Things Change and Are Ever the Same

Title: Fahrenheit 451  

Author: Ray Bradbury 

 

Given our current dystopian times and the re-emergence of book banning, we dug into what may be the ultimate story about the burning of books to destroy ideas and free thought.  Originally published in 1953, Fahrenheit 451 is Ray Bradbury's dystopian take on what could happen if book-banning were taken to its ultimate conclusion.

Written during the McCarthy era, the book led to its own spate of book-banning. The novel follows Guy Montag, a fireman whose role is to root out books, all of which have been banned, and burn down the homes of those who've been keeping them. During one such mission, he is overwhelmed with the choice of a book owner to burn along with her books. Secretly, he pockets one of her books, takes it home, and hides it, setting into motion a series of events that lead to the destruction of far more than one woman's library.

 

Insights and Opinions

Although our group was small and we missed our temporarily lost ones dearly, we had what may be one of the best and most in-depth discussions ever. Chris joined via Zoom and, while being only a disembodied head, added plenty to the discussion.

+ Several members of our exceptionally studious group had boned up by watching old movie versions of Bradbury's story. Super-achiever Linda watched both the 1967 Francois Truffaut version and the latest version filmed in 2018. Both departed from the book in significant ways. Truffaut's journal, which he kept during filming, includes this: "...The subjects of films influence the crews that make them. During Jules et Jim, everybody started to play dominoes; during La Peau Douce, everyone was deceiving his wife or her husband; and right from the start of Fahrenheit 451, everybody on the unit has begun to read. There are often hundreds of books on the set, each member of the unit chooses one, and sometimes you can hear nothing but the sound of turning pages."

+ What struck many of us about this work is that, as early as 1953, the urge to turn away from technology -- to fear it -- was already taking root. Bradbury holds up technology as the enemy of thought, building a world in which people are mindlessly staring at the moving pictures on their living room walls and no longer able to carry on a conversation. Yet, as Margy pointed out, the belief that TV would ruin us all is just an old chestnut that hasn't stood the test of time. Per Chris, if the percentage of today's world population that reads were compared to the percentage that were readers when this book was written, you'd find them to be about the same.

+ In the same way that Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek foretold technological advances that eventually came to pass, Bradbury invents technology that did not exist in his day. His characters wear Seashell-brand ear microphones well before ear buds were invented. His living-room screen walls predate today's giant flat-screen TVs by 60 years.

+ Bradbury's prose can be thrilling and poetic. But it can also be a bit of a word salad. Sometimes, his verbal pyrotechnics get the better of him and the reader is left wondering what the heck. But to write it, he would go to the UCLA library and work in the basement with coin-operated typewriters. So, as Margy pointed out, given that method, "you might have a tendency to say "well, good enough."

+ Other elements of the story are most likely products of their time, such as his portrayal of all of the women, with the exception of Clarisse, as ditzes. Were the women more susceptible to mind control than people like Faber and Beatty?

+ Liz felt there were perhaps two themes at play here -- book-burning as a method of mind control and Bradbury's own fear of technology and where it would lead. Bradbury is quoted as saying he was "a preventer of futures, not a predictor of them."

+ Overall, Fahrenheit 451 is a quick read well worth your time, both as historical social commentary and the work of a deeply experimental story-teller.

Smarty-pants Department

The Bradbury letter - click to view

+ Margy produced a letter from Bradbury, which has been hiding in her archive since her days as Director of Education at Walker Art Center. Despite being a foremost writer of future-focused literature, Bradbury was apparently unwilling to fly. (Now we are all rooting through our archives to see if we have any letters from famous people so we can compete.)

 

 

 

 

Lunch in the Garden Room

+ Thank you to our gracious hostess for a lovely chili lunch, which has now raised the bar for the rest of us. 

+ And to our waiter, Larry, for hot coffee when it was needed most.

Look how pretty this is

Our Next Books

• January: Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr (at Liz's house)
• February: The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
• March: War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (you know you've always wanted to read it and now's your chance)