¡Qué libro tan bueno! Hace tiempo que no leía algo que me mantuviera hipnotizado por un largo período de tiempo. Me recordó en parte al libro 1984, Winston Smith y Guy Montag tienen cosas en común; como por ejemplo, descubrir que estaban viviendo en una burbuja... en una burbuja totalmente falsa y quizás equivocada.
El libro no es largo, pero creo que no es necesario hacerlo más largo, o si no mataría un poco la historia.
Bueno, la verdad es que no hay mucho que comentar sobre a historia del libro, ya que habla del valor de los libros en sí, de lo útiles e importantes que son, como también el amor que uno le puede llegar a tomar a un libro (o a varios libros). Estoy gratísimamente sorprendido con la historia y me encantó que nombrara tantos libros que son clásicos. Según yo, este es un libro para alguien que no está muy adentrado en el mundo de la lectura, para alguien que no está 100% seguro si quiere pasar su tiempo leyendo, ya que Bradbury "promueve" la lectura y el valor de los libros.
Creo que después de esta historia, cualquier persona se enamorará de la literatura y lo que un libro puede entregar. Un libro es una historia, un mundo, una vida o una muerte. Un libro lo es todo; es el único lugar en el que son solamente tú y un libro, y puedes imaginarte todo conforme a lo que lees, pero imaginarlo a tu manera, lo que hace que la lectura sea única para cada uno de nosotros.
Dicho esto, amo la lectura y quiero leer tantos libros como me sea posible. Los amo a todos.

One of my favorite books of all time - book burning lights the path to tyranny. This book should be required reading for all politicians; but if I had to guess it would be shocking how few of them have read it. With this new wave of book bannings cresting across America I think this book needs to be read now more than ever.

This was my first Ray Bradbury book. Do you know - that with 1, 117, 082 ratings, and
28, 668 reviews-I didn't have a clue what to expect from this book? I may have been the only person living under a rock - down deep beneath the earth -who knew nothing about this story! My Goodness .......
"I CANT IMAGINE A WORLD WITHOUT BOOKS!!!!!"

I have in my hands a copy of the 60th Anniversary Edition. Neil Gaiman wrote the Introduction.... and really excellent I might add! Just beautiful introduction about Fahrenheit 451 being speculative fiction....."if this goes on......." story. Ray Bradbury was writing about his present, which is our past. He was warning us about things; some of those things are obvious, and some of them, half a century later, are harder to see.

.....First: Many readers say 'that readers', should read this book: I agree!
.....Fireman no longer put out fires-- but instead burn houses that have books inside.
.....The prose is beautiful- powerful - a tribute to the value of books.
.....Ray Bradbury created a world where watching TV is what is consider socializing.
.....TV is a baby sitter for busy parents. Sounds like present day to me! This is still a concern!!!

.....One night -one fireman - Guy Montag - meets a young almost 17 year old girl, Clarisse McClellan, who asks Montag, "Do you ever read any of the books you burn?"
He laughed. "That's against the law!" But soon, Montag begins to question the
forbidden and begins to steal books. ..... As the story unfolds, Montag bumps up against challenges - scary situations - sad and dangerous situations---

This is an INSANE WORLD --- played out to extremes --- but frightening that it resembles much of our world today. -- and that is even 'more' frightening!

Towards the end of the copy of this 60th Anniversary edition is "The Story of Fahrenheit 451". I found it fascinating. The story about renting typewriters at UCLA library - paying a dime for every half hour to write this story -- had me laughing. ( sorry for laughing at Bradbury's suffering when the typewriter would jam.....but I think his story will be helpful to me on those days when I have computer breakdowns-- in the COMFORT of my own home!!!!

Fabulous- - great excerpts on every page - A STAND FOR INTOLERANCE!!!

Farenheit 451 has been analyzed and reinterpreted by every successive generation to change its meaning. This is chiefly because the book is full of assumptions and vague symbolism which can be taken many ways, and rarely does anyone come away from the book with the conclusion the author intended, which would suggest that it is a failed attempt.

There are grounds to contend that even the title is inaccurate, since contemporary sources suggest paper combusts at 450 degrees Celsius, which in Farenheit would be more than 800 degrees. The truth is, paper combustion is gradual and dependent on many factors; even if some paper might combust at 451F, his title is at best an oversimplification, but Bradbury was more interested in a punchy message than in constructing a thoughtful and well-supported argument.

