My Weekly Book

Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury

Fahrenheit 451 is the story of a man who unravels. Guy Montag is a fireman in a dystopian future world where firemen start fires rather than put them out. His hose is filled with kerosene, not water, and his mission is to burn books before their upsetting and confusing contents can spread dissent and unhappiness throughout the world. And Montag, the son and grandson of firemen whose physical appearance even seems to mark him out for the role, performs it happily until a chance meeting with a teenage neighbour and an encounter with a dissident who would rather die with their library than submit to repression causes him and his life to unravel.

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I first read this book as a teenager. Written by Bradbury at the outset of his novelling career, in fluid and poetic prose, containing big, meaty ideas and coming in at fewer than 200 pages, I would say that it remains an ideal reading choice for that age group while having plenty to offer the rest of us as well. And, like its readers, time has inevitably failed to stand still for this little book. Indeed, 55 years after its initial publication, controversies surrounding it are still alive and well (see the links below). Bradbury has recently most emphatically denied that his book has anything to do with the suppression of free speech - he claims that it’s about the dangers of popular culture, specifically television in this case, overwhelming more intellectual pursuits and thus depriving people of the ability to think critically for themselves.

And this argument is indeed strongly in evidence. It is possible, in this world to install television screens that occupy all four walls of the ‘viewing parlour’ and program them so the characters appearing there (in five-minute bite-sized chunks, generally) address the viewer by name and react to them, even incorporate them into the action. As someone who has no satellite or cable service, who hates many ‘reality TV’ programmes and who feels physically ill when sitting in front of huge, widescreen sets, I can sympathise most emphatically with this point of view. But I think there are some other things we need to take into account. Firstly a crucial factor about all these post-war dystopian worlds is that they entirely failed to predict the development of the personal computer and the computer network which has proved to be the real threat to our privacy and, some would say, to our independence of thought, seeing the television set as the primary agent of our downfall. A possible exception to this is Isaac Asimov, who did explore the notion of the ‘thinking machine’ - but that’s a review for another time.

So, while there are undoubtedly important arguments to be had about the ubiquitousness and quality of broadcast and print media and their effects on our society I think it is fair to say that this is not necessarily the theme of this book that will chime most vehemently with a modern audience. We are in the age of the ‘war on terror’ where a Princeton professor criticising the president of the United States finds his name on a no-fly list, or a Canadian psychotherapist who described having taken LSD for research purposes decades ago is prevented in perpetuity from entering the country and from visiting his children at their home.

In Atlanta a woman is arguing with all the means at her disposal to have a set of children’s books she has never even read banned while a schoolgirl in Texas with utterly and totally unintentional irony has asked for Fahrenheit 451 itself to be removed from a school reading list because of “cussing” and references to “burning the bible”. Her father supported her quest by producing a page-by-page list of reasons why this was an unsuitable set text for teenagers including “cigarettes” and “talking about our firemen” (I’m really not joking - see links below) - calling the book “all kinds of filth” while simultaneously admitting to not ever having read it. Meanwhile in New Hampshire, not exactly regarded as a bastion of reactionaries, a substitute teacher with little experience of using computers is facing 40 years in jail for child endangerment because her school didn’t invest in decent protective software for its network, or give her any training, and then blamed her when indecent pop-up ads made it through and appeared in front of pupils. And then there’s the president who appears to have entirely substituted fundamentalist religious faith for reason-based analysis.

And, lest anyone think that I am having a go at Americans, in Britain we have our outgoing Prime Minister calling for censorship of the Internet because people have used it criticise him, instead of playing nicely, and record industry lobbyists trying to intimidate critical bloggers by threatening to denounce them to their employers - like something from the McCarthyite 50s. In the face of all this, Mr Bradbury, is it any wonder that people have chosen to take what they see as important points about free speech and dissent against authoritarian government as an important message from your book? This is, I state again, not an attempt to underplay the importance of the ‘dumbing-down’ argument or to even to deny its relevance to many of the issues raised above. But I would say it is impossible to address the subject the author says he focused on without also raising these other, critically important issues.

I have also long subscribed to the view, and aired it often and loudly here and elsewhere, that the very last person you should go to for an “objective” (loaded term, that) view of a work is its creator. This is a point picked up extremely well on the wonderful BoingBoing blog by science fiction author Cory Doctorow, who says the following:

Bradbury denies free speech message in Fahrenheit 451

Fahrenheit 451 was seminal for me, the book that turned me into a believer in free speech, a cause I’ve devoted my life to. It’s pretty heart-breaking to hear Bradbury repudiate the political subtext of the book.

On the other hand, I’ve had my own books subjected to critical scrutiny in which critics pointed out symbolisms and subtexts that I wasn’t aware of when I was writing. These critics make good points, though, and I can’t deny them with a straight face — I think that there’s a lot going on while writers write, and we’re not always entirely conscious of all of it.

Personally, reading the coverage, I think that Mr Bradbury is simply thoroughly enjoying being a crusty old contrarian whose thoughts are stirring up such a maelstrom of media interest. In the meantime I would suggest the only thing I possibly can, after all of the above - go and pick it up for yourself and have a read. I found it delightfully-written, thought-provoking and easy to get through as well as being surrounded by all sorts of preface anecdotage (written by its impoverished author on a rented typewriter in a library basement) which adds to the gaiety of nations. All in all, I find myself thoroughly glad to have returned to it.

Some links:

• Author’s official site
• Wikipedia: Ray Bradbury
• Wikipedia: Fahrenheit 451
• LA Weekly News: Fahrenheit 451 misinterpreted
• BoingBoing.net: Bradbury denies free speech message in Fahrenheit 451
• The Raw Story: Real problem not censorship but television
• YouTube: Religious nuts in Texas seek to ban book about book banning
• BoingBoing.net: Bradbury goes nuts over Fahrenheit 9/11 title
• Salon: Ray Bradbury
• Internet Science Fiction Database: exhaustive Ray Bradbury bibliography and links

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 20th, 2007 at 5:14 pm and is filed under 2007 reading challenge, Reads I recommend. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.