15 Serial Killers: Docufictions

by Harold Jaffe, Joel Lipman (Illustrator)

If you enjoy the show Mind Hunter-- 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. "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 "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

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Historical Fiction

180 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2003

About the author

Harold Jaffe is the author of 22 books, including nine fiction collections, one nonfiction collection, and three novels.

Jaffe's fiction has appeared in such journals as The Mississippi Review, City Lights Review, The Paris Review, New Directions in Prose and Poetry, Chicago Review, Chelsea, Fiction, Central Park, Witness, Black Ice, Minnesota Review, Boundary 2, ACM, Black Warrior Review, Cream City Review, Two Girls' Review, and New Novel Review. His stories have been anthologized in Pushcart Prize, Best American Stories, Best of American Humor, Storming the Reality Studio, American Made, Avant Pop: Fiction for a Daydreaming Nation, After Yesterday's Crash: The Avant-Pop Anthology, Bateria and Am Lit (Germany), Borderlands (Mexico), Praz (Italy), Positive (Japan), and elsewhere.

His novels and stories have been translated into German, Japanese, Spanish, French, Dutch, Czech, and Serbo-Croatian.

Harold Jaffe has won two NEA grants in fiction, a New York CAPS grant, a California Arts Council fellowship in fiction, and a San Diego fellowship (COMBO) in fiction.

Jaffe teaches literature at San Diego State University and is editor of Fiction International.

Reviews

[Jenn · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a creatively (small-pressedly) written documentary about 15 serial killers, which include regulars like Manson and Gacy, but also Henry Kissinger. Themes address our tendency to label poverty-stricken mass murderers "serial killers" while awarding rich, powerful mass murderers Nobel Peace Prizes; society's implicit guilt in serial killings by treating serial killers as entertainmet; our craptacular justice system; and the unreliable, gossipy nature of documentaries, masked as factual accounts.

The book relies a lot on the reader already having a fair amount of knowledge about each of the serial killers, so read up before reading.

[🐴 🍖]

most interesting when the killers narrate: phlegmatic kemper, oleaginous bundy, manson's bitter rasp. the 3rd person sections are at times coolly distanced & at other points a lil too pleased w/ themselves for being edgy. creepy resonances throughout: idk what it means that both berkowitz & ed kemper ate spam but stuff like that will nag at you from chapter to chapter. nice to see henry kissinger's outstanding work in the field acknowledged here.

[Rich · Rating 5 out of 5]

A jarringly disturbing book, but jarring only in fact. Jaffe neither celebrates nor deplores the personas he creates on the page. Instead, he approaches people like Dahmer as people with complex psychologies. Horror? Absolutely. Cheap sensationalism? Absolutely not.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating and new way of looking at serial killers. There are 15 stories here, each about a different killer. Jaffe's docufiction style reads like true crime but allows for drama and meaning that non-fiction books can't provide.

Note: I edited this book.

[Jiminy Panoz · Rating 4 out of 5]

As usual, Jaffe is mastering Docufictions.
Patchworks are just amazing, his style knows no compromises, no single word is censored.

Some parts of 15 Serial Killers sounded so real I almost felt bad. When words are almost making you vomit, then you know the writer is talented.