Interesting non-MK-ULTRA critique of Catcher in the Rye in regards Mark David Chapman, Hinkley, etc in the film Six Degrees of Separation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7t9St3pT ... re=relatedhttp://www.script-o-rama.com/movie_scri ... cript.htmlThen we asked him
what his thesis was on.
- The one that was stolen.
- Well...
A teacher out on Long lsland was dropped
from his job for fighting with a student.
Weeks later, he returned to the classroom,
shot the student - unsuccessfully,
held the class hostage,
and then shot himself - successfully.
This fact caught my eye.
Last sentence, Times -
"A neighbour described
the teacher as a nice boy,
always reading Catcher in the Rye. "
This nitwit Chapman,
who shot John Lennon,
said he did it to draw the attention
of the world to Catcher in the Rye,
and the reading of this book
would be his defense.
Young Hinckley, the whiz kid who shot
Reagan and his press secretary, said:
"If you want my defense, all you
have to do is read... Catcher in the Rye. "
- I haven't read it in years.
- Shh.
I borrowed a copy from a young friend.
I wanted to see what she had underlined.
And I read this book to find out why
this touching, beautiful, sensitive story, published in July
had turned into this manifesto of hate.
I started reading. It's exactly as I had
remembered. Everybody's a phoney.
Page two - "My brother's
in Hollywood being a prostitute."
Page three -
"What a phoney slob his father was."
Page nine -
"People never notice anything."
Then, on page my hair stood up.
Well...
Remember Holden Caulfield, the definitive
sensitive youth wearing his hunter's cap?
A deer hunter's cap.
"Like hell it is. I sort of closed one eye
like I was taking aim at it."
"This is a people shooting hat."
"I shoot people in this hat."
This book is preparing people for bigger
moments than I had ever dreamed of.
Then, on page
"I'd rather push a guy out the window
or chop his head off with an axe
than sock him in the jaw."
"I hate fistfights. What scares
me most is the other guy's face."
I finished the book.
It's touching and comic.
The boy wants to do so much
and can't do anything.
Hates all phoniness
and only lies to others.
Wants everyone to like him but is only
hateful and is completely self involved.
In other words, a pretty accurate
picture of a male adolescent.
What alarms me about the book - not the
book so much as the aura about it - is this.
The book is primarily about paralysis.
The boy can't function.
At the end, before he can run away and
start a new life, it starts to rain. He folds.
There's nothing wrong in writing about
emotional and intellectual paralysis.
It may, thanks to Chekhov and Samuel
Beckett, be the great modern theme.
The extraordinary last lines
of Waiting for Godot.;
"Let's go."
"Yes."
"Let's go."
Stage directions:
"They do not move."
The aura around Salinger's book -
which, perhaps, should be
read by everyone but young men - is this.
It mirrors like a fun-house mirror,
and amplifies like a distorted speaker
one of the great tragedies of our times -
the death of the imagination.
Because what else is paralysis?
The imagination has been
so debased that imagination...
being imaginative, rather than
being the linchpin of our existence,
now stands as a synonym for
something outside ourselves,
Like science fiction.
Or some new use for tangerine slices
on raw pork chops -
"What an imaginative summer recipe."
And Star Wars - "so imaginative".
And Star Trek - "so imaginative".
And Lord of the Rings,
all those dwarves - "so imaginative".
The imagination has moved out
of the realm of being our link,
our most personal link, with our inner
lives and the world outside that world,
this world we share.
What is schizophrenia
but a horrifying state
where what's in here
doesn't match what's out there?
Why has imagination
become a synonym for style?
I believe the imagination
is the passport that we create
to help take us into the real world.
I believe the imagination is merely another
phrase for what is most uniquely us.
Jung says "The greatest sin
is to be unconscious."
Our boy Holden says "What scares me
most is the other guy's face."
"It wouldn't be so bad
if you could both be blindfolded."
Most of the time, the faces that we face
are not the other guys', but our own faces.
And it is the worst kind of yellowness
to be so scared of yourself
that you put blindfolds on
rather than deal with yourself,
To face ourselves - that's the hard thing.
The imagination...
that's God's gift to make
the act of self-examination bearable.
If I knew all mysteries and all knowledge, and have not charity, I am nothing. St. Paul
I hang onto my prejudices, they are the testicles of my mind. Eric Hoffer