is intended to justify his behaviour, more to contextualise the time and if we are discussing the crisis of masculinity that is affecting men now after decades of women working and equal rights it can only be imagined how much more pronounced it was for the boys of men who had been war heroes and were the boss at home and at work. He feels invisible and unsure what his role in society is,
“Going to work thought I’d act polite, held open the door for a group of women. Not one of them mentioned it, not one bothered to look at me. I might just as well be a pile of shit on the sidewalk.”
He is a man floundering, adrift. His weekends he wastes doing nothing productive – he has given up physical activities and instead spends the free hours he has imagining what punishment he’d inflict on the women he perceives as having slighted him by ignoring him.
The other strong parallel with today is his disillusionment with the media and the belief that he is being lied to on every level,
“….but now I’ve learned how things really are. I can’t be fooled any longer. Believe very little that I’m told, investigate for myself. The government lies to me and people on the street lie to me.”
This is a man who was born for today’s Twitter. In fact he would be at home in the UK right now as we throw our hands up and despair of young make incels after a tv drama, the distrust of politicians of every hue and even more strangely coincidentally the increasing belief that we have a two tier justice system that punishes minor crimes more severely than serious ones,
“Seems to me that civilisation is spinning toward the Pit…Those big-shot corporation executives the other day convicted by federal Grand Jury of conspiring to violate some regulation or other – millions of dollars involved, brigades of lawyers from 5th Avenue or wherever they have those swank offices. What’s the penalty? Tap on the wrist. Judge gives them “stern warning.” That’s about what I expected… But let Earl Summerfield swipe an apple – oh oh! Convicted of theft, fined, put on close probation. If I took two dozen apples I’d rot in jail.”
As his mental health deteriorates and his anger at the world increases he 0becomes an amalgam of several serial killers. Like the night stalker he creeps out at night and breaks into people’s homes just for the thrill of it, like BTK he dresses up in his wife’s underwear which just increases his hatred of women and belief that they think they are superior to him. The hatred of what he feels is unattainable,
“Last night laced myself into one of Bianca’s girdles, then put on stockings, hat with a veil, and paraded before the mirror. No wonder they are so arrogant. Flesh, hair, perfume & flimsy rags. Saw my shadow on the wall and thought the whore of Babylon was in the room.”
Incredibly this was written long before the crimes of either killer was known.
This is not a palatable book to read, it is as uncomfortable as it needs to be but Connell has managed to drag into the light a series of issues that we are only now, 50 years late, starting to look at. Never mind Kier Starmer trying to debate and shape public policy around a Netflix drama, anyone who wants to understand what is being termed ‘the crisis of masculinity’, to understand why some men feel adrift and unsure of the rules of the modern world should start by reading this. You may not agree and you almost certainly wont sympathise but there is some explanation in this wise exploration of the sidelined male.
April 30, 2009
Wow. This was a damn good book. Disturbing? Yes. Frightening? Abso-fucking-lutely. Unnerving and breathtaking? You bet. But this has got to be the most daring, bold, courageous book I have ever read. Published in 1966, Connell took an enormous chance publishing this creepy, unorthodox story about a man's slow dissent into the pit of his own madness. I kept thinking, "holy shit!" It really got under my skin and crawled around a bit. I kept thinking, "this has got to be EXACTLY the way a rapist thinks." I don't know for sure, of course, and I have no idea how Connell accomplished it, but I can tell you that he did. He pulled off the impossible. I can't even imagine what kind of place he must have gone to in order to write this book, but I give him big props, HUGE props! I have an old copy, and one of the blurbs by The New York Times Book Review on the back does a good job explaining Connell's unique talent... "He knows all the colors of darkness and the full sound of the heart's anguish." Indeed, indeed.
Oh, and by the way, Connell, like Barth and Pynchon around the same time, also gives one hell of a sharp commentary on the state of the U.S. during that era - a slow slippage into apathy and complacency, later labeled as "postmodern" thought.
This is the fourth book I've read by Evan S. Connell, and I'm telling you, they just keep getting better. Seriously folks, if you haven't read any of his stuff you need to. I honestly think Connell might be the most underrated, overlooked writer of all time. I guess with a mind like his, you might guess that would be the case, but if I was doing some kind of dissertation or something, I'd write it on the brilliance of this man. Joyce Carol Oats called him "the most interesting and intelligent writer in America." I'm pretty sure he's still alive. I'd love to pick his brain. Somebody should write a biography or make a documentary or something. For reals! Read this book.
Oh, and by the way, Connell, like Barth and Pynchon around the same time, also gives one hell of a sharp commentary on the state of the U.S. during that era - a slow slippage into apathy and complacency, later labeled as "postmodern" thought.
This is the fourth book I've read by Evan S. Connell, and I'm telling you, they just keep getting better. Seriously folks, if you haven't read any of his stuff you need to. I honestly think Connell might be the most underrated, overlooked writer of all time. I guess with a mind like his, you might guess that would be the case, but if I was doing some kind of dissertation or something, I'd write it on the brilliance of this man. Joyce Carol Oats called him "the most interesting and intelligent writer in America." I'm pretty sure he's still alive. I'd love to pick his brain. Somebody should write a biography or make a documentary or something. For reals! Read this book.
December 27, 2015
When thinking of criminals; we tend to only think of them per the end product of their crime and don’t consider how they “got there” or their thoughts along the way. Evan Connell focuses on precisely this stage and state of mind in his novel, “The Diary of a Rapist”.
