In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth and called all of it good.
What is wrong in a country, in a world, in any society that prays for Peace all the time and has no idea what makes peace happen?
What is wrong with a country that calls itself a Democracy, a United states, establishes a Bill of Rights/Freedoms for all its citizens, and then silences some of these citizens from telling or writing the truth about themselves in an honest way? As a citizen I protest.
Is this moral? Is this ungodly? Is this a violation of the freedom of every citizen to practice his/her/their own religious faith? Does this corruption, this lie promote holocaust, exile, soul-murder, evil, the censorship of truth itself? That you can be stoned for being who you are, that you can be exiled for being who you are, that you can be lynched, jailed, buried alive, murdered, butchered, burned, bludgeoned, maimed, scalped, terrorized, banished, humiliated, deformed from foot-binding, censored, crucified, and shamed for being who you are and for writing, publishing, telling your own story about who you are.
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Why am I so passionate about all this? Well, because I am a reader who has read about campaigns to ban books that MIGHT be offensive to young minds. And because I’m a writer who remembers Holden Caulfield!
American writer J.D. Salinger, born in New York City (1919) is one of the most famous living authors in America even though he hasn't published anything since 1965, and he lived reclusively until his death in 2010. He’s best known for his novel The Catcher in the Rye, about a boy named Holden Caulfield who gets expelled from his boarding school and spends the next few days wandering around New York City, trying to figure out why people have to grow older, why everyone is so phony, and where the ducks go when the pond in Central Park freezes over.
The Catcher in the Rye started out as a short story called "Slight Rebellion Off Madison," and it was the first story that Salinger managed to sell to The New Yorker. The New Yorker bought the story in November of 1941, and planned to run it in their Christmas issue. That December, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, and Salinger's story was put on hold, considered too trivial in a time of war. Salinger writes from within the mental musings of a young teenager, gawky, curious, sexually awkward—unforgettable.
Salinger expanded the story into the novel, The Catcher in the Rye, which came out in 1951 when I was 13. The New York Times ran a review, titled "Aw, the World's a Crumby Place.” The children in it were unbelievably intelligent, and the style of the novel was too "showoffy." What adolescent is not? Within two weeks Catcher made the best seller list.
Who can forget Holden Caulfield, Jane Eyre, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, Ebenezer Scrooge, Oz, Bambi, Christopher Robin, Pooh and Piglet, Mrs. Dalloway, Peter Rabbit, Cinderella, Grumpy, Moses, Cruella Deville—and more?
Every tale and every character embodies good and evil, sorrow and joy, love and hate, light and darkness, heaven and hell, life and death—together.
In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth and called all of it Good.
O, light of the world, let your bright star stand over the place where the poor have to live; lead our sages to wisdom and our rulers to reverence. Hear this prayer for your love’s sake. Amen. (from The New Zealand Prayer Book)
