Hey all,
I found this really interesting, but if graphic descriptions gross you out, please don't read any further.
I got Thomas Harris's book "Hannibal" yesterday, and started reading it today. When I was reading the story of how one of the main characters, Mason Verger, ended up in his condition, I INSTANTLY recognized the story. The character in the book is faceless. He has no lips, nose, eyelids, only one eye, no skin.... He tells the story of removing his face piece by piece with a shard of broken mirror, and feeding the pieces to his dogs while under the influence of angel dust. He even goes on to tell that the dogs' stomachs were pumped by the police in order to retrieve the nose.
That story is IDENTICAL to a real-life story of a man whose picture is widely traded on the internet. Someone posted a link here (that of course was deleted immediately after I followed it) to that picture. The picture shows the man apparently on an operating table, and there is a caption below the picture that tells what happened almost word-for-word identical as what's in this book.
So, I'm thinking harris just appropriated this person's identity for a character in his book? As far as I know, that picture with the caption has been around longer than Harris's book, so I would doubt that someone made up the caption after reading "Hannibal." Another part of the storyline deals with the "darker underworld" of the internet, and the trading of gruesome pictures. As a matter of fact, it specifically mentions one picture, supposedly very popular, of an execution, that I believe I have seen on the same site as the man with the peeled-off face.
So, I'm wondering what to do with this information... how to process it. Did someone make up the caption based on the book? If so, what REALLY happened to the man in the picture? Did Harris appropriate this unfortunate person's ID for a character in his book? If so, why did he pick such a commonly-recognizeable story/picture? Does his placing this story with mention of the other specific pictures mean he is trying to get people to get on the internet and find the picture of "Mason Verger"? I think maybe that's what it is. ? I think it's obvious that, in his research (or perhaps for his own macabre curiosity), Harris ran across this picture and decided to conform EXACTLY to the story in the caption, and purposefully gave a VERY specific name for the other picture, so that people would have a solid name to use in a search engine, in hopes that they would find the picture he based "Mason Verger" on. --Kinda like a roadmap?
What do you think?
Ricky
DesignDawg
I found this really interesting, but if graphic descriptions gross you out, please don't read any further.
I got Thomas Harris's book "Hannibal" yesterday, and started reading it today. When I was reading the story of how one of the main characters, Mason Verger, ended up in his condition, I INSTANTLY recognized the story. The character in the book is faceless. He has no lips, nose, eyelids, only one eye, no skin.... He tells the story of removing his face piece by piece with a shard of broken mirror, and feeding the pieces to his dogs while under the influence of angel dust. He even goes on to tell that the dogs' stomachs were pumped by the police in order to retrieve the nose.
That story is IDENTICAL to a real-life story of a man whose picture is widely traded on the internet. Someone posted a link here (that of course was deleted immediately after I followed it) to that picture. The picture shows the man apparently on an operating table, and there is a caption below the picture that tells what happened almost word-for-word identical as what's in this book.
So, I'm thinking harris just appropriated this person's identity for a character in his book? As far as I know, that picture with the caption has been around longer than Harris's book, so I would doubt that someone made up the caption after reading "Hannibal." Another part of the storyline deals with the "darker underworld" of the internet, and the trading of gruesome pictures. As a matter of fact, it specifically mentions one picture, supposedly very popular, of an execution, that I believe I have seen on the same site as the man with the peeled-off face.
So, I'm wondering what to do with this information... how to process it. Did someone make up the caption based on the book? If so, what REALLY happened to the man in the picture? Did Harris appropriate this unfortunate person's ID for a character in his book? If so, why did he pick such a commonly-recognizeable story/picture? Does his placing this story with mention of the other specific pictures mean he is trying to get people to get on the internet and find the picture of "Mason Verger"? I think maybe that's what it is. ? I think it's obvious that, in his research (or perhaps for his own macabre curiosity), Harris ran across this picture and decided to conform EXACTLY to the story in the caption, and purposefully gave a VERY specific name for the other picture, so that people would have a solid name to use in a search engine, in hopes that they would find the picture he based "Mason Verger" on. --Kinda like a roadmap?
What do you think?
Ricky
DesignDawg
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