A searching memoir of a life lived in the flicker of an action film,
by the author of I Will Take the Answer
In his first memoir, Ander Monson guides readers through a
scene-by-scene exploration of the 1987 film Predator, which he has
watched 146 times. Some fighters might not have time to bleed, but
Monson has the patience to consider their adventure, one frame at a
time. He turns his obsession into a lens through which he poignantly
examines his own life, formed by mainstream, white, male American
culture. Between scenes, Monson delves deeply into his adolescence in
Michigan's Upper Peninsula and Riyadh, his role as a father and the loss
of his own mother, and his friendships with men bound by the troubled
camaraderie depicted in action and sci-fi blockbusters. Along with
excursions into the conflicted pleasures of cosplay and first-person
shooters, he imagines himself beside the poet and memoirist Paul
Monette, who wrote the novelization of the movie while his partner was
dying of AIDS.
A sincere and playful book that lovingly dissects the film, Predator
also offers questions and critiques of masculinity, fandom, and their
interrelation with acts of mass violence. In a stirring reversal, one
chapter exposes Monson through the Predator's heat-seeking vision,
asking him, "What do you know about the workings of the hidden world?"
As Monson brings us into the brilliant depths of the film and its
universe, the hunt begins.