“The Diary of a Rapist” follows the fictional Earl Summerfield – a 26 year old man stuck in a miserable marriage with his wife Bianca and working at a dead end job in a governmental agency. At the end of the day, aside from these external elements, Earl is unhappy with himself. “The Diary of a Rapist” thus follows his degeneration into Crazy-town written in a diary-entry style. Each ‘chapter’ is a month and every day of the month has an entry.
Connell’s text is definitely not a ‘traditional’ novel. Even aside from it being penned as a diary; it varies in other ways such as not following a usual arc or character development. Yet, the reader truly learns the mind of Earl and his characterization feels quite real almost like some of his thoughts are your own: very relatable. This causes “The Diary of a Rapist” to feel very authentic and results in compelling reading.
“The Diary of a Rapist” is very much a character study (don’t expect dialogue) and therefore explores Earl’s mind along with life, philosophy, career, marriage, etc. None of this is forced, however, or feels the least bit pretentious. Again, “The Diary of a Rapist” is accessible and feels on common ground but with a deeper element that makes the reader think.
One of the most impressive traits of Connell’s novel is how subtle he makes Earl’s decline. Earl suddenly engages in ‘crazy’ and lewd behavior but he mentions it in an almost nonchalantly which is truly how the mind of a crazy person works and therefore makes the reader stop and think, “Wait… Did that just happen?” . Connell is quite good at literary devices and tactics.
On a negative note, oftentimes the entries are quite repetitive and nothing really happen in the story. Even though this reflects true life (many of our days are not remarkable); some readers may become quite bored or kept from continuing on (although the novel is a fast read, though).
Despite this slight repetitive behavior; “The Diary of a Rapist” picks up midway through with some excitement in the story line and a faster rhythmic pace. This can also be said of the concluding chapters in which Earl becomes crazier and therefore the story is more complex and enticing.
“The Diary of a Rapist” is a simple, unconventional, and yet compelling novel mixing elements of classic literature with a timeless piece. Connell’s work is unique and suggested for readers seeking a psychological character study but without being drawn out.
“The Diary of a Rapist” follows the fictional Earl Summerfield – a 26 year old man stuck in a miserable marriage with his wife Bianca and working at a dead end job in a governmental agency. At the end of the day, aside from these external elements, Earl is unhappy with himself. “The Diary of a Rapist” thus follows his degeneration into Crazy-town written in a diary-entry style. Each ‘chapter’ is a month and every day of the month has an entry.
Connell’s text is definitely not a ‘traditional’ novel. Even aside from it being penned as a diary; it varies in other ways such as not following a usual arc or character development. Yet, the reader truly learns the mind of Earl and his characterization feels quite real almost like some of his thoughts are your own: very relatable. This causes “The Diary of a Rapist” to feel very authentic and results in compelling reading.
“The Diary of a Rapist” is very much a character study (don’t expect dialogue) and therefore explores Earl’s mind along with life, philosophy, career, marriage, etc. None of this is forced, however, or feels the least bit pretentious. Again, “The Diary of a Rapist” is accessible and feels on common ground but with a deeper element that makes the reader think.
One of the most impressive traits of Connell’s novel is how subtle he makes Earl’s decline. Earl suddenly engages in ‘crazy’ and lewd behavior but he mentions it in an almost nonchalantly which is truly how the mind of a crazy person works and therefore makes the reader stop and think, “Wait… Did that just happen?” . Connell is quite good at literary devices and tactics.
On a negative note, oftentimes the entries are quite repetitive and nothing really happen in the story. Even though this reflects true life (many of our days are not remarkable); some readers may become quite bored or kept from continuing on (although the novel is a fast read, though).
Despite this slight repetitive behavior; “The Diary of a Rapist” picks up midway through with some excitement in the story line and a faster rhythmic pace. This can also be said of the concluding chapters in which Earl becomes crazier and therefore the story is more complex and enticing.
“The Diary of a Rapist” is a simple, unconventional, and yet compelling novel mixing elements of classic literature with a timeless piece. Connell’s work is unique and suggested for readers seeking a psychological character study but without being drawn out.
January 26, 2010
My god, I am a sucker for depictions of madness, and Earl Summerfield runs the gamut of many ways human madness can express itself. This is not the tale of someone descending into madness. It is the tale of a full-bore madman from the very beginning.
I generally do not read reviews of books before I review them myself but I read some other opinions out there before I began this review. There are some for whom Earl Summerfield is the precursor to the modern Everyman, a person made mad by the world around me. For me this did not ring true. Earl was not made mad. He is mad. He is mad because he is a misogynistic paranoid with violent tendencies. This conclusion did not make this book any the less a compelling read. Connell could not have done a better job painting a picture of a repellent, insane human being.
Read the rest of the review here: http://ireadoddbooks.com/?p=263
I generally do not read reviews of books before I review them myself but I read some other opinions out there before I began this review. There are some for whom Earl Summerfield is the precursor to the modern Everyman, a person made mad by the world around me. For me this did not ring true. Earl was not made mad. He is mad. He is mad because he is a misogynistic paranoid with violent tendencies. This conclusion did not make this book any the less a compelling read. Connell could not have done a better job painting a picture of a repellent, insane human being.
Read the rest of the review here: http://ireadoddbooks.com/?p=263
Read
October 8, 2024It’s obviously not an enjoyable read, but I found the prose to be interesting at times. Though this was published in 1967, I felt many parts were quite modern and like I could have been reading it from an incel forum or manifesto. The last third is a real slog and took me forever to get through. Can’t really recommend it to anyone but I’m not sorry I read it.
