My Friend Dahmer by Derf Backderf

Image from Amazon

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.