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A very strange, troubling book. The author was a prison psychiatrist at Winson Green Prison, which housed Fred West, among others. (as a side note, one of his predecessors was the father of my consort's best and oldest friend: the job drove him into deep depression). What is so alarming about this book is that you KNOW, absolutely, that what the protagonist is doing is wrong, but it's very hard to give a reason WHY it's wrong.
I went to Bradford (UK) for the weekend (fucked up, yeah, I know) . What better holiday literature for this occasion than a work by Theodore Dalrymple, the walking barometer of decline in England.I guess that after working for years and years with the lowest scum on earth, one does start to feel the compulsive need to smash the head of one of this species with a large, blunt object. While that would give you an enormous feeling of relief, it would also give you twenty to life. Unlike the protago...
Het ergste aan dit boek is, dat Dalrymple zijn argumentatie serieus meent..
Theodore Dalrymple kruipt in de ziel van een seriemoordenaar. Grappig geschreven en gebaseerd op de jarenlange praktijkervaring van de schrijver zelf die als arts werkzaam was in de gevangenis van een grote Britse stad.
Moraal op zijn kop met behulp van filosofische argumentatie! Leuk boek om lezen!
A moral justification of a serial killer's 'selected' crimes. The narrator reduced his arguments to supposedly pure reasoning. He draws on literature, philosophy and psychology sources to support his point of view. Mainly criticizing on the hypocrisy of the society, the narrator fiercely questions the social, economical, institutional power structure and tackles the questions of 'free will', 'freedom', 'morality', 'humanity' and 'human values', etc. Can such type of 'reasoning' be of any values
Een aantal jaren geleden, heb ik de toneelbewerking van dit boek gezien en die heeft veel indruk gemaakt. Het is een goed boek, maar de toneelbewerking heeft meer indruk gemaakt, vooral omdat het verhaal natuurlijk ingekort moest worden en de minder sterke passages van het boek daarin gesneuveld zijn. Toch heb ik dit boek met plezier (en met afschuw: tja, de man plaatst zich moreel ver boven de rest van de mensheid en het is dus een sociopaat/psychopaat en een fascist) gelezen. Aanrader.
I know that I am drifting to the right as I age, however I was shocked at how difficult it was to disagree with the logic of the arguments put forward by this fictional serial killer in support of his crimes. This book touched something deep and dark in my psyche. Maybe I've just lost my sense of humour.
Hoewel de (behoorlijk arrogante en hautaine) protagonist zichzelf af en toe al dan niet onbedoeld tegenspreekt, geven veel van zijn niet alledaagse argumenten en theorieen over onze morele inconsistentie, zin en nut van het leven en verhoudingen tussen mensen onderling en mens en dier stof tot nadenken. Erg goede vertaling van Jabik Veenbaas trouwens.
Theodore Dalrymple typcally writes nonfiction about his work as a doctor, this to my knowlege is his only fictional work. Dark, but of the typical Dalrymple style, I really enjoyed it. About an "ethical" serial killer, very little about the killing but rather about the moral "justification" of his actions relative to the reader.
The scary thing about the killer is the fact that his ideas are completely mainstream, too bad the book title "The Banality Of Evil" was already taken.