December 28, 2021
Evan S. Connell is a genius. Brutal, bleak, funny and brilliant, this disturbing novel exquisitely captures a certain strain of masculine self-loathing and misogyny, just this perfectly calibrated depiction of the kind of man who is absolutely twisted and destroyed by his own sour self-regard and hatred and the judgment he passes on an admittedly sick and insane and decaying world. In the way it claustrophobically and critically inhabits a suffering and demented mind, it reminds me of IN A LONELY PLACE by Dorothy Hughes, another NYRB reissue, and B.R. Yeager’s equally smart and upsetting NEGATIVE SPACE.
A.M. Homes' introduction: "We have continued to consume this foul reporting, this "news"—if you can call it that—as a kind of perverse/ erotic fish food addictively sprinkled onto our breakfast cereals; we eat it staring, numb, at the superbright colors of the flat-screen television, cruising through the hundreds of channels, nonstop twenty-four-hour news, real cop shows, fake cop shows... We have by now so confused reality and fantasy, our sense of the moral and the criminal, that we are often hard-pressed to tell the difference. The questions raised by Connell have become all the more prescient. What in fact are we consuming—are we eating ourselves alive?" (xii)
"News reports Alcatraz prison is Leaking. Leaking! Two convicts tunneled halfway through one of the walls with a spoon--a spoon! The place is collapsing, won't stand up much longer. Evil digs its way toward us. How soon is it going to reach us? Or is it already here but we haven't recognized it? I don't know. The world's gotten too big, complicated & dangerous. Voice of the Antichrist. Sand drifting over the walls of the city. Newscaster says America has developed some kind of new weapon powerful enough to destroy every form of life and authorities believe if it was used nothing could grow on the earth for at least a century. Strange that doesn't alarm me. My feeling is that if the end of the world's in sight, I don't care. I've had no part in it." (101).
"Getting ready for another war. It's about time. Hurrah! Also--m-m-m--vandals in a cemetery toppling gravestones. What a shabby circus, and nobody can convince me it isn't going to get worse" (120).
"Don't know what sort of reality this is. But it is. Reality of ordinary people. Oh, perhaps the day is going to come when we'll be as orderly as a herd of cattle with electrodes planted in the brain. then of course all the famous philosophical arguments won't mean very much--not when anybody can be altered by a few sparks of electricity. However that's a long way off, at least as we measure time. For the present, we're going to go on this way, robbing, torturing. Trust nobody, least of all the holy Self.
What thou understandeth not, thou shalt know in the day of visitation. That's right.
So I lock the door to another day but can't exactly say much was accomplished. That's usually how it is. Some interesting thoughts but of course thoughts aren't always beneficial. Call this a higgledy-piggledy day and go to bed" (166).
"How very different I feel this evening! Now the wind as it sweeps through the park has another sound & it seems to me that all of us are preoccupied with imaginary crimes--incest, adultery, bigamy, etc. What a continuous list! Brutality's worse, yet somehow we honor that. Well, tweedle-dum, eh? Perhaps I'm much too harsh. I'd be a remorseless judge, have always been quite critical, yes, injustices 4 centuries old retain the power to infuriate me" (227).
"" ().
A.M. Homes' introduction: "We have continued to consume this foul reporting, this "news"—if you can call it that—as a kind of perverse/ erotic fish food addictively sprinkled onto our breakfast cereals; we eat it staring, numb, at the superbright colors of the flat-screen television, cruising through the hundreds of channels, nonstop twenty-four-hour news, real cop shows, fake cop shows... We have by now so confused reality and fantasy, our sense of the moral and the criminal, that we are often hard-pressed to tell the difference. The questions raised by Connell have become all the more prescient. What in fact are we consuming—are we eating ourselves alive?" (xii)
"News reports Alcatraz prison is Leaking. Leaking! Two convicts tunneled halfway through one of the walls with a spoon--a spoon! The place is collapsing, won't stand up much longer. Evil digs its way toward us. How soon is it going to reach us? Or is it already here but we haven't recognized it? I don't know. The world's gotten too big, complicated & dangerous. Voice of the Antichrist. Sand drifting over the walls of the city. Newscaster says America has developed some kind of new weapon powerful enough to destroy every form of life and authorities believe if it was used nothing could grow on the earth for at least a century. Strange that doesn't alarm me. My feeling is that if the end of the world's in sight, I don't care. I've had no part in it." (101).
"Getting ready for another war. It's about time. Hurrah! Also--m-m-m--vandals in a cemetery toppling gravestones. What a shabby circus, and nobody can convince me it isn't going to get worse" (120).
"Don't know what sort of reality this is. But it is. Reality of ordinary people. Oh, perhaps the day is going to come when we'll be as orderly as a herd of cattle with electrodes planted in the brain. then of course all the famous philosophical arguments won't mean very much--not when anybody can be altered by a few sparks of electricity. However that's a long way off, at least as we measure time. For the present, we're going to go on this way, robbing, torturing. Trust nobody, least of all the holy Self.
What thou understandeth not, thou shalt know in the day of visitation. That's right.
So I lock the door to another day but can't exactly say much was accomplished. That's usually how it is. Some interesting thoughts but of course thoughts aren't always beneficial. Call this a higgledy-piggledy day and go to bed" (166).
"How very different I feel this evening! Now the wind as it sweeps through the park has another sound & it seems to me that all of us are preoccupied with imaginary crimes--incest, adultery, bigamy, etc. What a continuous list! Brutality's worse, yet somehow we honor that. Well, tweedle-dum, eh? Perhaps I'm much too harsh. I'd be a remorseless judge, have always been quite critical, yes, injustices 4 centuries old retain the power to infuriate me" (227).
