The best-known of the nicknames with which Pierre Manniac has been saddled are both chronically uninspired and delectably accurate. For all that they lack in glorious invention, they gain in succinctness. ‘The Maniac Murderer’ is the one that most readily comes to mind, to be followed closely by ‘The Murderer of Monte Carlo’. Brought together as such, these two monikers open the dam of ignorance, allowing a brief biography of the man to pour forth, its essential details as prominent as its protagonist’s portly chin.
Born in Monte Carlo, Pierre Manniac gained notoriety soon after his fifteenth birthday, when he murdered his best friend following an ‘incident with a bag of chips’. From here on until his arrest shortly after his forty-third birthday, it is estimated that he took the lives of a further eighty seven people – friends, family and passers-by – maiming and molesting at least four hundred others. After a quiet period working as a loan shark, Manniac’s most dangerous years saw him employed as an independent researcher for an unlicensed equestrian magazine, where generous hours gave him the space to pursue his murderous tendencies. Whilst his relationship to organized crime is difficult to determine, it is almost certain that he shared a drink or two – if not a bag of peanuts – with most of the big cheeses, big guns and big bottomed assassins. He was for the most part an extremely successful criminal, evading capture to the extent that it was doubted for many years that he even existed. That is until someone looked him up in the phone book and the police dropped in for a dinner date.
Captured, tried, sentenced and imprisoned for the remainder of his life, the forty-three year old Manniac proceeded to do what every self-respecting serial killer would do. He signed a book deal. The proverbial breaths were held: was this going to be the greatest ever murder-orientated memoir? The announcement of the prospective title – Death: A Way of Life – promised as much. The industry prepared itself for a festival of gore; a riot of violence smeared with the promise of serious money-making. The film rights were sold before the book was even written; the newspapers crammed like buns with the cream of overstated debate. Relations of Manniac’s victims (those few that had escaped death themselves) took their protests to the streets, shocked by the concept that the man might be able to squeeze droplets of financial profit from the wounds of his heinous crimes. Anticipation and condemnation grew as profusely as pure weeds and wildflowers in the neglected garden of the modern marketplace.
Then the brambles wove their way into the mixture. Complications ensued. The book was written – there were no problems there – but the publishers were reluctant to release. Upon questioning, they stated that ‘legal gripes stood upon the bridge of progress’. The project was thus drowned in a pool of negativity; the release date put back a year or two and detractors, on the whole, triumphant. Some of us, yet, whilst uninterested in the book, still wished it to appear sooner rather than later. Personally speaking, I find such tell-all memoirs infinitely tedious and would rather be bathed twice daily in a mixture of bat’s blood and cow drool than have to read them. However, the tireless propaganda surrounding this as yet nonexistent work led me to wish that it could be published as soon as possible, so that we could all get the business of attacking it over and done with. If experience has taught me anything, it is that the only thing worse than a bad book is anticipation surrounding the publication of a bad book.
Little did I know that the ‘legal gripes’ preventing the publication of Manniac’s life story were, in the long run, to save its life – to miraculously convert a inferior lump of cultural trash into an inspired prime cut of literary greatness. That they were to reveal, ultimately, that the gap between moronic murderers and noble novelists is much smaller than previously thought. All that separates them is an injection of confidence, on both sides. Which is to say that writers are merely under-confident serial killers and serial killers under-confident writers.
Before examining the further implications of this statement, it is best if we deal more thoroughly with the nature of these all-important ‘legal gripes’. As it happens, the word ‘legal’ is most probably misused. My suspicions are that the primary problem was not ‘legal’ as such, but dictated by personal fears of illegal retribution. Blinded by the promise of money, the publishers had forgotten to imagine the repercussions of producing a book revealing the personal habits (sexual and violent) of some of the most notorious free criminals. Having remembered this, the publishing house was not unreasonably concerned that should they displease ninety percent of the organised crime community, it might have a negative effect on their health insurance. So it is known: Publishers will always be prepared to risk their reputations by publishing nonsense, but few if any of these mammon-worshipping cowards will risk their lives for any sort of literature.
