Bleah

[miko2]

So I stayed up last night reading all the way to the end of "Depraved", a book about Albert Fish, a man who murdered several children in the 1920's. And I could relate my own experience to that of a psychopathic killer, because just as they feel an overwhelming need to kill, I felt an overwhelming need to read the book all the way to the end, and just as they might regret their actions later, I regret reading about such a depraved lunatic.

Albert Fish was a psycho of the first order, right up there with Jeffrey Dahlmer and Ed Gein (the inspiration for the movie Psycho). As one psychologist said, Fish had not only contemplated but participated in every sexual deviancy that he knew of, and then some. So wle the book is a well-written account by a professor of American culture, and I found the whole tale fascinating, I now sort of wish I didn't know all this stuff about such a sick man.

But the other thing that bugs me about true stories such as this is that you often feel that only a part of the story was ever told. I hate mysteries when you can never know the truth. Fish admitted to three murders, but was suspected in maybe 15 or more. Nobody will ever know all of the places he went and all of the things he did.

I remember reading pirate stories and mysteries of lost ships and lost treasures when I was young. I always wanted to know what really happened, and of course, you can't. I had a fantasy that some day in the afterlife I would get to learn the truth about every mystery I'd ever encountered. But of course, what makes these stories fascinating is that they are mysteries.

Still, I think I need to read a fictional mystery now, where the hero solves the crime and there aren't lingering questions about what else the villian might have done or what secrets he took to his grave. The truth is too unsettling.