My Friend Dahmer by Derf Backderf

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My Friend Damhmer
by Derf Backderf

One of the books I read this week was Derf Backderf’s graphic novel, My Friend Dahmer, an Alex Award book from the 2013 list. It provides a chilling account of the author’s interactions with a socially awkward classmate who would grow up to be one of the most notorious serial killers.  Derf’s black and white illustrations work incredible effectively with his prose to recount his recollections of his encounters with Jeff Dahmer, mainly from their years as sophomores until they graduated from Revere High School. In this memoir (researched meticulously using interviews with other high school friends and neighbors, FBI files of Dahmer’s crimes and numerous interviews with profilers and psychiatrists, newspaper accounts, and other sources), Derf points out how Dahmer’s odd and troubling behavior somehow managed to fly under the radar of the adults in Dahmer’s life: school teachers and administrators never noticed anything unusual in his behavior above and beyond that of a typical burn-out student from that era, and his habitual drinking and skipping class mostly went unremarked; his parents were too wrapped up in their acrimonious divorce to notice Jeff’s fascination with road kill or his spiraling alcoholism. It’s only his fellow students, members of the Dahmer Fan Club, who at first encourage his bizarre spastic episodes, that ultimately one by one realize there is something wrong with this guy. Derf’s most memorable episode where he realized Dahmer had serious issues was when he witnessed him guzzle a six-pack of beers in the back of the car on his way to play spastic at the town mall for money that some of the high school kids had pooled together. Another friend of Derf’s recounts an episode where he invited Dahmer to his dad’s pond; Dahmer caught a fish and just cut it to pieces instead of throwing it back in the pond as he’d been instructed. Derf’s graphic novel lays the blame at all the adults in Jeff’s life who could have intervened in some way, but didn’t. Derf writes in the intro, “It’s my belief that Dahmer didn’t have to wind up a monster, that all those people didn’t have to die horribly, if only the adults in is life hadn’t been so inexplicably, unforgivingly, incomprehensively clueless and/or indifferent. Once Dahmer kills, however—and I can’t stress this enough—my sympathy for him ends. He could have turned himself in after that first murder. He could have put a gun to his head.” Derf’s graphic novel is an unflinching account of a kid who fell between the cracks, whose mental problems went undiagnosed and untreated, until he became the monster who would kill Steven Hicks, a hitch-hiking teen from a neighboring town.  This final descent into madness took place during the six-week period when Dahmer was abandoned by his mother and before his father, who had left right before the divorce, moved back in. Ultimately, Derf explains in the various notes after the book, Jeffery Dahmer would go on to kill 16 more victims while living in Milwaukee; a 17th managed to escape and bring police attention to Dahmer.

As the book mostly recounts Dahmer’s teen years, it’s not surprising that this dark memoir would have teen appeal and be awarded an Alex Award.  It’s well researched, chillingly recounted, and creepily illustrated, though it’s worth noting that Derf is not at all sensationalistic in his visual imagery (it could easily have been much more gory and Derf chooses to avoid that).  It’s worth noting that Derf credits underground comix legend Robert Crumb as one visual influence to his art style. This is a book that takes an unwavering and nuanced look at a troubled teen who ultimately went over the brink.

The Physics of Responsibility

Brown, Molly. The Physics of Responsibility: Alternate Worlds and Adolescent Choices. Mousaion, 2011, 28:2
http://repository.up.ac.za/bitstream/handle/2263/19825/Brown_Physics%282011%29.pdf?sequence=1

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In her article, “The Physics of Responsibility: Alternate Worlds and Adolescent Choices”, Molly Brown concludes that Diana Wynne Jones and Phillip Pullman both use the concept of heterotopia as a way to discuss the infinite possibilities of adolescence. Heterotopia, as Brown uses it, refers to “a move away from unitary or even a binary conception of the universe towards an acceptance of the possibility… that we may, in fact, be surrounded by seemingly endless number of dissonant and dissimilar world” (Brown, p. 2). In Fantasy series like Jones’ Chrestomanci series and Pullman’s His Dark Materials series, the fantasy worlds from which the protagonists live are only part of a much largest tapestry of interwoven worlds, an infinite possibility of worlds sometimes like or sometimes dissimilar from their own. In these fantastical multiverses, Brown implies, the authors present “a shifting perspective of limitless possibilities that mirror both the enormous potential and the terrifying insecurities of adolescence” (Brown, p.8).  Brown writes, “Finally, too, it would seem that both Jones and Pullman use heterotopia not only to reflect the liminal uncertainties of adolescence, but to question and reshape what Tolkien calls “eucatastrophe” (1977[1964]:70), the “happily ever after” that is perhaps, in the end, the most illusory element of all fantasy. By rejecting this comforting and traditional narrative formula, these innovative writers show their readers that life is not a story to be neatly resolved at a single point, but a continuous struggle to make and preserve meaning both for ourselves and for others” (Brown, p. 11). The challenge for teens is to turn their backs on all the different choices that they are not choosing, and instead embrace and fully experience the single world they are making for themselves. The challenge of adolescence, as presented by these two authors, is to learn to live a single life to its fullest. Maturation and adulthood come with the closing of possibilities and acceptance of the life choices one makes.

