This July 4th Feels Wrong

What is July Fourth to a Progressive?

 

 

Americans are gearing up for the July 4^th holiday in various ways. For some it’s a way to express their patriotism; for others, a show of support for American troops or relatives in uniform. A hardy few want to revel in Donald Duck’s Trump’s warped view of American might and his lies about prosperity and global respect. I suspect, though, that most Americans simply see July 4^th as an opportunity to have a picnic, see fireworks, or–in that greatest of American spectacles–take advantage of retail sales.

My title is a riff off a famous 1852 speech delivered by Frederick Douglass titled “The Meaning of July Fourth to the Negro.” https://masshumanities.org/files/programs/douglass/speech_complete.pdf

Douglass reminded us that one’s standing in society is more important than bang-the-drum symbolism. I recognize that this July 4^th is the 250^th birthday of the United States. I recall driving to Boston to watch fireworks explode across the Charles and listen to the late Arthur Fiedler lead the Boston Pops in patriotic tunes. That was when Gerald Ford was president, and one year after the Vietnam War ended and Richard Nixon resigned as POTUS for his role in the Watergate coverup. (Let the last one sink in; even Nixon had more honor than the national embarrassment currently in the White House.) I was ready to celebrate after years of protest against the war. I was also glad to see the back of Nixon, though I felt a minor twinge of pity as he was clearly suffering from a combination of acute depression and alcohol abuse.

For the 250^th, I’m thinking of donning black mourning garb and lamenting America’s fall from grace. This year’s celebration will feature Kremlin-like military spectacles, White House bombast, and attacks on all I hold important and sacred. I’d not be surprised were molten gold to drip from Trump’s forked tongue. It’s this simple, I am a pacifist Quaker who believes truth matters, knows a conman when I see one, believe that starting wars to look strong is an evil act. Sending fishermen to their deaths and pretending they are drug smugglers is pathetic and immoral.

American might is a myth, as is Trump’s “leadership.” Some of what he says is risible; a lot of it is so dangerous that what Trump likes to call the “radical left” is not exaggerating in calling it fascism. During the Trump years I’ve made it a habit to vacation in New England, where sanity still reigns; Canada, where it never left; and Europe, which has an educated population that can detect BS. In New England, Trump is an annoyance in the way a carbuncle is an annoyance. We get grumpy because we can’t wait to have him excised. Canadians fear him because they think he’s after something and they are probably right; Canada has more than 20 percent of the world’s potable water. So does the U.S. but almost all of it is in the Great Lakes shared with Canada. Subtract the lakes, not coincidentally bordering blue states, and it drops to seven percent. Even deep aquifers are disproportionately concentrated in the Northeast, Middle Atlantic, and the Far West.

Most Western Europeans act as if Trump is irrelevant. Neither they nor Canadians hate Americans. They feel sorry for us and say so in private conversations. They can see that their countries have more services, a stronger infrastructure, better schools and, yes, more freedom. Aside from a handful of Baltic states with a history of authoritarian rule, few Europeans see the U.S. as enviable. Their primary fear is that military power is under the control of an impulse-driven manchild who confuses missiles with the size he’d like his phallus to be. Can you say Armageddon?

As for me, I’m tired of trying to explain things to hardcore Trumpanzees. I don’t think all of his supporters are uneducated hillbillies. Some dislike taxes and have made out well, the white working class correctly feels left out by Democratic technocrats, and some vote out of party loyalty. Perhaps the majority feel lost in modern America and fear for their futures. It’s not wrong, though, to see a large swarm of Trumpanzees as militaristic rah-rah boys, racists, end-of-the-world evangelicals, isolationists, misogynists, and losers. The hardcore is immune to reason and would turn back progress. On July 4^th I will mourn the loss of democracy.

RW

 

 

 

 

 

 

 CLOSE TO DEATH (2024)

By Anthony Horowitz

Harper Penguin, 432 pages

★★★★★

 

Close to Death is subtitled “A Literary Whodunnit about a Murder in a Gated Community.” I’m sure every published author thinks their work is “literary;” Anthony Horowitz has the chops to say that without provoking an eye roll.