The solution to this would seem to have been simple, requiring nothing more than for the editor to change the real names noted by Manniac into fictive ones. But would this be enough? Uncertainty refused to relinquish its seat and Manniac and his editor were obliged to re-engage with the problem. The names were again changed, along with the odd fact. For the first time, however, the writer, supported by his trusty editor, revealed a sense of invention – using not entirely new names, but those of historical figures. This added another level to the book: a comic level. For example, a previously dreary description of a sexual encounter between a mafia boss and a prostitute was brought alive by their being renamed Josef Stalin and Audrey Hepburn. However, the publishers were no more satisfied by this development than they had been by the last.
Manniac and his editor, on the other hand, were gradually getting in to the spirit of things. Fittingly, their next change raised the stakes. Historical figures were replaced by cartoon characters. Daffy Duck was seen to garrotte Minny Mouse and copulate with Maggie Simpson. Though somewhat childish, the black humour nevertheless offered another improvement on the original – to be rejected once again by the pusillanimous publishers.
The options were by now becoming increasingly limited. Unless almost every word was changed, it seemed likely that the text would not be accepted, for fear of brutal repercussions. Instead of freezing under the pressure, Manniac and his editor responded once more with wit and imagination, finally manipulating the last of many enforced changes into one of the great strategic transformations of modern literature.
At the heart of this last amendment was again the basic idea of changing the names of the characters, but for the first time it was accompanied by a new attitude regarding the rest of the text. In the previous adjustment, the words ‘Porky Pig’ were used as replacements for a real person’s name, but with actions of the latter reproduced almost exactly, with few if any concessions to the fact that the figure in question was in theory a cartoon pig. This was not to be the case next time around, where animals once more proved the inspiration for the changed names, but where their actions were more appropriately – though not exactly – suited to their titles. The comedy provided by recognition was abandoned. No more stolen names were used, from either historical figures or cartoon characters. Instead, the name of a single animal was selected for each character, ranging from ‘Lizard’ to ‘Elephant’. The narrator – Manniac himself – was rebranded as ‘Gorilla’. An elementary change in itself, but when supported by this ‘new attitude’ of which I speak, a veritable springboard for a work of consistently unconventional genius.
I’ll happily concede: I wasn’t convinced at first. I found it difficult to unhinge myself from the foundations: to see beyond the tiresome heart of the plodding self-indulgent autobiography from which the streams of distinction flow. The use of animal names seemed to me a cheap trick, by which I refused to be hoodwinked. Gradually, yet, I found myself drawn in, predominantly by the quality of the research, which on reflection reveals itself to be anything other than cheap. The question is – to whom do we credit the quality of this research? To Manniac, or to his industrious editor?
Allow me to explain. I refer not to the research of Manniac’s murderous deeds – they ought to have sprung from the writer’s mind without much persuasion – but to that of the animals’ deeds, which have replaced those of the humans. For the characters have not only been renamed ‘Lizard’ and ‘Gorilla’, but in so far as you can imagine it, they are these creatures. When Manniac, in the guise of ‘Gorilla’, enters a fist fight with ‘Alligator’, the former uses his heavy ape hands against the latter’s stumpy scaled feet and tail. In short, we witness a fight between a real gorilla and alligator, albeit those speaking in the language of people. Yet whilst this last detail wears its fictive heart on its sleeve, it must be underlined that in all other details the animals are meticulously illustrated, as if the writer had actually observed a punch up between a gorilla and an alligator (which would, on reflection, seem unlikely). The same applies, with simultaneously entertaining and unnerving effect, to many of sexual scenes later in the book. In one case, the character called ‘Frog’ attempts to procreate with a female character called ‘Raccoon’. Scientifically impossible though this may be, the writer makes an admirable stab at describing it, revealing what I know to be a thorough understanding of amphibian sex. Once more, one finds it hard to believe that he hasn’t based this passage on reality; however unreal it is in theory.