"" ().
May 26, 2008
This book is amazing. Oh my god, this thing scared the hell out of me. It's a beautiful testament to the struggle and strife that everyone feels. We are all capable of this kind of violence and hatred. You find yourself in Earl and you just seem to understand where he is going. You dont like it, you dont agree with it, but you understand it, and that is scary. It's also historically relevant (written in the 60's) you can look at it as the fall of society. I dont want to give anything away but the Beauty Queen = The American Dream and Earl = Society (by interpretation of course). This book is amazing, this will show you what you are capable of and will make you face your inner demons.
January 24, 2009
Connell's nimble wordplay is a lifeline out of the paranoid muck of his 1968 San Francisco. Told as a year's worth of journals from an increasingly deranged narrator, The Diary of Rapist seems an obvious precursor to Scorcese's Taxi Driver in its first-person chronicle of a psychotic protagonist lashing out at urban upheaval. It's an unpleasant book to read--I had to set it down often--but Connell's tremendous control over voice and character, however unpleasant, makes it worth wading into the filth.
April 4, 2017
NOVEMBER 10
"So, earl, another week has ended. You survived, be thankful. The city of San Francisco stinks with vice. Hypocrisy. Theft & Lies. Hail to the hieroglyph, to the sound of tamping boots. Buildings fall, wild screams, the clanking of religious armour. Could anybody suppose He laboured six days to create This! My mother's labor was more profound. Ask. Ask if life's always been like this. Or are we born in an age when the nature of God is changing?"
3.5 This is a rather intense, philosophical novel. Earl is a distant character even in his own words, his own story. I feel as if I know nothing of him and even less about the woman he shares his life with. Much of his diary focuses on the violence and hypocrisy of the world and the United States in particular. Aside from that, the title of the book isn't explicitly expresses or acted out, unless i was missing something.
The remoteness of the characters and Earl's obvious hatred and anger towards women made this a very uncomfortable read. But having experienced feeling of intense loneliness, discontent and disillusion, I love how this was captured and reimagined within someone. I would love this to be a book club read as I believe much can be taken away from it. I would recommend this to anyone!
"So, earl, another week has ended. You survived, be thankful. The city of San Francisco stinks with vice. Hypocrisy. Theft & Lies. Hail to the hieroglyph, to the sound of tamping boots. Buildings fall, wild screams, the clanking of religious armour. Could anybody suppose He laboured six days to create This! My mother's labor was more profound. Ask. Ask if life's always been like this. Or are we born in an age when the nature of God is changing?"
3.5 This is a rather intense, philosophical novel. Earl is a distant character even in his own words, his own story. I feel as if I know nothing of him and even less about the woman he shares his life with. Much of his diary focuses on the violence and hypocrisy of the world and the United States in particular. Aside from that, the title of the book isn't explicitly expresses or acted out, unless i was missing something.
The remoteness of the characters and Earl's obvious hatred and anger towards women made this a very uncomfortable read. But having experienced feeling of intense loneliness, discontent and disillusion, I love how this was captured and reimagined within someone. I would love this to be a book club read as I believe much can be taken away from it. I would recommend this to anyone!
October 31, 2018
BEWARE of SPOILER
Earl Summerfield, 26 years old, a civil servant, married to a 33 years old high school teacher, wrote a diary entry everyday from 1st January up til 25th December 1966 except on 4th July.
Earl hated his job, his wife and pretty much everything. He kept record of the bad things that happened around him or what he could get from the news. And at one point, he saw all the bad things as normal. Like stuff should happen that way and no one will bat an eyelash.
So what happen on 4th of July 1966? It was presumably, Earl rapes a beauty queen outside of her church. Earl does not record the details of his crime as he does the details of the other crimes, but later, as he becomes more and more unraveled, he reveals in small amounts what he did.
Why presumption? Because no one except Earl could attest everything he wrote as true or not. He's the epitome of unreliable narrator. Earl is, however, a very accurate depiction of mental illness that becomes violent.
DECEMBER 19
The most difficult thing will be to explain—to tell her how I felt. How can I let her know that I was terrified of life, and this was the reason I fell in love with hate? How can I help her to understand? - Earl Summerfield
That very nearly explain the messed up life of Earl.
Earl Summerfield, 26 years old, a civil servant, married to a 33 years old high school teacher, wrote a diary entry everyday from 1st January up til 25th December 1966 except on 4th July.
Earl hated his job, his wife and pretty much everything. He kept record of the bad things that happened around him or what he could get from the news. And at one point, he saw all the bad things as normal. Like stuff should happen that way and no one will bat an eyelash.
So what happen on 4th of July 1966? It was presumably, Earl rapes a beauty queen outside of her church. Earl does not record the details of his crime as he does the details of the other crimes, but later, as he becomes more and more unraveled, he reveals in small amounts what he did.
Why presumption? Because no one except Earl could attest everything he wrote as true or not. He's the epitome of unreliable narrator. Earl is, however, a very accurate depiction of mental illness that becomes violent.
DECEMBER 19
The most difficult thing will be to explain—to tell her how I felt. How can I let her know that I was terrified of life, and this was the reason I fell in love with hate? How can I help her to understand? - Earl Summerfield
That very nearly explain the messed up life of Earl.
January 22, 2010
Tastes like a mixture of Dostoevsky's Notes From Underground & something from Selby. The Diary stays mostly strong until the last quarter or so. I dont disagree w/it, but I wish it would have gathered in intensity towards the finish. Still, a fantastic read for the most part. I appreciated the subtlety in dealing w/the events which take place off the page & even more so the profound psychological insight. Its a nice portrait of a deteriorating personality. You can see as well as feel the cracks widen.