Little Brother by Cory Doctorw

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Little Brother
by Cory Doctorow

One of the books that I read this past week was Cory Doctorow’s novel Little Brother.  In it, Marcus Yallow and three of his best friends, Jolu, Daryl, and Van are skipping school to play their favorite Alternative Reality Game (ARG) the afternoon a terrorist attack destroys the Bay Bridge in San Francisco.  The four are detained by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and treated as suspect in the bombing.  Marcus resists giving his captors passwords to his phone and email, and they immediately respond by increasing their pressure tactics on him.  Marcus eventually cracks, giving up his passwords and phone passkey, and three of them are released.  Daryl, however, is not.  For the bulk of the novel, Marcus is unsure if Daryl is still detained, but he vows to bring down the DHS and bring their torture tactics to light.  Once home, he doesn’t tell his parents about the DHS detention, and he discovers his laptop has been bugged.  He then decides to hack a free Xbox Universal with a freeware OS, ParanoidLinux, and begins to distribute DVDs to help other do the same.  This becomes the Xnet, one of the last truly secure networks.  Marcus and the Xnetters constantly find ways to disrupt and undermine DHS’s escalating surveillance and monitoring tactics. Marcus’ hope is that by adding sand in the ointment, the general population will realize that DHS’s tactics aren’t making San Francisco any safer, they are simply repealing civil liberties for the sake of security theater.  Through Jolu, Marcus meets Ange Carvelli, a fellow Xnetter and love interest. The two decide to stage a press release within one of the MMORPGs in Xnet, but the efforts seem to backfire as the press takes large parts of his and others’ explanations for their actions out of context. After discovering that Daryl is very much alive and still in the hands of the DHS, Marcus Marcus then decides to come clean to his parents about his DHS detention, and his mother seeks out the help of an investigative reporter his parents know, Barbara Stratford.  Along with Daryl’s father, who had previously assumed his son was killed in the attacks, Marcus and his parents meet Barbara and explain everything that they know about the DHS detention facility on Treasure Island. Barbara warns that she will investigate further to corroborate his story, but it is out of his hands and she will write the story as she sees fit for The Bay Guardian.  She’ll give Marcus a warning before she goes public, but she warns there could be repercussions. Marcus is contacted by another teen working with the DHS, Masha, who tells him that he is still very much on their radar and he has only a few days before they close in.  Masha offers him the chance to escape with her if he’ll help her created an Xnet diversion.  Marcus and Ange decide to trust her and stage a Vampire-themed LARP for the Xnetters.  Marcus and Ange are separated during the confusion, and Masha practically kidnaps Marcus on her way out of town. Marcus steals her phone and runs away. He’s eventually captured by DHS, but not before he is able to get Masha’s phone and incriminating video safely to Barbara. Once in DHS’s detainment facility, Marcus is waterboarded for his information, and he nearly gives up hope when suddenly the facility is raided by the California State Troopers under the guidance of Stratford.  Stratford warns Marcus that he’s still under arrest and it may be a few days before they can have a hearing to post him for bail, but that from here on in, it will all be done under the normal course of the judicial system, not through secret DHS prisons.  Marcus is eventually charged with a small misdemeanor for stealing Masha’s phone, and the rest of the charges are dropped.  The story ends with the news that the woman in charge of the facility was found not guilty of wrongdoing in a closed military tribunal.

The novel is in many respects a dystopian novel based on the fears of what would happen is a terrorist attack on the same scale as the 9/11 attacks were successfully pulled off in San Francisco.  The villains in this novel are not the terrorist so much as the draconian surveillance state that the DHS creates in order to prevent further attacks.  In this novel, Doctorow imagines many of the real-world ant-terrorism tactics used by DHS but turned on a hactivist teen from California, someone with which the readers can empathize.  Marcus is an intelligent, charming high school student with a bit of an anti-authoritarian streak who just happens to be at the wrong place and the wrong time. Doctorow’s novel warns of the civil liberties that have been lost on the battle for the War on Terror, real losses made more evident in this dystopian vision of what is to come if we allow unrestrained powers to the NSA, FBI, and DHS in response to terrorism threats.  Part of the immediacy of the text is that it places the anti-terrorism tactics of rendition and interrogation in the back yard of San Francisco, not in some remote country like Yemen or Syrian.  I really liked this book; the novel is part dystopia, part romance, and part hacker manifesto.  Doctorow, who is one of the co-founders of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, laces his fiction with realistic and useful explanations of the basics of cryptography, trust webs, RFID hacking, privacy rights, and open source software, sometimes leaning a bit on the preachy side, but for the most part his explanations help further the plot of the story. I really enjoyed this novel and think it has great teen appeal, as it has a lot of quick pacing and great suspense as the story unfolds.  The technology is a little bit dated, but not so much that a current teen would find it too stale.  The ever-present smart-phone and gaming systems in current use are just the next generation or two after the ones used in this fictional world. I think this novel would be a great way to discuss practical issues such as using encryption for personal mail and data backups, preserving privacy rights in a post 9/11 world, and real world civil rights organizations like the EFF and ACLU.