Video: Catcher in the Rye - America's Youth Bible or Murderer's Favorite Book?
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
July 16, 2016 marks 65 years since the publication of the most famous work of an American writer D. Salinger - the story "The Catcher in the Rye" … The public's reaction was very contradictory: from deification to the banning of the story in several countries for obscenity, foul language and depression. Many readers in the main character Holden Caulfield, rebelling against society, recognized themselves, and some even went to crimes …
Jerome David Salinger's father, a smoked meat and cheese merchant, dreamed that his son would continue his business. But Jerome never graduated from any of the educational institutions. In 1942 he was drafted into the army, where he served in counterintelligence. His first story was published in 1940, 11 years later the story "The Catcher in the Rye" was published, which brought the author worldwide popularity. The writer worked on this work for about 9 years.
The image of the main character - 16-year-old Holden Caulfield - is so close and understandable to American youth of the 1950s-1960s that Salinger's story soon received the status of "the bible of American students." Indeed, for several generations this book has become a cult, and the main character is an expression of the views and moods of young people who oppose falsehood and hypocrisy in society.
The ideas of protest against social order were adopted not only by young rebels, nihilists and beatniks, but also by people prone to deviant behavior and violent scenarios of the struggle for their own beliefs. The Salinger book was obsessed with John Hinckley, the criminal who committed in 1981 the assassination attempt on the 40th US President Ronald Reagan.
Mark Chapman - the killer of John Lennon - after five shots at the idol, sat down under the lantern and began to read "The Catcher in the Rye" while waiting for the police. During interrogation, he stated that he found the encrypted order to kill Lennon on the pages of this book. Maniac Robert John Bardot pursued for three years, and then in 1989 killed the actress Rebecca Schafer. At the time of the crime, he had with him the book "The Catcher in the Rye."
The tradition of linking Holden Caulfield's philosophical beliefs with the psychology of killers has continued with screenwriters and writers. In Conspiracy Theory, The Catcher in the Rye is the link for a group of murderers who don't know their victims. And the main character of the book D. Picolt "19 Minutes", who shot 10 classmates, is also read by Salinger, and during a search they find "The Catcher in the Rye". Of course, in the story there is neither propaganda of violence, nor calls for murder, but everyone is free to interpret the protest against the existing social order in their own way.
Holden Caulfield really does not accept everything that surrounds him: “Lord, how I hate all this! And not only school, I hate everything. I hate taxis, buses where the conductor yells at you to get out through the back platform, I hate meeting lomaks, … I hate to ride in elevators when I just want to go out, I hate trying on suits …”. But despite maximalism, depression, infantilism and non-conformism, the main character professes completely different principles. His dream is to catch children over the precipice in the rye: “I can imagine how little children play in the evening in a huge field in the rye. Thousands of kids, and around not a soul, not a single adult, except me … And my job is to catch the children so that they do not fall into the abyss."
10 years after the first publication, The Catcher in the Rye was translated in 12 countries, including the USSR. The Minister of Culture E. Furtseva, nevertheless, published an indignant review: “What kind of abstract kindness and supra-class tenderness is this? The main character might have thought of something more concrete than an abyss. However, the propaganda of revolutionary ideas of the struggle against bourgeois society, with all the desire, could not be found in Salinger.
After the story brought worldwide popularity to the author, he decided not to be published anymore, since 1965 not a single piece of his work has been published. Jerome Salinger led a reclusive lifestyle, practiced Eastern spiritual practices and did not contact journalists. In his last years, he studied Buddhism, practiced yoga and alternative medicine, and did not communicate with the outside world. The writer died in 2010 at the age of 91.
Today "The Catcher in the Rye" is included in the list of the 100 best English-language novels of the twentieth century. and 12 best-selling books in history
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