Blame it on Camus

Wondering about media effects:

According to the Swedish tabloid Expressen, the presumed killer of Swedish foreign minister Anna Lindh has as a favorite book: Albert Camus’ The Stranger.

The journalist half-heartedly tries to make a case for a connection between Camus and the murder (my translation):

The explanation [for the murder] can possibly be found on the book shelf of the 35-year old.
-His favorite book is “The Stranger”, a friend tells us.
The book is about an ice-cold killer who attacks a person on a beach. After the murder, the man is put to trial. When the verdict is announced, it is declared that he is punished harder since he has not shown any emotions. In the book, the main character also has a very complicated relationship to his mother.

I am not sure the description of The Stranger would receive a passing grade as a book essay in high school, but it is certainly unusual to blame high-brow literature for the evils of the world.

I suppose the general assumption has been that low-brow culture (like Grand Theft Auto) is bad for you, whereas high-brow culture (Camus, Rilke, Bartok) generally purifies your spirit and makes your personality all nice and angelic.
I doubt I ever believed the first part, that rock music, jazz, techno, cartoons, video games, or anything else demonized lately could cause you to commit a violent act, but up to a point I really did romantically believe that art was good for you.
I ceased to entertain that notion in 1994 when a fellow student at Nordic Literature at the University of Aarhus shot two people in the cafeteria. Here was a guy whom I assume must have read all the canonical novels and poems of Danish literature, and yet it had not inoculated him against committing a violent, stupid, and despicable act against other human beings. Art can’t save your soul.

By strange coincidence, this happened on the first day I had taken leave from my studies to work with computers instead – it was beginning to look like a very good idea.