Teaching Notes for Becoming Monster:
Use in the classroom to discuss: poetic essays; alternate forms of critical writing; writing about writing; writing about film; dialogic writing; race theory; critical theory perspectives; analysis; political critique; genre play and formation; creeping horror; what is inherent to humanity.
Pairs well with The Storm That Bears Your Name, Reports.
Becoming Monster by Christopher Higgs
56 pages.
Perfect-bound.
An essay in nineteen parts, in which writer-critic Christopher Higgs investigates how a monster is not born but formed. What are the circumstances that can turn a person into a monster and what are the ramifications of becoming one? Scanning art, philosophy, literature, and television, Higgs is on the hunt not just for the world’s monsters, but for the monstrousness that hides in human nature. Then again: “What do we mean when we say human,” Higgs asks, “and what do we mean when we say nature?” These unstable definitions are as dangerous as any monster hiding in man’s stories. Part treatise, part warning, Becoming Monster is a critical study of the very nature of the grotesque. The Cupboard Pamphlet is thrilled to put the beastly thing in your hands.
Christopher Higgs wrote The Complete Works of Marvin K. Mooney (Sator Press) and assembled ONE (Roof Books) in collaboration with Blake Butler and Vanessa Place. Other of his work appears in print and online at The Paris Review, Denver Quarterly, BOMB, AGNI, Quarterly West, and elsewhere. He currently lives in Florida, where he curates the critically acclaimed online art gallery Bright Stupid Confetti.