Shared Reads

First off, I’d like to state that The Lampshade by Mark Jacobson is a beautifully designed book. The cover, before it was laminated, was thin and translucent, like parchment, and slightly greasy to the touch, very disconcerting, given the subject of the book. Visible through the cover is the titular Lampshade. Suspended as if floating against a black background the Lampshade looks like many others that might be found on a wooden floor lamp from the 1930s, a common shape, somewhat worse for wear, with a ragged band of tatty rick-rack running along the bottom edge. It is the very illustration of the phrase “banality of evil” so kudos to Jackie Seow for outstanding work in graphic design.

The Lampshade lays before the Reader the implicit question, “What would you do if you came into possession of a lampshade made of human flesh?’ The Lampshade washed up in detritus of Hurricane Katrina and landed in the hands of a notorious New Orleans grave robber who sells it at a yard sale for $35.00. The new owner, haunted by nightmares that left him unable to sleep, within a few days contacts the author, a journalist whose own Jewish grandparents had left Europe before the Holocaust, and he pays $17.00 for a half-interest in the item and shortly thereafter finds himself in possession of the Lampshade.

What would you do if you suddenly found yourself in possession of such an item? What the author does is spend five thousand dollars of his own money to have DNA testing done to the Lampshade. This confirms that the Lampshade is made from human flesh and sets the author on a quest to mine a deeper meaning from this object, a quest that takes him from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, where he is told that the Nazi lampshades made from human skin are a “myth” and that even though DNA proved it was human they couldn’t prove it to be from the Holocaust, it may well be one of Ed Gein’s, to Holocaust deniers, to skinhead youth in Germany, to people who had participated in the Nuremburg Trials, where a lampshade made of human skin was displayed on the “Buchenwald Table,” to an unsuccessful attempt to locate the son of Ilsa Koch to a successful attempt to meet with David Duke who has relocated from Louisiana to Austria.

The author travels from Louisiana, New York and Washington D.C. before traveling through Germany and on to Israel, Palestine, and Jerusalem, meeting with scholars, Rabbis and Mediums before deciding that maybe instead of Myth, the Lampshade, like the similarly contested rendered soap, is Mythic.

This is an excellent book that packs a lot of philosophical punch into a quick, engaging read. I would highly recommend it to anyone who is not squeamish about the subject matter. In addition to the wonderful design and deeply engaging text, this volume boasts detailed footnotes and an excellent index, something sorely lacking from many books making this book an uncommon pleasure from start to finish.

~ Laura Wilkerson