Shit Magnet: One Man's Miraculous Ability to Absorb the World's Guilt

Jim Goad’s brief career as an underground celebrity has been studded with controversy, from an obscenity trial over a much-reviled “rape issue” of his online magazine, to a White House shooting in which the perpetrator quoted Goad’s writing, to a two-and-a-half-year stint in prison for assault. Shit Magnet is his manifesto, written while he was incarcerated. The book’s theme is guilt — how the act of blaming the enemy and slaying him is history’s propulsive force. Preferring the role of “shit magnet” to “pity sponge,” he explores the disabling effects of guilt; uncovers sinister forces behind fashionable stances on race, gender, and criminal justice; and offers his own life as an example of how “evil” can be imprinted on a person from an early age. Goad is the former publisher of the legendary zine Answer Me! and the author of The Redneck Manifesto.