Oh yeah, for 13-year-old me, aside from the main themes, this was a deep insight into patriarchal culture and opposite, self-determination. For a kid that was being abused, this was a godsend.
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I read Catcher in my first year at Uni, it was really stressful, I could feel the book unbalancing me
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That “god” is just a thug.
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I’ve read a bunch of these, enjoyed most of them, don’t think any of them fucked me up mentally. So, apparently only sticks and stones can break my bones, or I was already fucked up beforehand.
Hmmmm…
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The Fountainhead
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Ubik left me in a state of idly wondering which side of existence I was on.
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Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosi
All the President’s Men by Woodward and Bernstein - read it in my early 20s, tho I’d watched the Watergate Hearings when I was a kid, and saw the film as soon as it came out
Christiane F
The Shining, despite having previously seen the film, constantly made me feel more uncomfortable than any other work of fiction (the bible excepted). HP Lovecraft’s The Case of Charles Dexter Ward comes pretty close.
Nine Stories by J. D. Salinger didn’t really fuck me up, but after reading each story I found myself just staring at the ceiling for a long time, lost in V strange thoughts. No one but Salinger can do that to me with any consistency.
I lent an artist BF a paperback Lovecraft collection, and the cover was kinda fucked when he gave it back. He apologized, and explained he’d flung it across his room after finishing The Colour out of Space b/c it had freaked him so hard.
I knew several people who’d been plagued by nightmares after reading The Necronomicon. I wasn’t, but my dislike of even fictional sumerian religion was reinforced.
I say to you againe, doe not call up Any that you can not put downe; by the Which I meane, Any that can in Turne call up somewhat against you, whereby your Powerfullest Devices may not be of use. Ask of the Lesser, lest the Greater shall not wish to Answer, and shall commande more than you. - HPL, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
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Yup! Totally f#@ked up 16-year-old me, cold-sweating my way through the Reagan years.
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They made you read Lord of the Flies in 6th grade?! That is fucked up. I attended a snobby prep school during 7-9th. It was fulla rich kids with mostly mediocre intellects & a few poor kids who were at least gifted, and we didn’t read that sucker until 9th grade. A fine reflection of 9th grade with snotty rich brats.
They made us read Shakespeare’s Juiius Caesar, the Odyssey, & the Iliad in 8th grade.
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I just wiki’d Riddley Walker, and the article references parallels with A Canticle for Leibowitz. A Canticle.…didn’t F#@ me up because I didn’t read it until AFTER Hiroshima, and also A Canticle…has a sly, silly sense of humor all through the book…until the very, very bleak end.
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It bears (sorry) re-mentioning. Yep… I’ve read it. I’m not really into horror literature (exception: William Peter Blatty’s books) but the extent of the horror in Blood Music was typical for a Bear novel; far-reaching and global (as is Dead Lines, as you’ll find out).
Ender’s game
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It’s worse when you know OS Card’s day job was Mormon propagandist. Really.
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Catcher in the Rye has always appeared to be one of those books that folks either love or hate. I read it as one of the options on a high school summer reading list, just cause the title sounded weird. Can’t say that it f’ed me up, but it sure did annoy the heck out of me.
Some of the underlying foibles of the protagonist were things I loathed in myself and strenuously hoped I’d avoid or overcome. But they weren’t related as really a journey of self discovery or overcoming limitations or a rich inner dialogue of wrestling with demons, they didn’t even seem conveyed as a cautionary tale or picaresque entertainment. Just kind of, “Presented without comment: This dumbass.”
Maybe there was supposed to be some elusive deeper meaning to it all, but the only interpretations I could get out of it were things like:
- Slice of life: Sometimes people are just dumbasses.
- Morality tale: Have you ever considered that you might be a dumbass? (Well, yes. But thanks for throwing salt on that wound.)
- Psychological analysis: The problem with being a dumbass is you don’t know you’re a dumbass.
- Existentialist parable: Every living thing is born a dumbass, prolongs it’s self for dumbass reasons and dies a dumbass.
- Historical insight: The early 1950s were peopled with a certain flavor of dumbass, in some ways distinct from, yet similar to, the dumbasses of our current era.
None of this felt particularly inspiring or instructive.
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But did it wreck your life?
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Mentally? No.
But it was the first time I sustained severe muscle strain due to excessive eye rolling, so that was pretty traumatic.
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I didn’t think it was that odd to have kids read something like that around that age. I’m fairly sure it was one of the “classics” options on summer reading lists we would have gotten somewhere around that time. And I know the parochial school I attended had us reading Candide some time between 5th to 8th grade.
It’s all well and good to realize it’s formulaic many years later. They say there’s really only seven archetypal stories anyway. That being said, it wouldn’t have made little 9 year old me any less traumatized at the time.
A little editing/tweaking and you’d have something good to go right on the headstone.
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