It's not a book about book censorship, but a book about how TV will rot your brain. Bradbury himself has stated this again and again, as evidenced in this article which quotes Bradbury and in videos from Bradbury's own website--indeed, in an interview, he stated he was inspired to write it because he was horrified that a woman might listen to a radio while walking her dog. Not only does he patronizingly assume that she's listening to a soap opera, instead of news, or appreciating classical music, but it's a strangely anti-technology pose for a sci fi writer to take--does it really matter whether we get our art and knowledge from compressed tree pulp, or from radio transmissions?

This book falls somewhat short of its satirical mark based on this cranky lawn-loving neighbor's message. Then again, it was written in the course of a few days in one long, uninterrupted slurry (mercifully edited by his publishers, but now available utterly restored). It contains archetypes, misconceptions, and an author surrogate, but can still be seen as a slighting view of authority and power, and of the way people are always willing to deceive themselves.

Unfortunately, Bradbury did not seem to recognize that reading has always been the province of a minority and that television would do little to kill it. More books are written, published, and read today than at any other point in history. Most of them are just redundant filler, but so is 90% of any mass creative output, books, art, movies, or TV, as Sturgeon said. And there's nothing new about that, either: cheap, trashy novels have been a joke since the Victorian.

Television is a different medium than books, and has its own strengths and weaknesses. Bradbury's critique of TV--that it will get larger, more pervasive, and become an escape for small minds--is just as true of books. As for television damaging social interaction, who is less culturally aware: the slack-jawed boy watching television or the slack-jawed boy reading one uninspired relic of genre fiction after another? I read a lot of books as a kid and watched a lot of TV, and each medium provided something different. Neither one displaced the other, since reading and watching aren't the same experience.

There is an egalitarian obsession that people are all capable of being informed and intelligent. We now send everyone to college, despite the fact that for many people, college is not a viable or useful route. The same elitism that values degrees values being 'well-read', and since this is the elitism of the current power structure, it is idealized by the less fortunate subcultures. Bradbury became informed not because he read, but by what he read. He could have read a schlocky pop novel every day for life and still been as dull as the vidscreen zombies he condemns.

He has mistaken the medium for the message, and his is a doubly mixed message, coming from a man who had his own TV show.

In Ray Bradbury's creepy classic, Montag is your typical modern fireman , burning books for a living with his dedicated gang. None of that old -fashioned putting out fires, he and a hose full of kerosene and just a little old match, does the trick. Sets books a blazing, it's more fun too! Besides no one reads anymore and the warm inferno, towering high into the sky, makes a pretty picture, lighting the cold, dark night . Father was a fireman, so was his grandfather, the family business, you can call it, Montag didn't really have a choice, tradition must continue. Coming back from a good evening's work, the fire setter, pardon...the savior of the world (keeping bad ideas from spreading to the gullible public, they need protection). He discovers his unhappy wife took too many sleeping pills again . An accident she later claims , maybe even believes. After getting her stomach pumped, Mildred is as good as new, poor Guy, on the long road of life's journey, every step seems in the wrong direction. Mildred is addicted to wall to wall television, (so are her friends) the fantasy world negates somewhat the pain and emptiness . Happy shows of course, no others will penetrate the dreams of the ladies, reality is not fun . Yet doubts come when a nearly 17 -year- old curious girl, a next door neighbor, starts asking Guy Montag, many uncomfortable questions, Clarisse McClellan admits she's crazy. In the firehouse, Montag spends most of his time playing cards with the fellows, strangely in the future, no women are employed in that noble profession. But plenty of cigarette smoking, they are real firemen . Captain Beatty starts getting suspicious of Montag, the mechanical pet dog, also, it likes killing rats, the four legged kind I mean, and hates our great hero. War is in the air , jet bombers are flying around the skies in circles, atomic bombs threaten to rain down and annihilate the so- called civilization . Not to worry; get back to the TV walls, people and forget. Clarisse mysterious disappears, one ordinary day, she's here, then .... gone...Finally the forbidden fruit's temptation, becomes quite unbearable , and Montag arriving in a house full of illegal , but strangely attractive books, takes a sample. Big horrendous mistake, worse, the owner, an old woman, refuses to leave her place and goes literally up in flames with her beloved "friends". Everyone says it was a shame , but her own fault; no tears should be shed. Afterwards an incident occurs and Guy has to flee for his own life, the relentless mechanical dog is on the hunt. The petrified Montag jumps into the cold river and peacefully, gently floats down the beautiful stream. Getting out soon after , he sees a fire above, with a group of "Hobos" near the water . Is that a flash in the sky ? This warning of a maybe world, in the years to come , is still relevant today , though so much time has passed. SCIENCE FICTION makes for an interesting atmosphere, anything is possible and Bradbury's poetic words dazzle the mind.

