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15 Serial Killers: Docufictions

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Every culture is obsessed with sex and death. But American Puritanism makes us squeamish when we imagine both at the same time. We take Paris Hilton and the DC snipers in separate doses.

Serial killers bridge the realms of sex and death. And, by adding Americans' love for celebrity to the mix, they become superstars. Aileen Wournos is just the latest example.

Yet we need to deny our fascination. We pretend to read the papers for our edification, not the gory details. So we look at the fragments, and we can't -- or won't -- put the pieces together.

Harold Jaffe can and does. In his new book, 15 SERIAL KILLERS, Jaffe -- a master at public fiction -- pushes the full dimensions of our prurience -- and the subjects and objects of our perverse fantasies -- straight into our own consciousness.

Jaffe's book presents "docufictions," in which he delineates the lives and crimes of serial killers, including Jeffrey Dahmer, Henry Kissinger, the Son of Sam, Charles Manson, and Dr. Jack Kevorkian.

The portraits include summations of events, detailed backstories, and "interviews" of the kind that make these killers stars.

Jaffe probes the mass murderers' similarities -- and their individuality. In so doing, he uncovers their grotesque cultural significance.

In his previous book, the deeply probing FALSE POSITIVE, Jaffe explored current events -- from road rage to Mideast violence. His mastery of public fiction allows him to mine the underlying "politicalness" of events and occurences, which makes his stories of headline-grabbing killers in his latest book both startling and unnerving.

Yet Jaffe also has a great grasp of story. In "Lonely Hearts," a more-than-twisted Nathanael West tale, Jaffe tells the story of Martha Beck and Ramon Fernandez, ballroom dancers who seduce lonely widows with money. It is both road story and romance. Martha is jealous of Ramon. Ramon is obsessively vain about his hairpiece. In the end, he kills Martha, then himself. In this story, limning the lives of largely unknown killers, Jaffe strikes a fine balance betwen the deeply personal and the deeply American sense of thwarted longing.

When he returns to the more wholly public sphere, Jaffe is equally skilled. He skewers the relationship betwen Nixon and Kissinger: "Iago and Iago."

Jaffe describes the private turmoil of his killers, creating -- yes -- sympathy for his characters alongside his penetrating public insights.

In these docufictions, we learn equally of John Wayne Gacy's successful management of a KFC franchise, of the Yonkers' Police Department's "media grab" in the arrest of the Son of Sam, of Ted Bundy's delight in biting his victims, and of the "game show' nature of current American "reality," as fictional hosts ask banal questions of their murderous guests.

The cumulative effect is one of a mixed mayhem -- public and private -- that we typically ignore.

Jaffe is fundamentally an epistemologist. He strikes hard at the core of what we know and how we know it in our "information age." His narrative strategies serve his ends well and they provoke, agitate, and ultimately compel.

We emerge from our immersion in the lives and aftermaths of these killers questioning not only our collective values, our assumptions, our way of looking at what we know about the world, but also questioning ourselves. When we reach the end of these 15 bone-chilling portraits, we must ask ourselves: do we ("God forbid")identify with any of these characters? These monsters?

That we get to ask this question at all is a great testimony to the success of this book.

15 SERIAL KILLERS is another Harold Jaffe masterpiece.

15 Serial Killers is an edgy, innovative collection of short stories that often reads like true crime. Jaffe's unflinching yet non-judgemental treatment of the sadistic details is both disturbing and thought provoking. The concept of a "Docufiction" is to fictionalize real events and people, often giving a clearer view into the chaotic mind of the killer than any book-length factual account could.

Although Jaffe employs many different formats; dialog, monologue, talk show transcript, there is still a pronounced completeness to the book. These 15 different stories explore the relationship between the serial killer as an individual and society's fascination with them.

This book grabs you right from the get-go, dropping you into the scene of the crime in a way unlike any I've read before: the "docufiction" approach merges the newsstories with a fictional re-enactment that immerses the reader in the reality of the murders in an intriguing way. This is what true crime fiction SHOULD do, but doesn't, because it's so repressed and interested in the lawful side of non-fiction. Here Jaffe expresses himself freely -- even as he is clearly writing in an objective manner, keeping the narrator out of the picture in each character study. 15 SERIAL KILLERS is a fascinating literary experiment even as it's a disturbing horrorshow, entering into the scene of the crime and the twisted methods and mentations of fifteen of the world's most notorious serial killers. Dahmer, Gacy, Bundy, Gein... they're all here for the party. Highly recommended.

