The F-Bomb

As I said earlier, I’m in the process of re-reading all the Prey series by John Sandford. And although I really like them, I can’t get over the number of F-bombs he uses in all its many variations. I’m not a prude, and I don’t mind reading the words, or even hearing them in movies, but it seems like it’s in overload in Sandford’s books. I keep remembering how, in my distant past, The Catcher in the Rye was banned in most high schools because of that one F-bomb near the end, when Holden sees it graffitoed on the wall at the museum. Catcher is one of the most affirmative and moral novels ever written, yet it suffered for years from the stigma of that one word. Holden wanted to be the “catcher in the rye,” the savior who would protect his little sister Phoebe and all the other Phoebes of the world from evil, as symbolized by that word. Not that the act itself is evil. Just that those who used the word back in the old days intended it as evil. Today, it seems to be just another word, neither evil nor good.