Authors: Les Edgerton
There is an exchange in Hemingway’s
The Green Hills of Africa
between the Hemingway narrator, also a writer, and a German kudu hunter. They are sitting around the campfire discussing literature. The German asks the Hemingway character, “Do you think your writing is worth doing as an end in itself?” What follows is a sort of metaphysical homage, a prayer almost, of what is possible when fiction works:
“The kind of writing that can be done. How far prose can be carried if anyone is serious enough and has luck. There is a
fourth and fifth dimension
that can be gotten.”
“You believe it?” asks the German.
“I know it.”
“And if a writer can get this?”
“Then nothing else matters. It is more important than anything he can do. The chances are, of course, that he will fail. But there is a chance that he succeeds.”
“But that is poetry you are talking about?”
“No. It is much more difficult than poetry. It is a prose that has never been written. But it can be written without tricks and without cheating. With nothing that will go bad afterwards.”
Perhaps Hemingway was correct that this fourth dimension has never been written, but as a lover of fiction that takes risks and pushes against the current boundaries of how far literature can go, I’ve had the feeling of being in contact with stories that bravely attempt to discover this land of the fourth dimension in fiction. With each book I could tell you where and when I was when I read it. It was this way with
The Rapist
.
As I sat down to read
The Rapist
on that summer afternoon, my expectations were that I would be reading another excellent, dark, sparely-rendered work of noir fiction by a writer who we had first published in the crime fiction magazine,
Murdaland
. I had read many of Edgerton’s novels and even a hard-punching memoir, and always had the feeling that Les held a special place in American crime fiction. Because of his background as a convicted felon who lived in the actual world of criminals, his novels and stories always possessed that veracity like that of Edward Bunker that many modern crime writers lack. Unlike Bunker, however, Edgerton’s prose had the discipline and ear of a unique and singular artist. To me, and I can never escape this, his voice was a hard poetry of the streets that avoided pretension yet delivered literature all the same, reminiscent of Charles Bukowski. In short, I always believed that Les Edgerton should be and would be a memorable and lasting voice in American fiction. But as I started this novel,
The Rapist
, I was a little bit taken aback. The narrator, Truman Ferris Pinter, is a pretentious, conceited sociopath, unlike any of Edgerton’s hardened, street-wise thugs that had come before. And while the book starts out with a gangbang and a rape, it somehow moves at a much slower pace than Edgerton’s other novels. Truman Ferris Pinter launches into invectives about the institutions of marriage and religion, and has historical asides about how Native American mothers would insert their babies’ penises into their mouths to quiet them when enemies were lurking. Truman reads Andrew Marvel and Aeschylus, rapes without mercy, and weighs with an inner rage upon all the injustice, stupidity, and foolishness of American society. And so I read, realizing this was no Edgerton “noir,” that this was something more, a dark, literary experiment, and I waited for that moment, hoped Edgerton could pull it off and take me beyond… and then Truman begins to fly. The final 2/3s of the novel warp and shrink and conflate with a pink-eyed madness, and I realized at the end that Edgerton had pulled something off: something thought-provoking and incredible.
When I put the book the down, I felt like I had when I was 21 years old and had just finished Hubert Selby’s novel
Last Exit to Brooklyn
. I was riveted, fractured, and throttled. Reading the novel had been almost completely a physical experience… and then I realized the author, as Hemingway says in
Green Hills of Africa,
had not cheated but had brought me back home without tricks, but with raw honesty. The end result was a sort of exhausted exhilaration, the feeling of having been taken beyond the normal reading experience.
I think
The Rapist
is Les Edgerton’s tour de force among his many other accomplished and wonderful noir novels. The tendency might be to try to classify and intellectualize this book. With its existential themes and the sometimes nihilistic tone of Truman, it might be tempting to liken this book to Camus’
The Stranger
or some Sartre play. I would like to caution against this.