 

This is a continuation of the Hawthorne though in previous books, private investigator Daniel Hawthorne’s partner is John Dudley. Tony Horowitz’s role is akin to Dr. Watson’s in Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes novels; he writes about how the cases were solved. Like Holmes, Hawthorne’s agency never takes credit for the solution; they allow local loan enforcement to wallow in kudos.

 

In Close to Death, Hawthorne and Dudley have parted ways and Horowitz has taken Dudley’s place. Is it literary to be a character, a guide, and the author of the same tale? If you can tell it like Horowitz, it does. The title is a pun. In England, a close as a small gated community, in this case, just six homes clustered around a half circle in Richmond Upon Thames.

 

Things have long been tranquil, but that changes when pushy social climbers Giles and Lynda Kenworthy buy the largest home in the Close. There is only one way around the half circle and the Kenworthys park so many cars there that it’s hard to get out. Their three kids are said to have ripped up flower beds, skateboarded underneath windows, and tossed a ball that smashed a chess set belonging into Adam Strauss. He is a ranked Chessmaster, who often wins matches in which he competes with more than 20 other opponents simultaneously. Adam insists the ball broke an invaluable set given to him by an Indian Raja, though the figures are from “Lord of the Rings” and appear to be plastic.

 

Others in the Close include Dr. Tom and Genna Beresford; Tom insists the Kenworthys are literally guilty of murder, as a patient died in his surgery because he couldn’t get out of the driveway blocked by the Kenworthys. Roderick Browne’s wife Felicity is an invalid, and the kids make noise that disturbs her rest. Mary Winslow and Phyllis Moore, two ex-nuns who also operate a mystery murder bookstore, think Giles threw their dog down a well, and even quiet Andrew Pennington, a retired attorney, thinks the new family is unfriendly.  

 

Adam calls a Close meeting and invites the Kentworthys to address the complaints. When they are no-shows, their thoughtfulness seems unbounded. When the family next announces plans to build a swimming pool that would uproot a beautiful magnolia tree, and the village council surprisingly approves the plan, Giles’s body is soon discovered outside his garage with a crossbow bolt in his throat.

 

Police Detective Tariq Khan comes to investigate the murder. The crossbow belonged to Roderick, but everyone in the Close–including Giles’ wife–had a murderous motive. Each also has an airtight alibi. So, who did it? Could it have been the gardener? Perhaps the Kenworthys’ Australian nanny? How about Lynda’s trainer who is probably her lover? Khan agrees to call in Hawthorne and Dudley to consult on the case. Dudley is unkempt and uncouth, and Hawthorne is a grating know-it-all. Khan is happy to dismiss them when Rodrick leaves a confession/suicide note ostensibly to spare Felicity more pain.

 

Five years later, Horwitz is Daniel’s new partner. He’s also a writer who owes his publisher a book but because Hawthorne has no new cases, Horwitz wants to write about the Close. He wonders why Daniel warns him not to touch the case. All of his reasons seem odd. Why can’t he ask Dudley about the case? Where is Dudley? Tony does some investigating of his own and lots of things don’t add up, including the number of meetings that were held. But things have changed and in the five years since the murder. Only Andrew and Lynda still live in the Close. Adam died a month after Giles by falling off a bridge, though no one saw him tumble. The more Tony ponders, the clearer it becomes that no one in the Close was who they appeared to be.

 

Yet his dilemma is the same as Hawthorne’s and Dudley’s: If everyone is a suspect, where do you turn? This novel has more red herrings than a large Dutch city! Horowitz’s multiple voices–in and separated by time–enhance the intrigue. Multiple people are fingered as the probable murderer, until they are not. This mystery will certainly engage your mind. It’s like a sophisticated game of Clue, except you can’t trust your gut, your logic, or any conclusion without reservation, even when Horowitz the writer offers one.

