15 Serial Killers
- $13.95 PaperbackISBN: 0-9745031-0-X
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Taking as his text Georges Bataille’s insight that “only at the extremes is there freedom,” critically acclaimed “guerrilla writer” Harold Jaffe documents Bataille’s aperçu with 15 bone-chilling illustrations. Manson, Starkweather, Speck, Son of Sam, the Night Stalker, Aileen Wuornos, the Unabomber, Dahmer, Bundy, Gacy, Kemper, Kevorkian and Kissinger are not merely present and accounted for, they are rendered into a “reality TV” that you’ve never seen before.
Widely praised as a virtuoso stylist, Jaffe employs a number of narrative stratagems, such as letters, monologues, interviews and “unsituated dialogues” to torque the flattened, cartoon-like serial killers into a potently unnerving third dimension.
As in False Positive, Straight Razor, Eros Anti-Eros and Sex for the Millennium, Jaffe’s “docufictions” are at the same time lucid, intricate, gruesome, infinitely sad, and hilarious. At the end we are left with a profoundly incisive commentary on America’s insatiable consumption of extremity, conveniently masked as moral condemnation.
What They’re Saying About 15 Serial Killers
“It’s hard to describe the docufiction any other way than “gripping”. It’s a work that cannot be put down once the eyes start across the print. Jaffe is a master and 15 Serial Killers should not be missed. Raw Dog Screaming Press wins once again with this title that we can only scream KUDOS about! Make sure to check it out!”
—AlterPraxis
“Jaffe’s prose peels away the scab-like caul of ‘history'” illustrating that those ‘official’ accounts people so often take for granted function on a level not all that far removed from the basest offerings of tabloid TV….Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of Jaffe’s latest collection, though, is his satiric, postmodern flattening of temporality (in the anachronistic/Jamesonian sense), a rhetorical and thematic strategy that reveals disturbing continuities in America’s wound culture by exploring why serial killers, from Charles Starkweather and Charles Manson to Ted Bundy and Ted Kaczynski, continue to occupy such a vital position in the American cultural imaginary.”
—Paradoxa
“15 Serial Killers is well worth reading, and will bear rereading in the future. It’s a solid resource book and an interesting volume. Taut, compelling, and as edgy as a freshly honed hunting knife, I can’t wait for the reality tv series to come out.”
—ReallyScary.com
“If you are into today’s monsters and are frustrated by the lack of originality pushed out there, then this is the book for you.”
—Hacker’s Source
“Jaffe is the real stuff.”
—Journal of Experimental Fiction
“Docufiction—fiction in the form of a documentary—and something that can mess with your head like no tomorrow! You often forget the ‘fiction’ part of that word and ‘suspension of disbelief’ is constant because of the facts and people used.”
—Horror-Web
“As in previous works by Jaffe, 15 Serial Killers looks at serial killers through a unique point of view that resists glamorization, and it is effective at reaching deeply into the hic et nuc of the situation…one cannot but admire Jaffe’s courage (and gall) in using these notorious figures as the inspiration for “docufiction.” The potential of ‘docufiction’ is philosophically and narratologically rich.”
—American Book Review
“Harold Jaffe shines a distinctly contemporary light on the pervasive unthinking assumptions of our current culture.”
—Electronic Book Review
“Certain parts of the book had me wondering if he was actually there, hanging out with the killers, sharing a six-pack with them, and watching the way they tore their victims apart. 15 Serial Killers is a flashback into America’s horrid past, delightfully written so the reader can relate to the fifteen psychopaths Jaffe describes, and sometimes becomes.”
—Stephanie Simpson-Woods, The Midwest Book Review
“I just received my copy of Harold Jaffe’s 15 Serial Killers: Docufictions, and Raw Dog Screaming Press did an absolutely beautiful job in layout and design; if this is a sign of things to come for them, all of us interested in outre fiction are in for myriad treats. And, per usual, Jaffe’s transgressive fictions are some of the most interesting and unnerving examples of angry edge-satire around.”
—Lance Olsen, author of Hideous Beauties
“Now, this isn’t an easy book to describe, so I’m going to take the low road and rip a quote right off the back of the book, because it is right on the money: “Jaffe employs a number of narrative stratagems, such as letters, monologues, interviews and ‘unsituated dialogues’ to torque the flattened, cartoon-like serial killers into a potently unnerving third dimension.” If you’re still unclear, just get the damn book—have I ever steered you wrong before? All of your favorite serial killers are here, kids, from Dahmer to Gacy to Bundy to Starkweather and more, and the whole package can be yours for the supremely reasonable price of $13.95. If you think far too much horror fiction is stale and formulaic, this book will renew your faith. You’ll also be supporting the small-press, and that will get you on God’s good side.”
—Tim Emswiler, Weird Times
“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.”
—Katanablue, Amazon.com
“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…they’re all here for the party. Highly recommended.”
—Michael A. Arzen, Bram Stoker Award Winner
“With his usual brilliant blend of deadpan humor and uncanny psychological insight, Jaffe takes the likes of Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, Son of Sam, and the Unabomber and transforms them from tabloid icons into complex fictional characters. What do Jeffrey Dahmer and Henry Kissinger have in common? Read this book and find out.”
—Stephen-Paul Martin
“With 15 Serial Killers Harold Jaffe continues his relentless exploration of ‘dangerous’ territory. He’s a rare literary pioneer—brave, brilliant, original. Watch your step, but follow him.”
—Derek Pell
“15 Serial Killers grabs you by the head and forces you to look hard at some of the most disturbing, graphic, violent, senseless acts of our time. It offers up these gruesomes in a deadpan, darkly comic way that, damn it, makes you laugh, which is perhaps the most terrifying thing of all.”
—Claire Tristram
Illustrations
15 Serial Killers is illustrated by Joel Lipman whose visuals, extraordinary in their own right, subtly complement Jaffe’s docufictions.
Joel Lipman is professor of Art and English at the University of Toledo. Among his beautifully obscure books of poetry are Provacateur [Bloody Twin Press, 1988], Machete Chemistry/Panades Physics, with Yasser Musa [Cubola New Art Foundation, 1994], The Real Ideal [Luna Bisante Prods, 1996], and Subversao Deliberada [International Writers & Artists Association, 2000]. Represented in the anthology Writing To Be Seen [Core, Light & Dust, 2001], his visual poems were exhibited in 2002 and 2003 at the New York Center for the Book and the Minnesota Center for Book Arts. Long active as a mail artist and a five-time recipient of Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowships in Poetry, an on-line portfolio of his work can be found at Light and Dust Poets.
About the Cover
The cover art was designed by Andi Olsen with one of Harold Jaffe’s guerilla writing tenets in mind, “Find a seam, plant a mind, slip away.”
“Freaks are just like us,” Ed McClanahan once wrote. “Only more so.”
Andi Olsen agrees with Ed McClanahan in a big way. Her Freakshow environments & excerpts there from have appeared in galleries across the country & in Europe, most recently in Los Angeles, Seattle, & London.
She has also published numerous illustrations—including collage-text collaborations with Lance Olsen—in various books and journals, & collaborated on a video in tribute to Kathy Acker.
View more of Andi’s art
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