February 5, 2016
I absolutely hated this one, not because it was bad but because it was so good and effective. Takes you right inside the mind of the rapist, who unsurprisingly is such a loathsome character that you just want to slam the book shut and then scrape the story off your skin.
gave-up-on
September 14, 2022DNF at 10%
Read 10% of it and it went nowhere.
Some reviews gave me a pretty clear image of what is going on and it never changes so w.e, Nah thank you. I see this book being interesting to some but it really bored me so much I couldn't actually focus on it.
Read 10% of it and it went nowhere.
Some reviews gave me a pretty clear image of what is going on and it never changes so w.e, Nah thank you. I see this book being interesting to some but it really bored me so much I couldn't actually focus on it.
April 22, 2025
Audio. I'm not supposed to have liked this book, but I did. It's at once evocative of its time frame and timeless, a story of growing obsession, entitlement, and simmering rage along the lines of Notes from the Underground and A Clockwork Orange. The audio narrator is excellent.
February 25, 2025
“Last night Bianca shook me awake and told me to stop grinding my teeth. Nothing gives her more satisfaction than to humiliate me. So one year ends, another begins.”
—
“Excite myself too much. I’ve got to learn to accept things as they are. Nobody has everything he’d like to have. Oh yes, be pious – shit! I’m dying, I’m dying in this place. I’m not alive. One day like another.”
—
“They act so innocent but then something turns up in the papers like last week when one of these innocents was ‘taken into police custody’ because police discovered she was earning about a thousand dollars a week between the time she got out of school and the time she came home for supper. […] The little pig was rolling on her back squealing with pleasure every afternoon in somebody’s apartment or hotel room, earning more in five minutes than I make by working all day.”
—
“Bianca’s the only woman I ever had. She used me. Got what she wanted. I hardly enjoyed it even at first. Didn’t much enjoy kissing her – lips too thin. Remember the first time I kissed her being surprised by the hard, closed teeth. I guess I’ve never impressed her much. If I was important she might be different. Too late now. Caught in this uninteresting life. Caught.”
—
“Neighbors reported lights, noises, police discovered most of the furniture broken – saw to pieces, hacked, mattresses ripped apart, mirrors shattered, paint poured into the washing machine, dishes thrown against walls, lighting fixtured pilled out, carpet burned & cut, shoes & garments stuffed into the toilet, bathtub filled and overflowing”
—
“We set the past on fire. Quiet a performance all right. I more or less remember it. Ashes everywhere, still sifting down. Ideals smirched, avarice, self-righteousness – the Holy Sepulcher just one more milestone on the road to some cloudy Fulfillment. Fulfillment of what! Cheating, lying, riots, war, wax, oil, iron, sulfur, wine, papyrus & eternal slavery. Jesus Christ in Heaven.”
—
“Divine Punishment? Who can be sure? Isaiah speaks of the man especially singled out by God but whom God keeps in obscurity like an arrow in the quiver. Certain times I’d like to be the appointed one, yes – controlling others, orders unquestioned, yes.”
—
“Sometimes it seems that we’re merely Constructions made out of yarn, paper & wood with threads rising from our toes and fingertips. We pretend to talk and act as though we were alive when actually we don’t have any choice in the matter. Some secret power directs us.”
—
“They never experience the world as it truly IS – always living within themselves brooding & calculating. What do they know about the human Spirit? The universe bores them. Their only urge is toward personal satisfaction, weaking a man & sucking away the power. Jellies, mold that grows on bread, rind of rotting fruit, infection, suppuration, evil odors that drift around during the night, colorless poisons, caverns full of dead little bodies. Unclean alchemies.”
—
“She belched and I had the impression she was a man. I must have been very nearly asleep. I thought that I was a woman. I thought that I was the wife & this was comforting. He’d be making the decisions, all the responsibility was his.”
—
“Seems as though I’ve always always always been supervised by women. There’s been some woman watching me since the day I was born. I don’t think I’ll ever get their talcum powders out of my nose, at times it feels like the inside of my skull is white or pink with talcum. How did they get so much authority?”
—
“What’s become of female pride and decency? – that’s what I’d like to know. Right at this moment in this apartment house and in the next one and the next and every building or house in the city you could find them hunching and contracting like eels. Dirtying the earth. Grease & rubber. Eggs, blood.”
—
“Pleasure from a rag – no sense denying it, am just trying to be honest with myself. Promise of a dream. Reality itself not half so real. Everything we see or smell or touch – last week seeing that peach sliced open in the kitchen and immediately thought about their Parts. How unexpected. Suppose only God know what boils up from hidden depths. Same as it was tonight.”
—
“White roots grow deep. The blossom is dark, the odor foul.”
—
“Saturday. Again today and again tonight. Angered by the way I indulge myself.”
—
“No reason I can’t visit her again. Why not? I’m free to do as I please, nobody on earth can prevent me. For the first time I know what Freedom is. Freedom that’s absolute.”
—
“I wasn’t in a hurry to open it because as soon as it was opened I wouldn’t be able to think about what might be inside, so held it in my hands a long time. Mmm – don’t believe I opened it until Aunt Ollie called that we were leaving, then put my thumbs side by side and pulled them apart & the box jumped open – remember now the way it jumped. Inside weren’t any jewels, just a dark velvet mound with a groove running through it. Tried to put my face into the box, remember running my nose against the velvet.”
