When Fiction Inspires Criminals: It Didn’t Start With <em>Catcher in the Rye</em>
Theraises the question of whether the Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier is right to regret the possible influence of the violence on the Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik. This issue didn't start with J. D. Salinger's and the assassin Mark Chapman. Modern Satanists have been inspired by the dark majesty of Lucifer in the devout John Milton's . Goethe's sparked a European suicide wave. W.B. Yeats later professed regret at the possibility that his play had inspired the Easter Rising and the tragedies it entailed. Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece continues to be cited in . Those stories about kids dying while jumping off buildings like Superman may be urban legends, but did lose an eye playing William Tell as a boy. An inadvertent role in tragedy is a risk in writing, composing, or painting.