"No hace falta quemar libros para que una cultura desaparezca. Mucho peor es no leerlos" - Ray Bradbury

Cuesta mucho encontrar en el vasto mundo de la literatura un libro que defienda precisamente al libro como patrimonio cultural de la Humanidad. Más allá de la distopía que encierra, la maestría de Bradbury nos posiciona ante los peligros que a veces significa para el poder el hecho de que la gente "piense" y quiera valerse por sí misma. Uno de mis libro preferidos de toda la vida...

Esta era mi pequeña reseña allá por el 2015, cuando este libro inolvidable de un también inolvidable Ray Bradbury dominaba mi sentidos y se transformaba en uno de mis preferidos de toda la vida. Y aún sigue siéndolo. Aún sigue teniendo esa misma vigencia inalterable en mí.
Es que mi grado de admiración hacia el viejo Ray sigue en ascenso y no se detendrá nunca. Es un escritor del que aprendo. Esa es la palabra. Es un maestro, un abuelo, un profesor y un profeta. Todo lo que irradió en su literatura fue sabiduría y genialidad. Sus novelas y cuentos están poblados de enseñanzas y advertencias. Mensajes y premoniciones. Fue un erudito, un escritor que supo ver mucho antes todas las calamidades que golpearon a la Humanidad sumiéndola en un sopor de las que muchas veces le costó salir.
Anticipó avances tecnológicos también. A partir de libros como "Crónicas marcianas", "El hombre ilustrado" o "Las doradas manzanas del sol" supo advertirnos que el futuro podía transformarse en algo peligroso e incómodo.
Al final de esta novela se percibe ese aire enrarecido de una latente catástrofe que hace eclosión arrasando una ciudad. ¿Acaso hoy no sentimos esa opresiva preocupación con las pruebas nucleares de un dictador desequilibrado en la supuestamente remota Corea del Norte?
Esto y lo sabía Ray Bradbury. Él nos dijo que cometimos el error luego de la segunda bomba mundial y que probablemente podamos volver a cometerlo. Porque somos humanos, falibles, inestables. Hemos atravesado épocas de paz y guerra, pero siempre se han vivido largos años de desigualdad. De poder desmedido sobre gente oprimida y esa disparidad puede terminar mal.
En "Fahrenheit 451" , se nos pinta una sociedad controlada y vigilada. El libro es una de las tres mejores distopías que puedan leerse junto con "1984" y "Un mundo feliz". En la contratapa de la novela Kingsley Amis dice que "De entre todos los infiernos del conformismo, Fahrenheit 451 ofrece el retrato más convincente." Disiento a medias con el señor Amis.
Creo que ese conformismo está más exacerbado en "Un mundo feliz", en donde la distópica Humanidad de la novela de Huxley está sedada por el soma y la gente no sufre preocupaciones. Es una sociedad controlada por fármacos, y se distancia mucho de la de Oceanía, de "1984", en donde vive Winston, allí las cosas son más difíciles e incluso mucho más peligrosas aún que las de "Fahrenheit 451".
En "Fahrenheit 451", su personaje principal, Guy Montag es parte de un cuerpo de bomberos que no apaga incendios sino se dedica a quemar libros de aquellos descarriados que el sistema no llega a controlar hasta que son denunciados, porque como digo al principio, el poder que controla todo es peligroso que el ser humano piense, se valga por sí mismo, se apoye en lo que escritores, filósofos y pensadores y queda evidenciado en el pensamiento del capitán Beatty, jefe de Montag y del cuartel de bomberos cuando insidiosamente sostiene: "Un libro es un arma cargada en la casa de al lado. Quémalo. Quita el proyectil del arma. Domina la mente del hombre. ¿Quién sabe cuál podría ser el objetivo del hombre que leyese mucho? Yo, no lo resistiría un minuto."
La frase de Beatty nos refiere hasta ese punto se ha llegado. Sin la violencia explicita ni el totalitarismo desmedido de "1984", la sociedad en esta novela es vigilada, controlada, perseguida y castigada, si es necesario.
Las tres distopías tienen algo bien claro en común y son los tres personajes principales de cada una de ellas: Guy Montag en este libro, Winston en "1984" y Bernard Marx en "Un mundo feliz".
¿Por qué? Bueno, precisamente por querer salirse del sistema, por rebelarse, por querer demostrar que su realidad es injusta y que no se puede vivir así. Se salen de su curso, comienzan a realizar pequeños actos subversivos, se suman a las minorías que resisten estos crueles totalitarismo y como es de prever, son descubiertos.
Montag, al igual que los héroes de los otros libros, descubre a la vez lo que debería estar bien pero sigue mal. Su vida está en suspenso. Cuando Clare McLellan, esa chica que conoce y que lo saca de su abotargamiento le hace la simple pregunta "¿Eres feliz?", simplemente no sabe qué responder.
Ha estado viviendo por años con una esposa que es en sí prácticamente una desconocida. Mildred es una mujer hueca, vacía, ausente, atontada por sus enormes pantallas. Su vida es anodina, supuestamente agradable pero fría, sintética. No tiene ningún tipo de acercamiento con Montag y las cosas siguen adelante por su propia inercia. Son dos desconocidos que alguna vez se casaron y viven juntos. Solamente eso.
Durante una de sus salidas con los bomberos, Montag tendrá una experiencia en extremo shockeante y a partir de ella no será el mismo. Prontamente "despertará" para acercarse a lo más peligroso e inconveniente que pueda cruzarse en su vida: los libros.
No seguiré adentrándome en la historia porque siempre hay lectores que no leyeron "Fahrenheit 451", pero sí sostendré lo expuesto al principio de esta reseña:
El libro, es uno de los mayores tesoros que la Humanidad ha tenido y tendrá por siempre. No importa que algún día sean devorado por las llamas, porque eso ya pasó muchas veces, la última vez a manos del nazismo.
El libro nunca morirá, porque es eterno. La defensa de Bradbury en "Fahrenheit 451" es inspiradora, sanadora y edificante. El libro es un objeto precioso, una gema, es ese amigo que nunca decepciona como decía Carlyle.
Un libro nos hace sentir orgullosos como personas lectoras, nos dignifica, nos enseña. Para un lector pasar cuidadosamente los dedos por sus páginas es una darle caricia, un mimo. "Los libros van siendo el único lugar de la casa donde aún se puede estar tranquilo", decía don Julio Cortázar y no se equivocaba. Aquel que no es lector tal vez no entienda el por qué de tanta pasión, tanto amor, tanta admiración que los lectores tenemos por los libros.
Bradbury nos dice que en el fondo no importa que desaparezcan mientras nosotros, los lectores los tengamos en la mente y en el corazón y creo que ese es el mensaje que quiere dejarnos al final de esta novela a partir de esos "hombres libros" con los que Montag se encuentra en el bosque luego de su persecución.
¿Pinta algo inverosímil Bradbury en este libro? No. ¿Acaso no han sido muchas personas perseguidas o asesinadas a partir de sus pensamientos, de lo que escribieron o de lo que intentaron cambiar a partir de las líneas de un libro? Claro que no.
Siempre, este libro será uno de mis preferidos porque casualmente es un libro cuyo tema principal trata acerca de la importancia que siempre ha tenido en nosotros.
Todos los días agradezco a Dios el haberme dado esta pasión por los libros y también le digo gracias a Ray Bradbury por haberme enseñado a ser un mejor lector.