—
“Noting matters now, remembering his pleasure. Weeks, months, years & years in prison – he’d enjoy that but looks forward even more to a few instants of excitement in the painted steel chamber. Uniformed guards, signals, mysterious rituals. Blessing of the priest as Christ and the Devil join. Powerful sodomy.”
—
“Hours later the corpse was discovered in a Negro Baptist church. She’d been strangled with a length of electric cord. Hands tied by her own black silk stockings. Naked, slashed from breast to belly, her blood had formed a pool in the aisle and she was dangling above it, suspended from the balcony. She’d been elevated because we must elevate what we worship.”
—
“Being latest in the sequence of evolution it follows that Man must be the least perfect form of life.”
—
“Counter the evil tendencies of Man just as sailors counter currents driving them toward the Reef, thus the expression of attitudes impossible to those of lower sensibility. Object to object. Tincture of earthworm, poultice of adder’s flesh.”
—
“Holiday for Dead Soldiers. Now maybe I should have gone into military service. Certain I’d get along. Captain Summerfield. Major Summerfield. Kill. Missile. Gas Attack. Destroy. Cleanse Evil.”
—
“I hear singing – a sound like the rush of water over stones. Accepted by the predatory cats – how often I can see them sitting quietly in the dark. Yes, cats & the rustle of water. Birds motionless on the writhing limbs of trees. One forgets the purpose of fear. History loses meaning. Sooner or later I suppose all of us relive the lives of predecessors.”
—
“Why is it, I wonder, that we’re able to let go of all things and desire only one woman so that we follow and stare at her and reach for her in our sleep. Why is she worth so much? Judith the daughter of Merari made Holofernes faint with the beauty of her face. She put on a linen dress to deceive him, arrange her hair and spread ointment on her eyes & showed him her sandals, and then she passed the scimitar through his neck as though he was an ox to be sacrificed. This is what I wonder, and all I know is that together we form a pattern of marvelous subtility.”
—
“Excite myself too much. I’ve got to learn to accept things as they are. Nobody has everything he’d like to have. Oh yes, be pious – shit! I’m dying, I’m dying in this place. I’m not alive. One day like another.”
—
“They act so innocent but then something turns up in the papers like last week when one of these innocents was ‘taken into police custody’ because police discovered she was earning about a thousand dollars a week between the time she got out of school and the time she came home for supper. […] The little pig was rolling on her back squealing with pleasure every afternoon in somebody’s apartment or hotel room, earning more in five minutes than I make by working all day.”
—
“Bianca’s the only woman I ever had. She used me. Got what she wanted. I hardly enjoyed it even at first. Didn’t much enjoy kissing her – lips too thin. Remember the first time I kissed her being surprised by the hard, closed teeth. I guess I’ve never impressed her much. If I was important she might be different. Too late now. Caught in this uninteresting life. Caught.”
—
“Neighbors reported lights, noises, police discovered most of the furniture broken – saw to pieces, hacked, mattresses ripped apart, mirrors shattered, paint poured into the washing machine, dishes thrown against walls, lighting fixtured pilled out, carpet burned & cut, shoes & garments stuffed into the toilet, bathtub filled and overflowing”
—
“We set the past on fire. Quiet a performance all right. I more or less remember it. Ashes everywhere, still sifting down. Ideals smirched, avarice, self-righteousness – the Holy Sepulcher just one more milestone on the road to some cloudy Fulfillment. Fulfillment of what! Cheating, lying, riots, war, wax, oil, iron, sulfur, wine, papyrus & eternal slavery. Jesus Christ in Heaven.”
—
“Divine Punishment? Who can be sure? Isaiah speaks of the man especially singled out by God but whom God keeps in obscurity like an arrow in the quiver. Certain times I’d like to be the appointed one, yes – controlling others, orders unquestioned, yes.”
—
“Sometimes it seems that we’re merely Constructions made out of yarn, paper & wood with threads rising from our toes and fingertips. We pretend to talk and act as though we were alive when actually we don’t have any choice in the matter. Some secret power directs us.”
—
“They never experience the world as it truly IS – always living within themselves brooding & calculating. What do they know about the human Spirit? The universe bores them. Their only urge is toward personal satisfaction, weaking a man & sucking away the power. Jellies, mold that grows on bread, rind of rotting fruit, infection, suppuration, evil odors that drift around during the night, colorless poisons, caverns full of dead little bodies. Unclean alchemies.”
—
“She belched and I had the impression she was a man. I must have been very nearly asleep. I thought that I was a woman. I thought that I was the wife & this was comforting. He’d be making the decisions, all the responsibility was his.”
—
“Seems as though I’ve always always always been supervised by women. There’s been some woman watching me since the day I was born. I don’t think I’ll ever get their talcum powders out of my nose, at times it feels like the inside of my skull is white or pink with talcum. How did they get so much authority?”
—
“What’s become of female pride and decency? – that’s what I’d like to know. Right at this moment in this apartment house and in the next one and the next and every building or house in the city you could find them hunching and contracting like eels. Dirtying the earth. Grease & rubber. Eggs, blood.”
—
“Pleasure from a rag – no sense denying it, am just trying to be honest with myself. Promise of a dream. Reality itself not half so real. Everything we see or smell or touch – last week seeing that peach sliced open in the kitchen and immediately thought about their Parts. How unexpected. Suppose only God know what boils up from hidden depths. Same as it was tonight.”
—
“White roots grow deep. The blossom is dark, the odor foul.”
—
“Saturday. Again today and again tonight. Angered by the way I indulge myself.”
