William Marten Killer of Serial Women

Annotation

Philosophers maintain that the goal of life is to gain wisdom, and the unexamined life is not worth living. And with aging comes the ability to accept ourselves as who we are. This book tests the truth of these precepts by posing the challenge of a life lived at the edge. William Marten gives us the rare opportunity to experience a side of life few of us know. His sexual development from his earliest years to the present has been as a sadomasochist, which has been the source of soul-searing shame. The only cure he could envision was suicide. A Killer of Serial Women, alternately painful and hilarious, traces Williams path through life, from the child who became fixated on a drawing of Prometheus tortured by an eagle, through the young adult tortured by desires for sexual release based on physical suffering, to an almost mythical ordeal through which he learns compassion and acceptance. With extraordinary honesty, intelligence, clarity, and humor, his life shows us that even people we think of as other, as alien, share our common humanity.