The Rapist,
with its propulsive force, its indignant fury, its rage against institutionalization, its seething violence seen in both a detailed gangbang and rape, is, perversely but inherently, an American work of fiction: brash and petulant like a cowboy kicking his way through the double doors to the saloon; self-confident in its unlikable individuality like a boastful Charlie Manson; and shot through with a pure black-hearted anger and indignant rage as of the kind you can only get in the United States of America, the Land of Opportunity, where democracy is espoused, but the Nietzschean Will to Power and Ragnar’s Might Makes Right rule the day. This book is his poem, his testament, his art boiled down to its elemental genius. Edgerton’s vision, while it seethes, ultimately dissolves rage and hatred in its pages and, as it lifts you up… way up above Earth, emerges with something better on the other side, something that only literature in its finest moments can provide.
—Cortright McMeel
Thanksgiving Day 2012
The past, present, and future exist at
the same time,as is proved by our dreams.
—
John Donne, recurring theme.
Chapter One:
The Present
Let me tell you who occupies this prison cell. Perfidious, his name is Perfidity. His name is Liar, Blasphemer, Defiler of Truth, Black-Tongued. He lies down with all members of the congregation equally, tells them each in turn they are his beloved, while he is already attending to the next assignation in his relentless rendezvous with the consumption of souls.
He will inhale you, devour you, eat the pulp of your soul and spit out the husk. Behind his eyes lies nothing save the fevered light of unholy candles. He is black magic without redemption, without even the nethermost quality that could be termed human, or rather, he is not that at all; he is
all
that is estimated human, the sum total of those values that achieve the color that is the presence of all colors: black. He lacks a center—each of you is his center—and he has sucked the marrow dry of each of those he has visited. Beware of the son of Moloch that paces to and fro in that barred room.
This unholy creature is none other than the author of this narrative, Truman Ferris Pinter, which is the name my parents bestowed upon me, to which the State has added the further qualifier, Prisoner #49028. And these preceding words are but the insidious defamations of the man that unfairly prosecuted me and caused me to be sentenced to die by my own choice of execution, either hanging or firing squad?—hours from now? The summary of the time left me escapes my attention. It is not true that the condemned man savors and counts each eroding second that is left to him.
Perhaps after reading this account you will come to a different conclusion about who I am. Perhaps not…
I will tell you my story in chronological order, for I feel, even at this great distance in time and place, that you are much younger than I and no doubt raised on an insipid diet of television. Your attention span would be a single digit near zero and your comprehension of anything penned less than that, so I will keep it simple and direct. And in order. So as not to confuse you.
I actually saw her the night before the rape.
I was wheeling my bicycle past the town tavern. I had no profession then, never have, before or since, as my father was a prudent man, investing heavily into life insurance to the tune of nearly a million dollars, and my mother had the grace to expire during my twentieth year, leaving the bulk of the estate to me, her only progeny. I suppose I do have a profession of sorts: husbanding my inheritance and making it grow, but that is a job that requires little of my time. Mostly, it involves choosing a manager wisely and then standing aside and letting him go about his job. I do, or did, various things to occupy my waking hours, much reading, some writing, a little angling, taking a beer at the local tavern and so on. A gentleman’s life is what I aspire to, by temperament and situation, and it suits me well. I enjoy an intelligent conversation, and while such is a rare commodity in these parts, from time to time the odd professor or well-read graduate loses his way and ends up at our tavern, and we share a beer. I can turn a phrase or two when the audience is capable, and I know a thing or two of Homer and other savants, and my reticence only extends to yokels and sophists, of which sadly, the world appears filled to overflowing at present. Should Charon flow today, the ferryman would require three shifts, multiple crews, and a six-span bridge besides.
Keeping on, in the night in question, I was on my way home from my weekly marketing and elected to pass by the tavern instead of entering. I am by no means a habitué, setting foot inside, at best, thrice monthly, so it was not unusual to continue past Joe’s Tavern (ingenious name!) as I did that evening.