Of course, the use of animals in place of people is by no means a new literary tradition. It is in fact a very old one; albeit one which we would especially associate with children’s literature. From Beatrix Potter to Wilhelm Kränger-Furz, children’s authors are the unchallenged kings and queens of anthropomorphism. Walk down the brightly painted streets of children’s literature and you’ll be sure to bump into at least half a dozen talking frogs, singing dogs and dancing elephants. We take this for granted, though the roots of the tradition may have dark psychological implications (which I shall leave for another critic to discuss). What I can say, however, is that we must remember that anthropomorphism is about compromise. Rather than making animals human, or vice versa, it is about the space in-between the two: about taking the ‘best of both worlds’. The anthropomorphised bird can still fly like other birds; but it can also study Marxist theory, or make a wise-crack about American foreign policy, which real birds are not in the habit of doing. This begs the question – is there a better thing to be than an anthropomorphised animal? How many of us would like to be able to think logically like a man, and jump like a frog at the same time? It comes as no surprise that superheroes often have the attributes of animals: Spiderman, for instance, or Batman. On the other side of this, the medieval mind imagined demons who were half-man half-animal, like the hybrids who populate the hell scenes of Hieronymus Bosch. That these creatures find their nearest modern day equivalent within the pages of children’s book is an intriguing irony.
We owe it to Manniac’s book for renewing this ancient tradition; for taking it out of safe chest of juvenile literature and throwing it once more into the eye of the adult storm. I have written of how Death: A Way of Life uses animals for a somewhat comic effect – but I must reiterate that the total result clocks in at a more serious level, requiring the reader to engage with material that is far from amusing. In substituting humans for animals, Manniac’s book sheds new light on the previously dreary story of sex and violence with which he is concerned. Having been somewhat desensitised to the concept of men chopping each other’s limbs off, I find the revised narrative – in which a gorilla saws off the back legs of a horse – frighteningly compelling. Manniac takes us back to the visceral source; forcing us to re-engage with the true corporeal details. It is by changing the real story that he brings us closer to it. This is the paradox that drives great fiction: in order to speak about life, one often needs to take a conscious flight away from it. For this reason I have no problem with calling Death: A Way of Life a novel, though it is clear that the original intention was for it to be an autobiography.
To whom we owe this transformation from monotonous autobiography to distinctive novel is, of course, a different matter. My compulsion is to credit Manniac’s editor; to see the essential alteration occurring in that oft forgotten but utterly indispensable region between author and publisher. Manniac is, after all, a cold blooded killer, with neither any discernible knowledge of literature, nor acquaintance with the type of information required to rewrite an entire cast of human characters as different kinds of animal. He is, as the nickname informs us, a ‘Maniac Murderer’ – whereas Death: A Way of Life is cut from the cloth of cunning and sewn with the stitches of an intelligent imagination. One senses the editorial touch…
Ah, but is there more method to the man’s madness than we think? Manniac is, after all, a cold blooded killer. Not once, but over eighty times. And he claims to have killed every one of his victims in a different way. Excuse me for being crude – but surely that takes brilliant imagination? Maybe even the kind of imagination otherwise displayed by our novelists and poets. The same applies to Manniac’s almost immaculate ability to avoid the authorities; the work of a man with a calculating mind, with a talent – you might say – for ‘plotting’. We must also consider the oft ignored fact that he did in fact work – albeit not very hard – as a researcher for a horse-based journal – which might explain the interest, or passing knowledge of animal anatomy. Indeed, the more I allow the idea to roll about in the verdant grass of my head, the more I find myself compelled to roll with it. Forget the blessed editor: Death: A Way of Life in its complete, transformed and financially unviable form belongs to Manniac alone. And it reveals, once and for all, the frustrated writer behind the successful serial killer.
Needless to say, after all the anticipation, Death: A Way of Life was not the best-seller the publishers had hoped for. In fact, it almost completely alienated audiences and critics alike. Ironically, one of the most common complaints to come from the latter was that they found the book ‘sick’, if not entirely ‘degenerate’. Laughably, this was the reaction of people who had been hoping to find the memoir in its original state; who had been looking forward to being comforted by the real life story of a highly-sexed serial killer and who found the subsequent mixture of fact and fiction hard to stomach. It reveals to us the utter appropriateness of the absurd changes to which Manniac’s memories were subjected. Unable to feel the right level of revulsion toward the real, the suitable response can yet be squeezed out of the reader through the addition of the unreal. This, ladies and gentleman, is the essence of fiction.
Review by Sebastien Cheraz
Further Reading:
