There's more to know about Hannibal Lecter's creepy origin story

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Book ReviewHannibal Lecter: A Life By Brian Raftery If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores.Of all President Trump’s rather peculiar hyper-fixations — rigged elections, left-wing fake news and Rosie O’Donnell — there is one that particularly stands out, and his name is Hannibal Lecter.At times the president either compliments the serial killer or compares Lecter’s time in an asylum to that of immigrants seeking asylum — though the constant references to Hannibal the Cannibal might fall into comparison given the president’s own rather carnivorous-leaning diet.Brian Raftery cleverly opens his new biography, “Hannibal Lecter: A Life,” with this heightened focus on how the once side character became such a household name.

In introducing Lecter to this culturally embalmed state only offered to a select golden group of characters, the Los Angeles-based author sets the stage to unravel the mysterious character’s origins through his elusive creator, Thomas Harris, and the real-life crimes and surprising interviews with the FBI that shaped the mythologized antihero.But how does one set out to write a biography about the creation of an author who not only can’t be reached, but actively evades the spotlight? It’s this automatic built-in tension between the researcher and Harris, and ultimately Harris and the general public for decades, that excels within this story.Books In his memoir, legendary actor Anthony Hopkins dissects how he approached the biggest roles of his career, being bullied as a child and confronting his alcoholism.Thomas Harris grew up in the South as a bookish outcast, reading the works of Ernest Hemingway and Jonathan Swift.

It wasn’t until Harris moved to Texas and worked as a reporter at the Waco Tribune-Herald that his most iconic character began to ...