 

Rob Weir

 

The Keeper: Intrigue and Death in an Irish Village

 

 

 

THE KEEPER (2026)

By Tana French

Viking, 480 pages

★★★★

 

Author Tana French gets tabbed as one of Ireland’s greatest living novelists. She happens to live in Dublin, but she’s a Vermont-born lass who considers herself a homeless vagabond. Her father was an international development economist; Tana has lived in America, Italy, Malawi, Ireland, and several other places. If you’ve read the first two books of the Cal Hooper series, French is a bit like Cal. The Keeper is book three of a series whose very names tip readers of a major theme. The Hunter, The Seeker, and The Keeper are set in the fictional Western Ireland village of Ardnakelty. It’s in the heart of a farming region whose residents have a love/hate relationship to change. How do farmers keep up with Irish modernization without surrendering its historical and cultural identity? This delicate balancing act is at the heart of The Keeper.

 

For those who haven’t not read the previous two books, it’s preferable to do so, but not necessary. French gives plenty of detail about village life and characters that you can quickly catch on to who’s who in Ardnakelty. Cal was the seeker, a former Chicago police detective whose wife chucked him. He, in turn, quit his job and moved to Ireland for a slower, less stressful lifestyle. He got the first, but not always the second. He restored an old cottage away from Ardnakelty’s center, but that alone did not erase the reality of being an outsider to village customs and mores. As “seekers” know, small places often treat outsides with suspicion. Cal is, however, a talented woodworker who helps young vagabond “Trey” (Theresa) Reddy the trade and serves as a surrogate father to her. Cal also begins an affair with the fiercely independent widow Lena Dunne. 

 

The Keeper picks up Cal’s story at a time in which he is in his 50s and “engaged” to Lena Dunne, though it’s a bit of a ruse. Neither has a great desire to remarry, but it gives a respectable veneer to their long-standing romance. It helps that her sister Noreen runs the store where villagers buy essentials and consume another Ardnakelty staple: gossip. Cal’s neighbor is the cranky but amusing Mart(in), a lover of American music, TV, and films. He calls Cal “Sunny Jim” or “Columbo,” named one of his dogs “Kojak,” and is the voice for local farmers. Mart also helped Cal form a group of mates down at Séan Og’s pub. Trey is now an older teen who thinks of quitting school to become a woodworking apprentice, despite her mother Sheila and Cal pushing her to finish her final year before deciding. Telling Trey what to do isn’t a good way to go. She has enough confidence to assert her own will and has acquired mates who roam the woodlands and hills, engage in minor mischief, gang swarm bullies, and play soccer together.  

 

The first part of The Keeper is quite funny as it touches upon the foibles, superstitions, and shenanigans of village life. The locals find themselves deeply divided by the activities of Tommy Moynihan, a local mover, shaker, and (some say) crooked politician who has his finger in every pie. Much of the village is beholden to Tommy because he brought jobs into the area, but there are those who wonder why he has been buying up local land, especially adjacent farms. Rumors circulate that he is about to close a deal that would build a massive factory that would transform Ardnakelty. In true Ardnakelty style, no one takes a direct route to find out, nor would they trust Moynihan if he told them. When it appears that Tommy’s browbeaten son Eugene will stand for a controlling seat on the local council, tongues wag faster.

 

A crisis arises when Eugene’s about-to-be fiancée Rachel drowns in the river, and both the coroner and local Guarda rule it a suicide. Mart encourages those who think it’s a coverup. Lena does some investigating of her own, which leads Tommy to push back so hard that Lena fears she’ll be sent to an asylum. Vigilantism, barfights, and whispered words set villagers against each other. Was Tommy “riding” (having sex with) Eugene’s girlfriend? After the death of another local, does truth matter anymore?

 

French deftly moves from eccentricities to mystery to malleable conclusions. Can Ardnakelty can hold fast to the old ways, or must it change to survive?

 

Rob Weir