A Father's Story

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REVIEW IS LONG AND INTENDED ONLY FOR THOSE WHO ARE DEEPLY INTERESTED IN READING THE BOOK, NOT FOR CASUALTIES. To summarize, I am mostly disappointed. This was a great opportunity to get into the mind of Dahmer, to understand more of his personality; His psyche. This could have been a great revelation into how father and son interacted and if Lionel had fully delved into his relationship with his son, I would have been interested. The Goodreads description adds: “On July 23, 1991, Milwaukee chemist Lionel Dahmer discovered – along with the rest of the world – that his son was a murderer who, over a period of many years, had carried out some of the most ghastly crimes ever committed in the United States.

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. Jeff had hit bottom as a son, absolute bottom, and I could feel that he was taking me down with him, dragging me into the utter chaos that he had made of his life, and doing it publicly. A Father's Story cannot claim to have discovered the ultimate solution to the enigma of either the criminal or his deeds. It is, in fact, not the story of Jeffrey Dahmer at all, but of a father who, by slow, incremental degrees, came to realize the saddest truth that any parent may ever know: that following some unknowable process, his child had somewhere crossed the line that divides the human from the monstrous. Now, when I look at photographs of my son at this age, I can't help but wonder if strange shapes were already forming in his mind, odd notions that he himself could not understand, vague fantasies that might have frightened even him, but which he could not keep at bay.But for most parents the world over, these and similar worries are the only ones they will have to face. For Lionel Dahmer, a whole new set of worry was opened up for him in relation to his child, a son he called Jeff. Did my boy commit these horrific murders? Why didn't I see the signs? How did my own boy spiral down to a place I couldn't reach, and couldn't fix? Johnson, Dirk (February 16, 1992). "Milwaukee Jury Says Dahmer Was Sane". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on November 7, 2022 . Retrieved November 7, 2022.

The series includes a brief glimpse at Jeffrey’s family, including snippets of his relationship with his parents and his grandma. 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. 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. Under what criteria can this book be judged? I’ve decided that it cannot be, or at least I cannot—and certainly yellow stars are inappropriate. Is there a comparative piece of writing? Perhaps the only thing more idiosyncratic than the crimes Jeffrey Dahmer committed is this curious analysis by his father, which is more autobiography than criminology or portraiture. If it is sensationalism (like so many other books about serial murder), then he certainly has a bizarre method for doing so; if it is a clarification of facts, then it is incomplete and meandering; if it is an apology, it is sincere but just totally weary from years of apology. It is what it is. Lionel is befuddled and so am I. 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.We were no longer merely parents, and we never would be again. We were the parents, and I, in particular, was the father of Jeffrey Dahmer. Jeffrey, not Jeff. Jeffrey Dahmer was someone else, the formal public name for a man who was, at least to me, still Jeff, still my son. Even my son's name had become public property, foreign to me, a press report's designation, the name of a stranger, an abrupt depersonalization of someone who, at least to me, was still incontestably a person. 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. Lionel Dahmer reveals himself as a cold, emotionally distant father and husband who's greatest influence upon his oldest son seems to have been to create an atmosphere of such utter disregard and disinterest that Jeffrey's withdrawal into an interior landscape of cruel and twisted emotional violence is not only hastened, it is almost ensured. Between long, rambling barely-coherent attempts to place his son's crimes into the context of his own failings as a person (Not a revelation goes by without an accompanying "Perhaps I had been naive..." or accompanying admission that Dahmer Senior had also had similar desires "but never took them that far", as if he is so desperate to claim any sort of emotional connection that he is willing to take some sort of pale credit for his son's monstrosities.) and slimy, ham-fisted attempts to place the blame for Jeffrey's behaviour on anybody else but him-- particularly his first wife, the fragile and quite-obviously emotionally bullied birth mother of his son's, Lionel gives us less an insight into his son's psyche than a pure view of a father and husband of stunning emotional disassociation: a weak, deluded, egotistical and loathsome little man whose multiple failings read like a litany of dissemblances and pitiful excuses. I’m proud of the name Dahmer. My father was a schoolteacher and a barber. He brought himself up from the bootstraps," he told King in 1994. "His father and mother died at a very young age. I have a very good ancestry, and I’m proud of the name." 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 wrote. "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."

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. Lionel wrote a letter to Judge William Gardner asking for the judge to keep Jeffrey in prison, writing he believed his son needed additional mental health treatment, according to a letter he reads in the 2020 documentary "Jeffrey Dahmer: Mind of a Monster." Research chemist and author Lionel Dahmer, father of confessed serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, stands outside of Columbia Correctional Institute where his son is imprisoned. Steve Kagan / Getty Images Often psychologists talk about serial killers and the "need for control" or the "fear of abandonment" — attributes which describe most of my friends and certainly my own self. This is an anguished memoir, as the author tries to find common ground with his son, and desperately searches for something, anything, to explain the unexplainable. Jonathan Kirsch wrote in his review for the Los Angeles Times: "'A Father's Story' is really more about Lionel Dahmer than his son, a heartfelt effort at self-analysis and self-revelation by a bewildered father forced to accept that his son is a mass murderer: Where did I go wrong?" [3]Published in 1994, so this book does not grapple with Jeffery Dahmer's own death (killed in prison in late 1994). The caretaker stated: "We’ve talked to his publisher about it too due to all the chaos that is going on and the stories we’ve seen. Lionel and his power of attorney are gathering information and looking at a possible lawsuit against the production team or possibly Netflix. There was zero care whatsoever about Lionel’s wellbeing." Much of the most monstrous details of Dahmer’s actions were unknown to me. When he stood trial in the early 1990’s I was fairly young, and I remember equating him with Poe’s “Tell-Tale Heart”… in that, a murdered body was carefully dismembered and hidden away in a home. I vaguely knew that the whole affair was wrapped up in sexuality somehow, but remember mostly the mechanics of its concealment—notably, Dahmer’s freezer, ultimately impounded by police, as seen on television. This book only provides occasional and cursory gruesome details, and understandably so. I looked elsewhere and found calculated necrophilia, human taxidermy, trepanation, and cannibalism—all ultimately at the rate of one murder per week.

In the tv show Joyce says this is all rubbish. She was outraged. She announced she was writing her own book, provisionally called “An Assault on Motherhood”, but said that she didn’t want to cast any blame on Lionel as she perceived him to have blamed her. She says :Someone should have told Lionel to hire an editor before releasing ‘A Father’s Story’ for publication. So many spelling errors.