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"My father often said that if not for pornography, he'd have become a serial killer."
Chris Offutt's My Father, the Pornographer is such a strange book. It's beautifully written, and deeply strange, and involves watching someone rummage through a haunted house filled with things you've never seen. It's a memoir recounting the period in which Offutt went through his father's archives after his father died -- the difference is: his father was one of history's most famous and prolific producers of porn books. His father was a monster at home, and the narrative is consumed by Offutt's psychic wrestling with the still looming specter of his father. It's also about growing up in Kentucky and trying to understand things not meant to be understood.