[Download] "Hypnotist, Philosopher, Serial Killer, Friend: A Critical Review of Ian Brady's the Gates of Janus (Critical Essay)" by Nebula # Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Hypnotist, Philosopher, Serial Killer, Friend: A Critical Review of Ian Brady's the Gates of Janus (Critical Essay)
- Author : Nebula
- Release Date : January 01, 2008
- Genre: Reference,Books,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 391 KB
Description
The Gates of Janus, a confessional-philosophical book by the British 'Moors Murderer,' Ian Brady, presents one of the very few prose offerings by a "serial killer." Stephen Milligen mentions a manuscript supposedly penned by John Wayne Gacy and submitted to Doubleday titled A Question of Doubt (149) but along with Charles Nimo, Milligen doubts that anyone ever actually published the work. (1) Brady's The Gates of Janus, in large part, attempts to smash certain cultural illusions about serial killers, while contradictorily arguing for our recognition of the importance, if not necessity, of the serial murderer in contemporary society. In this way, Brady takes the enlightenment of his reader as the goal of his text, and the book functions paradoxically as both an expose and a how-to guide. Nonetheless, Katherine Ramsland dismisses Brady as a "postmodern nihilist" (166). Ramsland, who draws the term "serial killer" back to the beginnings of recorded history, lumps Brady together with several other authors, whom she equally misinterprets. Consider, for example, the connection Ramsland makes between Brady and three major figures of literature and philosophy: "Inspired by Dostoevsky, the Marquis de Sade, and Nietzsche, [Brady] believed that certain men can rise above society's moral standards and do as they pleased" (166-177). As I will demonstrate, Brady's text deserves greater consideration than this. After all, Brady explains why he thinks people find him repugnant while also finding him attractive and gives us insight, not into what makes a serial killer tick, but into a method of viewing, by which serial killers do not really exist at all. The probing, interrogative nature of Brady's self-study hardly resembles Ramsland's description, and, as we shall see, The Gates of Janus weaves an odd array of themes, such as friendship, hypnosis, and representations of the mastermind criminal, which if anything calls for a deconstruction of the myth of the serial killer. Brady's text offers a productive struggle to dismiss the notion of evil as an essence, and The Gates of Janus provides a fascinating means of tracking this line of argument in the mind of a controversial criminal.