Radically innovative writer Harold Jaffe pulls out all the stops with his newest collection of prophetic meta-fictions. Just you keep on flipping that remote. Jaffe is now in control of your television set with his chilling array of hyper-real killers and virtual predators. At once both menacing and comic, 15 Serial Killers sinks its razor-sharp fangs into the media manipulated society that both condems and consumes serial killers as an entertainment "product." Jaffe challenges even the hippest of readers to think for themselves about our crumbling sit-com society. Read this book and let Jaffe grab you by the scruff of the neck and take a close, hard look at it.

Harold Jaffe's 15 Serial Killers actually scared me. 15 docufictions tales written so well that I truly believed I stood within touching distance of famous slayers. I very strongly urge you to read this book, but only when the lights are bright and help is only a scream away.

Jaffe has been called a literary pioneeer, and rightly. His tendency is to treat the seemingly most intractable material and somehow transform it into a potent message on behalf of those segments of society that other people--including writers--do not--or choose not to--see.

Here, Jaffe's subject is serial killers, and though the names are familiar--Bundy, Dahmer, Gacy, Son of Sam, the Unabomber--the treatment is like nothing you can imagine. The best way I can put it is that when you finish this amazing volume it is as though your eyes have been sewn wide open.

Yet more serial killers, you ask? Well, yes and no. Sure, the usual suspects are mostly all there: Bundy, Wuornos, Dahmer, Gacy, the Night Stalker, the Unabomber, Speck, Son of Sam . . . But what is Henry Kissinger doing in that company, coming off, in Jaffe's version, as a serial mass murderer of entire countries, dwarfing any of the other official serial killers by comparison.

As usual, Jaffe's writing is so sharp, his pitch perfect, the cadences so precise, that even the most graphic violence is transformed into a rare sort of poetry.

With all the hoopla over the movie Monster, Jaffe's version of Aileen Wuornos is far and away superior in its complexity and, finally, compassion for the female "serial killer".

Technically, 15 Serial Killers is a tour de force, but its profundity is more than technical; rather it's a combination of moral daring, passion, the keenest intelligence, and remarkably varied prose.

How can a single volume of "docufictions" be graphically violent,
elegantly stylized, philosophically revolutionary and irrepressibly
funny all at once? Jaffe somehow brings it off.

Given the subject matter, the graphic violence goes without speaking;
the stylization is in how the individual narratives (each "story"
belongs to a different serial killer) are modeled. Jaffe presents us
with monologues, "unsituated dialogues," letters, playlets, mock TV
talk shows, and various combinations of these modalities. The result
is not chaos but its opposite, a kind of fluidly elegant architecture
of form. Revolution is, it seems, the intent; a revolution of
consciousness which has aligned the serial murderer with the powerful
politician or media capitalist and demonstrated conclusively the
greater virtue of the serial murderer. As in False Positive, Straight
Razor, Sex for the Millennium and his other books, Jaffe is comical
in ways that can't easily be described--a combination of the
language, the uncannily accented rhythm and the wildly incongruous
details and images.

The upshot is a virtuosic performance which is at the same time an
extraordinarily trenchant commentary on our post-Millennial culture.
--

If you are a fan of narratives that leave you feeling that strange stimulating combination of humor, unease and engagement (as I am), then you will not be disappointed with Jaffe's latest docufiction work that takes factual information about some of the most infamous killers ever known, from Charles Manson to Henry Kissinger, and treats it, at once giving intriguing insight into these dark and arguably brilliant criminal minds while exposing the exploitative, hypocritical media and culture that voraciously consumes and condemns them at the same time.

Naturally, Jaffe presents all of this material in his usual innovative, unconventional fashion that keeps you thoughtful, amused and engaged until the end. This is a work for those who enjoy having their cultural assumptions interrogated while being thoroughly entertained--not for the unimaginative or feint of mind.

I got my first taste of the exploratory and prolific author, Harold Jaffe, when I read his stories: "Latex Gloves" and "Straight Razor"from his STRAIGHT RAZOR collected works. These far from mainstream, revolting tales, introduce Jaffe with a distinct flavor that won't be misread. The tangy juices run through your veins long after you've devoured his words; embedding themselves inside you, leaving you with uncertainty mostly imparting within you an utter bewilderment for the unknown and unexplored.

Jaffe derives so much satisfaction from his masochistic scribing of physical and emotional abuse? The gratifying pleasure, from humiliation and mistreatment, the tendency to subject his readers to unpleasant and trying sexual experiences through such poetic magnificence? From a sexual experience almost politically orgasmic? Who is Jaffe the author that has created an encounter that could make Madonna feel like a virgin being touched for the very first time? READ this extreme collection: 15 Serial Killers: Docufuictions by Harold Jaffe and find out!
Damn wicked, just freakin genius works by a master at the extreme. Brutally recommended! Come on, you know you want it....don't be afraid, --be VERY afraid that you just might enjoy it. *evil laughs* close your eyes and click the button --really nothing will explode. really... really.... you'll enjoy it --I love this book!