Mark David Chapman shot and killed John Lennon with a copy of J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye in his coat pocket. He said his actions would all be explained when the authorities read the text. It is also alleged that John Hinckley Jr.’s obsession with the text motivated his shooting of Ronald Reagan. He has gone on record saying that the shooting was an attempt to impress the actress Jodie Foster. Both Chapman and Hinckley are still alive. So is Foster and Salinger.

Between 1961 and 1982 Catcher in the Rye was the most censored book in American High schools and libraries. However by the time it came to me, it was common fare in primary education; they forced me to read it in seventh grade. I don’t think I will ever forgive then for ruining that book for me. The same goes for Fahrenheit 451. And Walden. For much like Che Guevara, one generation’s subversion becomes the next’s perversion, or worse. I have heard (most likely by some book publishers) that Fight Club was the revolutionary book of this generation. While I liked the book a great deal, I sincerely hope this is not true. But I suppose the matter is out of my hands.

In John Darnielle’s contribution to Continuum’s 33 1/3 series, he explores teenage angst, psych wards and forgiveness in the mirror of a Black Sabbath album. In terms of background information goes, John Darnielle is the singer and song writer behind the Mountains Goats and the 33 1/3 series is a line of short books that allow one author/musician/academic to meditate upon/explore/interpret one specific album. Darnielle’s novella is specifically focused on Black Sabbath’s third album entitled Master of Reality. Masters of Reality is not an album you hear a lot of people talk about and it is even more rare to see people write about it.  We should be thankful for this, for if it was it would surely suffer as Guy Montag, Billy Pilgrim and Winston Smith have. It would almost be too much to take. At least for this writer.

In a few words, the plot is narrated in two parts, the first composed of 21 journal entries that take place between Oct. 11th and November 1st, 1985 and the second spans 12 journal style letters dated ten years later. The pathos, confusion and rage of the institutionalized protagonist, as expressed through his love and investment in Black Sabbath, make for an immensely enjoyable read. However, behind the idiosyncratic prose and the economical story is something far more arresting: familiarity. But this familiarity is regrettably phantasmic and fragmented for The Catcher in the Rye now comes after Algebra, and so we came to know it by other names. Darnielle called it Black Sabbath.

The blazing fire of an unrepentant refusal to forgive is the something that has been lost, or more properly stated, something that has been obscured and thus dismantled in the commodification of subversion. But this refusal cannot be destroyed; it burns inside the heart of everyone who was ever dealt a raw deal when they were born and those who came to realize it later. For as long as there is childhood there will be unpaid debts and the outcasts who are owed. Like shards of a broken mirror these outcasts, we outcasts, reflected the maddening helplessness of adolescence which was only exacerbated by the overwhelming sense that something is wrong. For in truth something was wrong; something is still wrong. Far from evoking nostalgia, Darnielle’s realistic portrayal of the refusal to forgive foregrounds the protagonists recognizable longings, the  oppressiveness of authority, the text’s Biblical laden imagery and the author’s sublimated desires. It is this most realistic form of forgiveness, a forgiveness that is neither extended, deserved nor desired that resonates throughout the text and haunts the reader after the book ends.

This is not the first time Darnielle explores these dark waters. In fact the text is a retelling, if not an extension of “The Best Ever Death Metal Band Out of Denton,” the first track on the Mountain Goats’ 2002 album, All Hail West Texas. As both the text and the song are meditations on the redemptive aspects of heavy metal, the depravity of institutional authority and the refusal to forgive, the reader who is familiar with either Darnielle’s musical work or Black Sabbath will find the text particularly rewarding. Holden Caulfield is dead, long live Holden Caulfield.

Amazon: Black Sabbath’s Master of Reality: 33 1/3

Amazon: Master of Reality

For more of Christian’s thoughts on metal: Handjobs Are The New Black Metal