Library as cathedral, as all libraries should be - John Rylands Library, Manchester. Image source

Read me, love me, touch me, treasure me

This is a book about the power of books that is itself steeped with references, both explicit and indirect, to the great works that permeate our culture so thoroughly that we do not always notice them - until they’re gone. Bradbury shows us the horror of a hedonistic but unhappy world where books and ideas are banned in the futile pursuit of the illusion of happiness. As with A Clockwork Orange (see my review HERE), there is a constant tension between the deliciously poetic language and the horrors of the setting.

The intended message of this 62-year-old novel is different: a prescient warning about the addictive power of continuous, passive imbibing from the virtual worlds and interactive screens that are our constant companions. I guess Bradbury was so infused in bookish culture himself that he didn’t realise how loudly the literary message shouts from every page, almost drowning out everything else: read me, love me, touch me, treasure me. Reading is a physical, sensual, transformative relationship, not merely a mental process. See this excellent article (thanks, Apatt!) for Bradbury's views on the persistent misinterpretation of his book: LA Weekly article. It's interesting to compare this with his Usher II, where books are burned for the opposite reason: to make people face reality by quashing imagination. See my review HERE.

Nevertheless, the balance of themes is shifting: smartphones and the Internet of Things mean we’re catching up with Bradbury’s vision. Certainly, I was more aware of his technological warning than on previous readings - but it’s still the insatiable thirst for what is in and from books (ideas, discussion, and knowledge) that stokes my passion for this novel:
“The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us.”
As Henry Cowles wrote in Aeon recently, “Screens are not just a part of life today: they are our lives.”

The weak characterisation, cruelly caricatured Mildred, and the rationale and details of the totalitarian state’s oppression, censorship (sadly apt after the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris in January 2015), and warmongering are secondary - just the canvas on which Bradbury delicately paints his nightmare, by moonlight, to the pitter-patter of raindrops and the whisper of falling leaves.

tl;dnr - stick with the four paragraphs, above.


