The Shocking True Story Of Ed Gein Summary

Harold Schechter is Professor Emeritus at Queens College. He teaches American literature and myth criticism. He is the author of multiple essays and books such as Deviant: The Shocking True Story of Ed Gein, the Original “Psycho”, The Mad Sculptor: The Maniac, the Model, and the Crime that Shook the Nation, The Tell-Tale Corpse, and many others. The book I read was Deviant: The Shocking True Story of Ed Gein, the Original “Psycho”. The book is about a killer, and it follows his life. From before, during and after the killings and other crimes he committed. The book not only follows his life, but it also explains how these crimes impacted the entertainment industry. Psycho, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Silence of the Lambs are movies directly

“Edward Gein had two faces. One he showed to the neighbors. The other he showed only to the dead.”(page 70) The book shows both sides. The quiet, weird, harmless neighbor to a violent killer. Schechter put in a lot of detail on both aspects. He didn’t skip over when Gein would help people in his hometown, but he also didn’t skip the gruesome details of Gein’s home. “Though Gein displayed no signs of remorse or, indeed, any awareness at all of the enormity of his deeds, he did not come across as a cold-blooded killer. On the contrary, he seemed so friendly and cooperative -so childishly eager to please - that Wilimovsky had to be careful not to put words in his mouth. Eddie would cheerfully admit to the most extreme perversions.” Schechter wrote about the seemingly normal side of Ed Gein and how that contrasted so drastically with his crimes. He writes about the facts of the case and doesn’t try to paint Gein as something of pure evil. He was just a man who was dealt bad cards. Schechter remained neutral and rarely gave his personal opinion, instead giving the opinion of others who knew Ed Gein. Most opinions were from people who lived in Gein’s