houseofathousand-serialkillers:
The average serial killers have the following characteristics:
- Charismatic
- Intelligent
- History of a troubled childhood or a broken family.
- History of violence. (hurting/killing animals or others)
- The love of fire
- History of bed wetting.
- Unable to hold a long term relationship.
- May have a physical deformity.
- May have a head injury.
- White.
- Male.
- Around 25-35 years of age.
- An interest in pornography or violent pornography.
- Psychopathy.
It was good. Very good. If you’re interested in Jeffrey Dahmer, for what reasons have you, you should pick it up and keep it in your little macabre collection. However, this isn’t a great book about Jeffrey Dahmer (so far nothing’s taken that title from A Father’s Story for me, but I haven’t read The Shrine yet). It is a great book about how high school sucks, and how as a young person you can be so much more attuned to the fucked-up shit around you than most adults, but you’re also incredibly powerless and can do nothing to stop it.
Backderf’s tone in the prologue and notes was most bothersome to me. He goes on and on about how adults should have been there, other people should have seen the patterns that he and all of his friends were seeing, but then he gets incredibly defensive of his and his friends’ own inaction and apathy. I don’t think anyone would blame him for being apathetic: seventeen-year-olds are assholes, and looking back on it and acknowledging he was wrong in not speaking up about a person needing (arguably, “crying for”) help would give the work a lot of maturity and perspective. Unfortunately, that perspective is this short of being there.
That’s the part of this book that will be most frustrating and disappointing to Jeff aficionados; however, I think there’s still merit there. Backderf clearly has a lot of issues with his relationship to Jeff: sometimes he’ll repeatedly reiterate that they weren’t super-close, other times he’ll refer to the killer as a “close friend” and subsequently get out of jury duty (Google it). And that’s pretty much what My Friend Dahmer has in common with a book like A Father’s Story. It’s ultimately just a dude trying to deal with his baggage, the personal part he played in a wretched, horrible crime.
The anecdotes are the best part of the novel itself: The time Backderf, dressed as Hitler, had a nice chat with Jeff backstage at the school talent show, the class trip to Washington, D.C. when Jeff got some students to meet with the Vice President by making a quick pay phone call (this actually might have been my favorite part of the book, the way he sets it up is really quite lovely), prom, the last time one of Derf’s friends hung out with Jeff (it was a couple days after he’d killed Steven Hicks). The anecdotes get progressively creepier and sadder, and it’s about perfect for what Backderf’s trying to achieve.
There are a couple choice panels that are really, really well done, which make up for a lot of the average-er parts of the story. I really wanna share them with you but I have to run out the door and go to a recital. In general, though, get it, read it, have it on hand. It also has a really great notes section. Okay. Goodbye.
