Customer Reviews

Of Men and Monsters: Jeffrey Dahmer and the Construction of the Serial Killer

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Typical of postmodern "theory," the writing is needlessly complex, which, also typical of postmodernists, hides the fact that the author is substantively ignorant of the topic and has no insight to offer. If you can sort through the jargon, this book basically argues that serial murders would not happen if we just ignored the killers, because they are part of a "discursive" loop, in which the killers are a sort of performer who kill to please their audience, which is the public. The author is oblivious to work done in psychology, criminology, sociology, and FBI investigations. Overall, the book is a flight from reality, which would be humorous if the topic were not so serious.

I found this to be a good book, given the relatively difficult topic, very informative (another person's (Richard's in this case) is always usefully anyhow; however, this is the most hardest of reading material that I have ever come across. ADVICE: One Korean Gingseng and no alcohol before opening Richard's Book.

When i started this book, i thought I'd frequently find myself depressed by the subject at hand. Serial killers - depressing stuff, right? However, Tithecott deconstructs the mythology of the serial killer in such an utterly non-sensationalizing manner, it could almost be described as "refreshing" considering the way this (patriarchal) phenomenon is usually approached in popular-culture.

This book went far beyond what i imagined it would cover as well. It delved into subjects like the discourse surrounding law-enforcement (of clean/dirty binaries that posit police as agents of "public sanitation", who use non-psychiatric/'feminine' modes of addressing criminality), the significance of cannibalism within the public sphere, how the actions of serial killers' are naturalized (by being described as "without motive", "random", or even "unspeakable" - instead of perhaps racist, classicist, homophobic or misogynistic) and how this normalizing language does nothing to dismantle (or can even perpetuate) the destructive reality of individualistic masculine-power fantasies abundantly circulated in contemporary North American society... amongst many, many, many, many other things - too many to even try listing.

In short, this text covers A LOT in under a 200 pages and has a bibliography i will definitely look upon if i ever want to pursue these subjects further.

Perhaps this is part of the reason book reviewers of the past have found this text "needlessly complex". Admittedly, the first chapter in particular took some time to adjust to, because the author directly quotes A LOT of different sources. The frequent citing of names & quotation marks made staying focused on the ideas difficult at times. It would have been nice to see more liberties taken with paraphrasing, but perhaps that is an issue of copyright & less of writing style.

This is the finest book on the subject, addressing not what serial killers ARE but why we make them the way they are, how they function for us, and why we need them. The prose is witty, direct, and precise; the argument is more chilling than any horror story.