Rabbit is Racist

Rabbit is Rich is the third of John Updike’s “Rabbit” series of novels. It is preceded by Rabbit, Run and Rabbit Redux, and followed by Rabbit at Rest and Rabbit Remembered.

I’ve read the first two, am nearly finished with the third, and intend to continue through the series. The titular “Rabbit” is Harry Angstrom, so nicknamed in high school as a star basketball player. Those years turn out to have been the high point of his life, and the novels, published at about ten year intervals, chronicle the rest of his ordinary, everyman existence.

The books are quite good. The second and third in the series, in fact, won Pulitzers. Each is written in the present tense, which is a little odd at first, but you get used to it. Some of the overall story is quite moving, as in a meeting between Rabbit and a former lover some twenty years after their fling.

But this isn’t really a review. I want to comment on what I see as the casual racism in the series, which is most noticeable in Rabbit is Rich, when Harry is in his complacent, financially secure middle years. While no characters (most of them white) are klan members or anything that extreme, there is an unmistakable bigotry, a sort of benign intolerance, that is quite bothersome. A character will invoke a slur or stereotype, but no one stops to interject, “That is so racist!”

True, the N-bombs, anti-Semitic bombs, and homophobic bombs are not in abundance. But they are frequent enough. Since they are so casually part of the narrative, they hit like a slap.

It’s that casualness that is so galling. Presumably Updike is just painting a portrait as he sees it, but he never condemns the sewage that spills from some of his characters’ lips.

There is, of course, much more to Rabbit is Rich and the others than what I’m here calling casual racism. I love a good sentence, and they are plentiful. There are also parts – in Rabbit is Rich, especially – that made me laugh out loud. I must admit that it’s tempting to ignore the stereotypes and slurs as outdated reflections of their times, which they are. But I cannot overlook them, not without comment.

(In spite of what I have written here, I do recommend these novels. If you decide to read them, I strongly recommend looking at the entire series as a whole, and reading them all).

Project 2025

Project 2025’s defining document is more than 900 pages of ruthless, self-justifying policy objectives. The media usually calls it a “blueprint” for a second Trump term. It is really a blueprint for minority rule.

Bearing the arrogant title Mandate for Leadership, this long, dense document has no executive summary or précis, no bulleted main points. This is by design, because there is much to hide.

“If we are going to rescue the country from the grip of the radical Left, we need both a governing agenda and the right people in place, ready to carry this agenda out on Day One of the next conservative Administration,” its authors state on the Project 2025 website. “This is the goal of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project."

Their defining document identifies “four broad fronts that will decide America’s future.” I quote:

1. Restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children.
2. Dismantle the administrative state and return self-governance to the American people.
3. Defend our nation’s sovereignty, borders, and bounty against global threats.
4. Secure our God-given individual rights to live freely—what our Constitution calls “the Blessings of Liberty.”

The hypocrisy is stunning.

The so-called “mandate for leadership” is no mandate. These people and their ideas are broadly unpopular. They are devoted to money and power. They are devoted to white male minority rule. They are committed to getting what they want by any means necessary. They are unalterably opposed to anything that stands in their way. They are prepared for a bloodbath.

In a fair election they will lose, but the wild card remains: there is nothing they will not stoop to. They will cheat and call it winning. If that fails, they will unleash the minions, as we saw on January 6, 2021. Only this time, it will be far worse.

Follow this link to learn more about Project 2025.

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A Helluva Book

As part of an ongoing project to downsize our cluttered abode, I recently confronted several over-stuffed bookcases with the determination to get rid of at least a few armloads of books. It would require some tough decisions. I’d have to admit that I hadn’t looked at certain titles in years – had even lost interest in them – and would likely never open them again. Not easy admissions for me to make.

I’ve confronted this before, and with a similar determination. And I’ve followed through. I almost always regret it.

This time, as the gotta go pile grew, I came across a copy of Flags Of Our Fathers. I’d forgotten I had it, but do have a recollection of my late father (d. 2016) giving it to me some years back.

