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A short summary about Morton Rhue
Morton Rhue is the pseudonym of the author Todd Strasser, who was born in New York in 1950.
Todd went to the college at New York University for a few years, and then he dropped out.
He lived in a commune, the he lived in Europe where he was a street musician. All the while, Todd wrote songs and poems. Finally he decided to try being a writer. In this respect he returned to the United States and went to Beloit College where he studied literature and writing.
After college, he worked at the Middltown Times Herald-Record newspaper in Middletown, New York, and later at Compton Advertising in New York City. In 1978, Todd sold his first novel "Angel Dust Blues". He used the money to start the Dr. Wing Tip Shoo fortune cookie company. For the next 12 years he sold more cookies than books.
In 1990 Todd moved Westchester County. During the next few years, he wrote many movie novels, including "Home Alone", "Free Willy" and "Jumanji". All together he has published more than 100 books.
How does he get to Morton Rhue?
When Todd Strasser wanted to publish "The Wave" in 1981, his american publishing company planned to publish a n additional book of him. " Two books of the same writer- thats impossible!", said the publisher and advised Todd to provide a pseudonym. Todd thought about it and he found a multilingual solution - maybe affected by his visit in Europe when he was a young man: "Strasser" sounds like the german word "Straße". In French "Straße" means "Rue". A little bit americanized it becomes "Rhue". "Todd" sounds like "tot" in German and the french word for it is "mort". And because of the reason that "Mort Rhue" sounded hacked up, Todd Strasser become "Morton Rhue".
Meanwhile "The Wave" is published in the USA with the original author name. In Germany the edition keep up the pseudonym, because so he became famous with "Die Welle".
The background of the novel
The novel "The Wave" is based on a true incident, which happened at the Cubberley High School in Palo Alto in autumne of 1968. As reaction to the statements of the class, that the forms of behaviour of the National Socialism couldn't be found within ourselves, the history teacher Ron Jones engaged an experiment together with the students.
In the experiment the students were organised as "The third wave", get roles and were subjected restrictions; norms of behaviour were put up and erforced strictly. Original planned for one day, the experiment lasted five days.
Ron Jones was startled by the easiness, which manipulated the students so easily. So he broke off the experiment and made an assembly with the fans of "The third Wave" and demonstrated them a direct comparison with the youth-organisations of Third Empire (Dritten Reich).
In 1972 a short report of Ron Jones with the title "The Third Wave" were published. Years later Ron Jones summarized his experiences in the book "No Substitute for Madness:A Teacher, His Kids, and the Lessons of Real Life". The novel were filmed.
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