Jared Lee Loughner: seeking insight from his reading list
Do the books that Jared Lee Loughner was reading tell us anything useful about his state of mind?
鈥淭ell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are,鈥� the great French lawyer and gastronome Anthelme Brillat-Savarin once said.
In other words, you are what you eat, Brillat-Savarin posited. Are we also what we read? Can an individual鈥檚 bookshelf offer a glimpse into his mind? Are we a reflection of what we read 鈥� or vice versa?
Investigators, legal aid workers, counselors, and the media are considering these questions as they pore over a revealing piece of evidence in Saturday's grisly Arizona shooting spree: suspected shooter Jared Lee 尝辞耻驳丑苍别谤鈥檚 reading list.
尝辞耻驳丑苍别谤鈥檚 includes a long list of his favorite books. On the list are 鈥淎nimal Farm,鈥� 鈥淏rave New World,鈥� 鈥淭he Wizard Of Oz,鈥� 鈥淎esop Fables,鈥� 鈥淭he Odyssey,鈥� 鈥淎lice Adventures Into Wonderland,鈥� 鈥�Fahrenheit 451,鈥� 鈥�Peter Pan,鈥� 鈥�To Kill A Mockingbird,鈥� 鈥淲e The Living,鈥� 鈥淧hantom Toll Booth,鈥� 鈥�One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest,鈥� 鈥淧ulp,鈥� 鈥淭hrough The Looking Glass,鈥� 鈥淭he Communist Manifesto,鈥� 鈥�Siddhartha,鈥� 鈥�The Old Man And The Sea,鈥� 鈥�Gulliver's Travels,鈥� 鈥�Mein Kampf,鈥� 鈥淭he Republic,鈥� and 鈥淢eno.鈥�
Since its discovery, observers have scrutinized the list, straining to find clues about the mysterious 22-year-old suspect. They have attempted to draw correlations between his bookshelf and the impetus that drove him to release an explosion of bullets into Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and others, ultimately leaving six people dead and 13 wounded or in critical condition, including Rep. Giffords.
What insight does 尝辞耻驳丑苍别谤鈥檚 reading list offer?
Anti-government propaganda, for starters. 鈥淚n examining 尝辞耻驳丑苍别谤鈥檚 list of favorite books, which includes Orwell and 'Mein Kampf,' the Southern Poverty Law Center鈥檚 [Mark] Potok notes that an anti-government thread runs through all those works," . In the current climate of political vitriol and venom, particularly regarding health care and immigration, the impassioned political rhetoric
Another theme in his reading list? Paranoia. , 鈥淲hat unites [the assassin鈥檚 reading list] is paranoia, a sense of others controlling you, of conspiracy theories and government plots, of illegitimate government and its agents of control.鈥�
If 鈥淎nimal Farm,鈥� 鈥淏rave New World,鈥� 鈥淔ahrenheit 451,鈥� and 鈥淥ne Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest,鈥� provide a sampler of paranoia and conspiracy theories, unfortunately, so does 21st-century politics. Some Americans still believe 9/11 was an 鈥渋nside job,鈥� while scores of others continue to claim President Obama is a foreign-born Muslim/Fascist/Socialist/terrorist intent on killing Americans through health care 鈥渄eath panels.鈥� As yet, we don鈥檛 know 尝辞耻驳丑苍别谤鈥檚 views, but he may have absorbed some of the paranoia he read and observed in politics.
Indeed, speculation has run far and wide 鈥� some say Loughner was an anti-Semite, as indicated by the inclusion of 鈥淢ein Kampf鈥� on his reading list; Others have posited he is a proponent of conscious dreaming, the idea that reality is perceived and we live in a holographic universe. Evidence? 鈥淎lice in Wonderland.鈥�
Still others wonder not about what鈥檚 on the list, but what鈥檚 not on the list. 鈥�Catcher in the Rye鈥� isn鈥檛 on the list. It was a novel favored by two other mentally-disturbed shooters: Mark David Chapman, who killed John Lennon, and John Hinckley, who tried to assassinate Ronald Reagan.
Whatever insight 尝辞耻驳丑苍别谤鈥檚 bookshelf offers into his mind, 鈥渢he idea that this list will tell us much about Loughner and any political motives he had for shooting those 19 people is sorely misguided,鈥� .
尝辞耻驳丑苍别谤鈥檚 story isn鈥檛 likely to be found between the covers of his favorite books. The real story lies in his garbled, rambling, imcomprehensible statements on YouTube, indicative of a mentally disturbed young man whose grip on reality had become increasingly weak in recent years.
Husna Haq is a Monitor contributor.
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