A pet to one, a monster to another

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, psychology, psychopaths, folklore, monsters

I don't know how a book that claims to be a comprehensive treatment of monsters (of all kinds) can go 300 pages and not even mention Mao TseDong or Josef Stalin. At least Adolf Hitler gets a cameo appearance, but he is 1/8 the murderer Mao was, and "only" half so bad as Stalin.

Entering "monster" into the Princeton WordNet search page, we find:

• an imaginary creature usually having various human and animal parts
• giant: someone or something that is abnormally large and powerful
• freak: a person or animal that is markedly unusual or deformed
• a cruel wicked and inhuman person
• (medicine) a grossly malformed and usually nonviable fetus

In On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears, Stephen T. Asma discusses all these kinds of monsters and more. He categorizes them into four larger areas:

• Ancient monsters (mostly chimeras and wild take-offs of human types such as headless men with faces in their chest)
• Medieval Monsters, seen as divine messages
• Scientific Monsters, including deformed fetuses and more-recently-produced chimeric creatures
• Inner Monsters, such as mass murderers, serial killers, and the monstrous impulses that can be found in any of us.

To me it all boils down to this: we most fear what we can neither predict nor control. Lesser fears are reserved for controllable but unpredictable things, but we reserve some of our greatest dread for that which we can predict but not control, as witness all the people who shout (or whisper) "Don't go in there!" at key moments of a horror film.

I don't really have much more to say about the book. Though well enough written, it is a bit more scholarly than I'd have expected for a popular treatment. It took longer to read as a result. I already know that the real monster is in me, and under which circumstances I'd conclude "there is a fellow I'd cheerfully bump off." Those who really need such insight, however, never seem to find it.