It was just past nine, and as our orbits around the sun are exact, I am sure you know, as it pertains to this latitude, at this time in the summer solstice, in July, you would realize at once that a full moon adorned the heavens and provided enough illumination to read a standard newspaper held at arm’s length. So it was as I pedaled my two-wheeler past crude and raucous laughter, almost certainly directed at one of Joe’s two buxom barmaids, and, if tavern events were holding to custom, probably in response to some raw remark referring to anatomy, specifically breasts. I grimaced at the sound, disgust washing over me. I had attempted more than one conversation with these waitresses, whose names were Jo and Beth (I sense unrewarded optimism on their mothers’ part in affixing such gentle names on the fruit of their wombs, stubborn, misplaced hope that they would turn out as well-bred and docile as Miss Alcott’s creations) and had discovered that decorum was not the path to either’s heart, each preferring the clumsy advances of what you and I would refer to as “rough trade.”
I digress. That is my nature; I admit the fault. A thought flits by here, then there, and I must follow; it is the curse of the nimble mind. All the while that I am pedaling furiously, however, I can see the main road and know that the path I have taken will lead back to it eventually. If you ride with me, trust me; I shall have you back on the wider highway, sooner or later. Is it not on the smaller trails that we sneak up on truth? Such has been my experience. You may get there faster with your blind drive, but will you know how you got there or even why? I think not. The hermit whom the uninitiated would seek, sits not by the side of the road as the poet would have you think, but by the side of the
barely visible path
, hidden behind the milkweeds and goldenrod, and you fool yourself if you think he waits for you; he waits for no man and is hard to find for a reason.
I was past the tavern and entering the small wood that sprawls just past it, situated between the tavern and my own modest house, the same house I was born in and grew up in. Did I mention that? There is a small path, negotiable only by foot or bicycle, that is a shortcut to home. Midway into this copse, which means fifty yards into the wood, I heard voices and laughter. Curiosity aroused, I laid down my bike safely off the path and stole back through the trees to see what goes. I was naturally furtive in my movements, not wishing to disturb what I honestly thought to be unknown persons engaged in innocent and wholesome activity.
I was wrong… oh, how I was wrong! There were several persons, to be sure, but innocent was not the name of their game. They were engaged in the act of sexual intercourse, one by one, three men and a girl. They seemed to be just beginning, the girl still removing clothing and the men standing in a respectful semicircle, watching her.
Propriety suggested that I leave at once, but as I’ve stated before, I’m human, and I gave in to my venal side, opting to remain where I was secreted and watch, like Fabian. I am ashamed, I admit it, but would you have done otherwise? I think not. There are certain things we are all bound up in together, regardless of class or station, and this is one of them. I think certain weaknesses will always be with us, no matter to what plane we evolve.
I didn’t mark the time I stood there, concealed by a dead oak of magnificent girth.
Initially, I wasn’t aware of what was happening. It was just three men and a girl. Two of the men I recognized as being regulars at Joe’s Tavern—common drunks. The third looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him in the dark, not being able to see his features clearly. The woman kept running back and forth from man to man, giggling as she’d peck one on the cheek and then another, her hand flying to her hair after each buss. I could hear her juvenile giggling, and she’d shriek when one reached out to take her by the waist, squirming free to skip up to the next one, breaking away from him as well and on to another; round and round she went. One of the loose women whom I’d also seen at Joe’s many times, cadging drinks from fawning men as she flitted from table to table. I couldn’t recall her name.
Then they began to encircle her, and she was in the midst of their circle, still giggling but now with a somewhat hysterical sound to her laughter. They all stopped in their tracks to stare when she reached behind her, unhooked the tube top she was wearing, and released her breasts. She tossed the top, and one of the men reached out and plucked it out of the air and brought it to his face and buried his nose in the material. I could hear the sharp intake of one of the men and realized I was holding my own breath.