A Father's Story

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But even when I thought of him as a man, a prisoner, a murderer, it seemed to me that my son was very far away from me. He was far away in the distance that physically separated us, and which was obvious; but he was also far away in his character and personality, which, it seemed to me, was no less obvious. In both of these senses, he was where I wanted him. Safely away. Far, far away. Overall Thoughts: Reading a memoir or biography without pictures is like having a cookbook without pictures of the recipe. So I really appreciate that the dad did include some photos into this book.

When I find out that Jeff was murdered, it was just devastating," he said. "It affected me very gravely." I have reservations regarding Jeff’s chances when he hits the streets. I have experienced an extremely frustrating time trying to urge initiation of some type of treatment,” Lionel Dahmer explained. “I sincerely hope that you might intervene in some way to help my son, who I love very much and for whom I want a better life. I do feel, though, that this may be our last chance to initiate something lasting and that you can hold the key.”

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By the fall of 1988, there were far , far more things that I did not know about my son than I did know about him. I didn’t know that he had already killed four human beings, two of them in the basement of my mother’s house.” His social life, which should have been expanding, narrowed to a circle that was no larger than his mind, an imagined world in which his friends were phantoms, his lovers mere lumps of unmoving flesh. DOES contain adult theme(cannibalism, pedophilia, alcohol abuse, drug overdose, rape, depression, suicide, anxiety)at least as much as Lionel could describe through his eyes. The fact that seemed hardest to understand was that we, ourselves, had done nothing to deserve such unwanted attention. But this was a fact that no longer mattered. Perhaps it had never mattered. We were the Dahmers. We had ceased to be anything else. Lionel splashes around in his personal failure as a husband, a father, a citizen, whatever. But none of it is worse than my own family. He tries out the blame shoe on everybody and everything—media, drugs, Mom, school, genetics, and mostly himself. His writing isn’t captivating, it is sentimental and emotionless at the same time, often forgivably hokey, but I couldn’t put it down. Is he lying about anything? I just don’t know, can’t know.

When serial killers are apprehended, we hear all about their crimes and the horrible acts they committed. And to a lesser extent, we are get a sense of the victims and their families, but very rarely do we ever hear from the family members of the killers and what they must go through as they are often turned into pariahs for what their children/siblings did. This makes Lionel Dahmer's book A Father's Story such an important work. However, as Dahmer repeatedly states, he has "an analytical mind" so the work tends to toward calculated prose, that gives very little emotional insight into what his experience was like, so that the book boils down to little more than a litany of events from Jeffrey Dahmer's childhood and trial, making it difficult to empathize with him or his wife. You will get an insight like, how you go to school, I go to school , Jeff when too. But what was different about him? But the part of Jeff that was most in danger was invisible to me. I could see only those aspects of his character that he chose to show, which resembled some of my own characteristics—the shyness, the general tone of acceptance, the tendency to withdraw from conflict. I suppose, like most fathers, I even took some comfort, perhaps even a bit of pride, in thinking that my son was a bit like me. A Father's Story runs chronologically from Jeffrey's birth until his arrest and imprisonment. Dahmer tries to figure out what made his son commit murder, practice necrophilia and cannibalism. He scrutinizes every possible contributing factor to his son's psychosis starting with himself. Dahmer judges himself a poor father because he was emotionally distant from his son. While reflecting, he "speculates that his own youthful shyness, fascination with bombs and fears of abandonment added up to a monstrous genetic inheritance." [7] Critical reception [ edit ]

At that point, I believed that it was my son's madness that most powerfully and permanently separated us. He lived in a world behind his eyes. I could never enter that world. We would always be separated by the barrier of his mental illness. In a sense, I saw nothing but his insanity.

Lionel, however, wanted Dahmer's brain to be cremated because he said that's what his son requested, according to the Los Angeles Times. A judge ruled in 1995 that Dahmer's brain would be cremated, the Times reported. A final chapter, added after Jeffrey's death in prison, simply adds a film of utter loathing to the reading experience, as father somehow contrives to tie in a possible redemption for his son with an incoherent, self-serving diatribe about the righteousness of intelligent design. I don't understand why they stayed married. Lionel says that the marriage was pretty much bad from the start. It's like, Look, he's smiling like a happy kid, I raised him right. It's not my fault he turned out this way! Exactly like that.That said, Lionel and Joyce had their own problems to worry about. Their relationship devolved during Jeffrey’s childhood, leading to a divorce in 1978 so bitter that each accused the other of “extreme cruelty and gross neglect of duty.” According to neighbors, police were frequently called to the house. But I wasn't told what these other mothers and fathers were told, that their sons were dead at the hands of a murderer. Instead, I was told that my son was the one who had murdered their sons. And so, my son was still alive. I couldn't bury him. I couldn't remember him fondly. He was not a figure of the past. He was still with me, as he still is.