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Murder and Adderall freebase in Elliot's new novel
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Graywolf Press, 2009
For more information on Stephen Elliot:
The true crime genre of literature has been notoriously riddled with authors who rely on shocking events and shoddy research to crank out best seller books. Many of them explore, and often exploit for profit, sensational crimes with widely publicized trials, like the JonBenét Ramsey killing, the OJ Simpson and Scott Peterson trials, and the “Helter Skelter” killings and trials of the Manson Family. Readers see animalistic mass murderers, demonized men, slayers of children and wives.
This is not to say that all true crime novels are poorly written and based on speculation, with little analysis. There are plenty of decent works of literature within the genre, most notably the work of Jack Olsen, Truman Capote, granddaddy of true crime and author of the famous 1965 novel In Cold Blood, and also Norman Mailer, who was revered for his meticulous research. Authors of this caliber are rare in the market of the genre today.
Stephen Elliot’s The Adderall Diaries (out this year from Graywolf Press) is a delightful surprise to readers disenchanted with the often predictable nature of true crime novels. Elliot, most often known for his fiction based on autobiographical events, straddles a peculiar cross-genre line with his newest novel, a hybrid of true crime and memoir. Born in Chicago, he ran away from home at the age of 13, shortly after his mother died, and slept on the streets for a year before he became a ward of the state. He lived in group homes throughout his adolescence. Elliot has been a stripper, a dot-com boomer, a drug addict, a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, editor of therumpus.net and a sadomasochist.
His novel begins in the spring of 2007 in San Francisco, when Hans Reiser, a famous computer programmer infamous for his difficult personality, was accused of murdering his wife Nina. Then, Sean Sturgeon, Nina’s former lover and an acquaintance of Stephen Elliot, confesses to eight unconnected murders that no one can verify as fact or fiction. At the time of the trial, Stephen Elliot struggles with writer’s block, his relationships with various women, and Adderall dependency. In a kaleidoscopic weaving of testimonies, addiction, reminiscence, sadomasochism, and pursuit of an ever elusive mutual understanding, Elliot investigates the validity of memory itself, between himself and his father, between Hans Reiser and the American public, between the American public and the rest of the world. He writes,
Everybody wants to…tell the ‘true’ story of their victimization. The confessions can’t be disproved, not fully. What portion of each tale is true and how much of what they’re saying does each of them believe? The truth and the lie combine to create history, like red and yellow paint mixing to orange, the original colors ceasing to exist.
Elliot’s novel is a revolutionary new form, and a tribute to real, psychologically analytic true crime novels, worthy of attention by academics and average joes alike.
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