My girlfriend is a bit concerned. She thinks IÂ’m obsessed with serial killers. A couple of months ago (as you know) I read Patricia CornwellÂ’s awful book about Jack the Ripper and now IÂ’m reading a better book, by Michael Bilton about the police investigation into the Yorkshire Ripper.
IÂ’ve tried to explain to her that IÂ’m not unnaturally interested in murder. I just like books about ripping. It can be paper thatÂ’s being ripped, or cloth, or the fabric of the space-time continuum or it can be the flesh of young women. I donÂ’t care, as long as there is ripping in it.
She argues that so far in her experience the ripping has all been from the latter category and I have to admit it looks a bit suspect to a casual observer. But the problem is, with my interest, that there just aren’t that many books about other kinds of ripping about. It’s an area that is woefully unrepresented in literature. It’s not enough for me that there is just a bit of ripping in the book, you see, because plenty of books might feature someone ripping up a letter, or some clothes. For me the book has to be mainly about ripping and preferably have the word “ripping” or “ripper” on the cover.
That doesn’t mean that I would enjoy a book from the fifties called “Ripping Adventures for Young Boys” or a book of scripts of the TV show “Ripping Yarns”. Because although these tomes have ripping in the title, there would be little to no ripping inside them. It has to be both.
For example I particularly enjoyed the recent “Diary of Jack the Ripper” as not only was that about (and supposedly by) a bloke who enjoyed ripping, the actual original manuscript was found in a book that had several pages ripped out of the front. I think James Maybrick must have been the Jack the Ripper. He clearly liked ripping things and it just got out of hand.
My interest in ripping is purely academic and anyone who suggests there is anything prurient about it, or that I am about to begin a campaign of serial killing/ripping carnage is ignorant. Just silly and ignorant.
TodayÂ’s entry has been a practice run for my forthcoming interview with Martin Bashir.