I opened it to the flyleaf to see whether he’d inscribed it, as he often used to do. No – but I did find an envelope. Inside it was a brief, undated letter from him that I’d totally forgotten about.

My dad was too young to have served in World War II, yet thought of himself part of the so-called “greatest generation.” He loved Flags Of Our Fathers – and considered it, as he wrote to me, a helluva book.

“It has a meaning for every one of us, I think,” he said. “Not just for war veterans. But for all of us. I want you to have it because of a number of things. First because that time is an important part of me...”

My immediate reaction: skepticism, quite frankly. I don’t know much about Flags Of Our Fathers. It has something to do with Iwo Jima, and that iconic flag-raising picture. I suspect a faux patriotic pulse; that it’s faintly (or not so faintly) jingoistic and rabidly macho, beckoning to an America that never was.

Whatever triumphs resulted from the sacrifice of these flagraisers, and the hundreds of thousands they symbolize, is threatened by the same elitist malignancies that caused World War Two, and today is poised to topple what passes for our democracy.

Or maybe I’m being too harsh. Wouldn’t be the first time.

That brief letter ends with, “I love you, son. Dad.”

He had me with hello. 

Book Review: Starkweather

The 1958 killing spree by Charles Starkweather and his fourteen-year-old girlfriend Caril Ann Fugate ushered in our modern era of senseless mass murder. That, at least, is a premise of Starkweather: The Untold Story of the Killing Spree That Changed America, by Harry N. MacLean.

Whether MacLean makes his case, and how much of the story really is untold, is debatable. But I did learn a few things from reading this book. Before, I had only a vague sense of these horrific crimes. I’d thought that 19-year-old Starkweather killed a few people in Lincoln, Nebraska for no apparent reason, and then he and his young accomplice fled by car across several states, murdering others along the way: a hitchhiker here, a guy with a flat tire there, and so on.

What really happened is that one day, Starkweather murdered Fugate’s mother, stepfather, and two-year-old sister. Then he and Caril hid out at the Fugate home for the next five or six days, before fleeing on their cross-country rampage. Only then did Starkweather murder seven more people, most of them in the Lincoln vicinity. Both were in custody within a few days.

The real question is: did Caril Ann Fugate participate in the murders? She insisted she did not – that she hadn’t even known her family was dead. But the legal system didn’t believe her, and gave her a life sentence. Starkweather got the electric chair.

In spite of this book’s title, Starkweather is at least as much about Fugate, and perhaps moreso. She always maintained her innocence, and MacLean presents evidence for and against her. Though she was never exonerated, Caril Ann Fugate was released from prison after serving eighteen years. As of this writing she is still alive, but in declining health, living in a nursing home.

There are flaws in Starkweather, clumsy ones. This susprised me, because according to a jacket blurb, Harry MacLean is a prizewinning writer of True Crime stuff.

In spite of this credential he fails to explain certain things, and the book suffers for it. During that five to six day period between the first murders and leaving on their cross-country spree, for example, Starkweather and Fugate stayed at the Fugate home (the initial victims stashed in a shed behind the house). On several occasions people came knocking on the door, but Fugate got rid of them, explaining everyone inside was ill.

Among those calling were two cops. They left with the crimes undetected – but why were they there in the first place? MacLean doesn’t explain. Even in the context of a more innocent time, would two experienced cops really buy an “everyone is sick” story?

The book also throws a lot of names and details at the reader, but there is no index. It is hard, in places, to keep everything straight. An index would be invaluable. The same is true of citations: there are no end notes, no footnotes, no page references – only a brief Author’s Note at the end.

If there is anything missing from MacLean’s telling of the crime saga itself, it is motive. But it seems to be beyond us, at this late date. Starkweather gave conflicting accounts of why he did what he did, then went to the chair. Surviving records provide nothing conclusive.

All that said, readers interested in a detailed account of this horrific murder case will not be disappointed by Starkweather.