When Books Kill

In reaction to ubiquitous reports of the dangerous examples set by violent films and video games, this neat little Salon piece points out that novels cannot be held blameless. Writer Aidan Doyle gives several examples of individuals and groups led to commit heinous crimes by the written word. They include Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo, OKC bomber Timothy McVeigh, and Ted Kaczynski:

The Unabomber was a big fan of Joseph Conrad’s “The Secret Agent,” an ironic novel in which a university professor turned anarchist is recruited to blow up a scientific icon, London’s Greenwich Observatory. A Washington Post article revealed that prior to Kaczynski’s arrest, the FBI had suspected the novel’s influence and contacted Conrad scholars to help them in constructing their profile.

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