—
“No reason I can’t visit her again. Why not? I’m free to do as I please, nobody on earth can prevent me. For the first time I know what Freedom is. Freedom that’s absolute.”
—
“I wasn’t in a hurry to open it because as soon as it was opened I wouldn’t be able to think about what might be inside, so held it in my hands a long time. Mmm – don’t believe I opened it until Aunt Ollie called that we were leaving, then put my thumbs side by side and pulled them apart & the box jumped open – remember now the way it jumped. Inside weren’t any jewels, just a dark velvet mound with a groove running through it. Tried to put my face into the box, remember running my nose against the velvet.”
—
“Noting matters now, remembering his pleasure. Weeks, months, years & years in prison – he’d enjoy that but looks forward even more to a few instants of excitement in the painted steel chamber. Uniformed guards, signals, mysterious rituals. Blessing of the priest as Christ and the Devil join. Powerful sodomy.”
—
“Hours later the corpse was discovered in a Negro Baptist church. She’d been strangled with a length of electric cord. Hands tied by her own black silk stockings. Naked, slashed from breast to belly, her blood had formed a pool in the aisle and she was dangling above it, suspended from the balcony. She’d been elevated because we must elevate what we worship.”
—
“Being latest in the sequence of evolution it follows that Man must be the least perfect form of life.”
—
“Counter the evil tendencies of Man just as sailors counter currents driving them toward the Reef, thus the expression of attitudes impossible to those of lower sensibility. Object to object. Tincture of earthworm, poultice of adder’s flesh.”
—
“Holiday for Dead Soldiers. Now maybe I should have gone into military service. Certain I’d get along. Captain Summerfield. Major Summerfield. Kill. Missile. Gas Attack. Destroy. Cleanse Evil.”
—
“I hear singing – a sound like the rush of water over stones. Accepted by the predatory cats – how often I can see them sitting quietly in the dark. Yes, cats & the rustle of water. Birds motionless on the writhing limbs of trees. One forgets the purpose of fear. History loses meaning. Sooner or later I suppose all of us relive the lives of predecessors.”
—
“Why is it, I wonder, that we’re able to let go of all things and desire only one woman so that we follow and stare at her and reach for her in our sleep. Why is she worth so much? Judith the daughter of Merari made Holofernes faint with the beauty of her face. She put on a linen dress to deceive him, arrange her hair and spread ointment on her eyes & showed him her sandals, and then she passed the scimitar through his neck as though he was an ox to be sacrificed. This is what I wonder, and all I know is that together we form a pattern of marvelous subtility.”
October 29, 2017
Gave up 60 pages in. It's written in the form of a diary. The main character is a miserable, whiny, boring, self-loathing, self-aggrandizing monster. He has an awful job. He hates his wife, who is slightly older than him. His coworkers are stupid. People don't recognize that he's a superior being. (So he thinks of himself, anyway.) Plus he's oogling women and thinking about doing terrible things to them.
After 60 pages of this, I can't help but feel this isn't going anywhere interesting or worth reading. Our narrator is a bad cartoon. This feels like one of those novels where the anti-hero slowly decomposes and we're along for the ride. That can be enjoyable, if the character has a sense of humour or style about his own inevitable destruction. (I love noir and the anti-hero decline of, say, "The Killer Inside of Me".) There's no style here. It's flat and humourless. There isn't even a sense of voyeuristic thrill, because the guy is just so miserable and dull.
Skimming ahead to see if there are any redeeming features or a point to any of this, there was nothing worth reading. I was hoping for a dark and weird book. Unfortunately, this reads like the angsty sort of nonsense a nihilist teenager would write.
After 60 pages of this, I can't help but feel this isn't going anywhere interesting or worth reading. Our narrator is a bad cartoon. This feels like one of those novels where the anti-hero slowly decomposes and we're along for the ride. That can be enjoyable, if the character has a sense of humour or style about his own inevitable destruction. (I love noir and the anti-hero decline of, say, "The Killer Inside of Me".) There's no style here. It's flat and humourless. There isn't even a sense of voyeuristic thrill, because the guy is just so miserable and dull.
Skimming ahead to see if there are any redeeming features or a point to any of this, there was nothing worth reading. I was hoping for a dark and weird book. Unfortunately, this reads like the angsty sort of nonsense a nihilist teenager would write.
December 20, 2017
ultimately just disappointing... i understand the value/sense of journal entries that tread the same ground repeatedly as the basis for a novel, but even so the story never went anywhere after the first 20 or so pages... hates life, hates job, hates women, hates boss, hates children, hates self ad nauseam... after all that i expected a flurry of violence or an orgy of self-mutilation or maybe renewing his marriage vows... as in, what the hell?!?!? anything could have happened but nothing did, just mind-numbing rehashing of loathing and silent disgust and rampant sexism with no meaningful statement... surprised at how mundane this reads...
September 25, 2020
Chilling book. I have never been scared. Right after I l finished this book, I left the grocery store, and a car that I did not recognize followed me closely. I almost went to the police station insteaed of the house. But I thought surely I can handle this. He followed me into the driveway and when he got out of the car, I recognized him as a guy I worked with at Merck. He said I wanted to say hi and then he realized I might be scaring me as he has a new car. I admitted he was making me nervous. I didn't tell him about the book.
September 24, 2018
Brilliant and horrifying, this story of a passionate, misogynistic, paranoid, narcissistic, and demented young man. I confess I was reminded of Taxi Driver; I wonder if Paul Schrader read this novel before he wrote that screenplay. I wonder too how many among us share the disturbed mindset of Earl Summerfield; I worry it's more than I can imagine.
