Friends

I can't believe I just paid $25 for Ethan Brown's new book Shake The Devil Off, an account of the 2006 "voodoo shop" murder/suicide, only to find out I apparently joined the media frenzy that savaged the reputations of the young murderer and his victim:

"After Katrina, Addie enthused to a reporter that 'we've been able to see the stars for the first time.' After she was murdered, Addie's remark about the stars brought a nasty rebuke from New Orleans novelist Poppy Z Brite, who wrote on her blog that while 'I feel bad for the girl ... I can't quite forgive that remark about how beautiful the stars were over New Orleans in the nights right after the storm. Stars are horrifying things in general and should never, ever be seen over New Orleans. Our night sky is supposed to be purple.' While it was understandable that New Orleanians sought to distance themselves from the gruesome tale of Zack and Addie [yes, I've always sought to distance myself from gruesome tales - PZB], surely these two young people had lives that did not need to be attacked at any opportunity, and sad ends that did not deserve to be ridiculed." ( -- Ethan Brown, Shake The Devil Off)

All very noble, Ethan. I'm not sure how disliking a starry sky qualifies as attacking and ridiculing, but let's leave that. Instead of arguing the point, may I bring to your attention that I did not recently publish a 286-page book about Zack and Addie's lives and, primarily, deaths, a book that meticulously details how the blood poured out of Zack's mouth after he jumped off the Omni Royal Orleans deck, how Addie's charred legs in a roasting pan, severed head, hands, and feet in a stockpot, and garbage-bag-wrapped torso in the fridge were found in the couple's squalid Rampart Street apartment, graphic descriptions of the police photographs you looked at, and exactly where and with which tool (the tub, a saw) he cut her apart? I don't see any notations in the flap copy or acknowledgements about your donating a portion of the book's proceeds to groups for Katrina recovery, troubled New Orleans youth, or a similar cause, so I assume you're profiting (such as book profits go; I don't say you're getting rich) off Zack, Addie, and readers' desire to know the gory, painful details of how they lived and died. No doubt you're doing it to try to understand and tell their side of the story and all sorts of other compelling reasons. As everything seems to do these days, it reminds me of a Stephen King story, in this case "Apt Pupil" and its young boy drawn to Nazi atrocities*:

"'Anyhow,' Todd said, "the library was real good. They must have had a hundred books with stuff in them about the Nazi concentration camps, just here in the Santo Donato library. A lot of people must like to read about that stuff ... I really did do a research paper, and you know what I got on it? An A-plus. Of course I had to be careful. You have to write that stuff in a certain way ... All those library books, they read a certain way. Like the guys who wrote them got puking sick over what they were writing about.' Todd was frowning, wrestling with the thought, trying to bring it out. The fact that tone, as that word applies to writing, wasn't yet in his vocabulary, made it more difficult. 'They all write like they lost a lot of sleep over it. How we've got to be careful so that nothing like that ever happens again. I made my paper like that, and I guess the teacher gave me an A just cause I read the source material without losing my lunch.' Once more, Todd smiled winningly." ( -- Stephen King, "Apt Pupil")

So you go ahead with your bad self, Ethan Brown. Smile winningly at your signings, and keep telling yourself, as your flap copy rather startlingly claims, that you have discovered how these two young people's lives could have been saved. We'll hope your book makes certain that Nothing Like That Ever Happens Again. I'll just stay over here nastily rebuking people on my blog.

But remember this, Ethan: Both you and I have profited from writing about severed heads and bloody limbs.

Mine were fictional.

*I'm aware that I have invoked Godwin's Law here and thereby lose all the Internets. I can't help it; that's what the damn story is about.

Tags: books, new orleans, pinheads