August 13, 2010
Why am I stuck with such warped twisted writing? Was I imagining an American version of Seducer's Diary? Perhaps it is - it is about as much thought and art to expect from the American Johannes. Should know better than to blindly pick up a book for the NYRB Classics tag.
September 25, 2010
This book is wonderfully written despite the focus. Some entries I had to reread just to savour the language. A whole lot more palatable than American Psycho, just as masterly done, but still makes me reflect on the writer behind the work.
January 23, 2023
It was an okay read for me. It baffles me how arrogant the guy is, based on his journal and inner thoughts while writing it. I think it's important to know that he is pathetic in all aspects, who deem himself worthy of better things when really, he doesn't. He was pretentious, self-seeking, and abominable jerk. I honestly get why Bianca would be disgusted by him (even if he had only thought of it that way, I can see Bianca truly just staring at him and thinking nothing of him from the beginning, but in a gradual pace, I can see the disgust later on). I wasn't exactly entertained while reading this, but that's on me. I get how cryptic and disturbing the narrator's thoughts are, but see no specific "oh, this guy could really kill me if he wanted to." he was moreso a "I'll do it to prove to you that I can" which is pathetic. He's the kind of scum I don't want to associate myself with and it's not because he's disturbing or too dark for me, but he's the typical edgelord wannabe. The book goes on about nothing in particular, just the gradual descent of a man's inner thoughts and how it can go from slight to deranged when provoked by minor inconveniences. Again, he's too pathetic and I don't find the entertainment value in reading someone's pretentious and arrogant inner voice. Still, this is an okay read as it deserves the hype for the author's great writing.
June 28, 2018
The title of this book makes it hard to read on the train.
And the title is indicative of its contents. The book attempts the difficult task of making a rapist, if not sympathetic, then at least recognizably human. The portrait painted is one of a deeply insecure and unhappy man who protects himself with a wall of anger and false arrogance. Like a Dostoevsky character, he thinks he is intellectually, creatively, and emotionally superior to everyone around him, even while deep down recognizing that he is not. This book was written in the 1960s, but with a tweak to time period and subject matter it could also be the diary of a mass shooter.
While I think this is a brilliant and worthy project, I can't quite give it five stars. Ultimately, it painted the portrait of its narrator's sociopathy pretty quickly. And then once it had done that, it didn't really add much. The book began to get repetitive even before the narrator committed his first criminal act (which takes place mostly "off screen," ftr). Still, I can see why some would regard this book as a classic of imaginative empathy. My own fiction is interested in evil, and how it doesn't really exist and/or how it exists in all of us, and this book a useful guidepost in that regard.
And the title is indicative of its contents. The book attempts the difficult task of making a rapist, if not sympathetic, then at least recognizably human. The portrait painted is one of a deeply insecure and unhappy man who protects himself with a wall of anger and false arrogance. Like a Dostoevsky character, he thinks he is intellectually, creatively, and emotionally superior to everyone around him, even while deep down recognizing that he is not. This book was written in the 1960s, but with a tweak to time period and subject matter it could also be the diary of a mass shooter.
While I think this is a brilliant and worthy project, I can't quite give it five stars. Ultimately, it painted the portrait of its narrator's sociopathy pretty quickly. And then once it had done that, it didn't really add much. The book began to get repetitive even before the narrator committed his first criminal act (which takes place mostly "off screen," ftr). Still, I can see why some would regard this book as a classic of imaginative empathy. My own fiction is interested in evil, and how it doesn't really exist and/or how it exists in all of us, and this book a useful guidepost in that regard.
April 24, 2024
This is not for everyone. It's a dark ride. The narrator is not just unreliable, he's a depraved, misogynistic madman. Reading it I was reminded that, in high school, I read excerpts from Arthur Bremer's diary in some magazine. Bremer attempted to assassinate George Wallace and his diaries became the basis for the film, Taxi Driver. Taxi Driver is a film I revere but I don't wish to watch it again. I can't do bleak like I used to. That being said, the voice of this novel--Connell is a masterful writer--is repulsive, yet beguiling. I found I had to read till the end.
September 29, 2018
Its a dull read.
I can see what the author is trying to achieve here though. He's trying to capture one mans journey into mental instability. His dislike but also love of woman, his dissatisfaction with his monotonous job and lack of career progression, his delusions of grandeur, all of this written in the diary pages with subtle cursory comments on his true deviancy sprinkled throughout. Yes I understand the message of the book - but it is still a dull read.
I can see what the author is trying to achieve here though. He's trying to capture one mans journey into mental instability. His dislike but also love of woman, his dissatisfaction with his monotonous job and lack of career progression, his delusions of grandeur, all of this written in the diary pages with subtle cursory comments on his true deviancy sprinkled throughout. Yes I understand the message of the book - but it is still a dull read.
March 14, 2023
This book is on a list I’m trying to read through!
If you’re looking for a book that is like “you” but more unhinged and a raw look at someone’s declining mental state this can fill that gap. The title can be off putting but truly understanding the concept behind it is what drew me in. There’s not much to say about this book as it’s left up to you to decide in a philosophical way,how to feel about this book, but it is worth anyone’s time who’s a fan of dark psychology.
If you’re looking for a book that is like “you” but more unhinged and a raw look at someone’s declining mental state this can fill that gap. The title can be off putting but truly understanding the concept behind it is what drew me in. There’s not much to say about this book as it’s left up to you to decide in a philosophical way,how to feel about this book, but it is worth anyone’s time who’s a fan of dark psychology.
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