Plot and Narrative Structure

The plot is well-known: It is set in the near future, where all books are banned because they are elitist and hence cause unhappiness and division. Instead, the population is fed continuous inane soap operas to lull their minds into soporific approximation of non-unhappiness. TV really does rot their brains, or at least sap their ability to think for themselves. Firemen no longer put out fires, but instead burn houses where books are found.

Montag is a fireman, so part of the regime. But he is tempted by the unknown promise of what he destroys, takes greater and greater risks, and ends up a fugitive, living rough with other rebels, each of whom has memorised a book so that when things change, they can be rewritten. (Ironically, these people also destroy books - just the physical ones, after they have memorised them.)

There are three parts:

1.t“It Was a Pleasure to Burn” shows the restrictions of Montag’s world, and his growing, but unfocused, dissatisfaction with it, contrasted with beautiful imagery of the natural world, especially moonlight and trees - and fire.
2.t“The Sieve and the Sand” is about confrontation: with self and others - with truth.
3.tFinally, in “Burning Bright”, revelation leads to liberation, danger, and the possibility of freedom. But at what cost?

QUOTES

I had forgotten (or maybe never noticed!) how wonderful the language is. This review is even more focused on quotes than usual, so I never forget.

Contradictions

•t"The trees overhead made a great sound of letting down their dry rain.”
•t“They walked in the warm-cool blowing night on the silvered pavement.”
•t“He felt his body divide itself into a hotness and a coldness, a softness and a hardness, a trembling and a not trembling, the two halves grinding one upon the other.”
•t“He was moving from an unreality that was frightening into a reality that was unreal because it was new.”
•t“The Mechanical Hound slept but did not sleep, lived but did not live.”

Mechanical Hound

This thing, this high-tech version of the most atavistic, omnipotent monsters that plague our dreams from infancy, is where Bradbury’s hybrid of beauty and horror reaches its peak:

•t“The moonlight… touched here and there on the brass and the copper and the steel of the faintly trembling beast. Light flickered on bits of ruby glass and on sensitive capillary hairs in the nylon-brushed nostrils of the creature that quivered gently, gently, gently, its eight legs spidered under it on rubber-padded paws.”
•t“Out of the helicopter glided something that was not machine, not animal, not dead, not alive, glowing with a pale green luminosity.”
•t“He could feel the Hound, like autumn, come cold and dry and swift, like a wind that didn't stir grass… The Hound did not touch the world. It carried its silence with it.”

(Moon) Light, Rain, Nature

•t“Laughter blew across the moon-colored lawn.”
•t“The moonlight distilled in each eye to form a silver cataract.”
•t“They read the long afternoon through while the cold November rain fell from the sky in the quiet house. They sat in the hall because the parlour was so empty and gray-looking without its walls lite with orange and yellow confetti.”
•t“You could feel the war getting ready in the sky that night. The way the clouds moved aside and came back, and the way the stars looked, a million of them swimming between the clouds… and the feeling that the sky might fall upon the city and turn it to chalk dust, and the moon go up in red fire.”
•t“The river was mild and leisurely, going away from the people who ate shadows for breakfast and steam for lunch and vapours for supper.”
•t“The more he breathed the land in, the more he was filled up with all the details of the land. He was not empty.”

Burned Books as Once-Living Things

•t“The flapping pigeon-winged books died on the porch.”
•t“They fell like slaughtered birds and the woman stood below, like a small girl, among the bodies.”
•t“The books lay like great mounds of fishes left to dry.”
•t“Their covers torn off and spilled out like swan-feathers.”
•t“The books leapt and danced like roasted birds, their wings ablaze with red and yellow feathers.”
•t“Light the first page, light the second page. Each becomes a black butterfly.”
•t“The floor littered with swarms of black moths that had died in a single storm.”

Fire

If BuzzFeed is to believed (a medium-sized "if", imo), its original title was not "Fahrenheit 451", but "The Fireman". He and his publishers thought it a boring title, so they called a local fire station and asked what temperature paper burned at. The firemen put Bradbury on hold while they burned a book, then reported back the temperature, and the rest is history.

•tThe opening sentence: “It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. with this brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history.”
•t“The books went up in sparkling whirls and blew away on a wind turned dark with burning.”
•t“Those who do not build must burn.” (Do they ignite the fire, or are they consumed by it?)
•t“It’s perpetual motion; the thing man wanted to invent but never did.”
•t“A bloom of fire, a single wondrous blossom that curled in petals of yellow and blue and orange.”
•tA bonfire, “was not burning; it was warming... He hadn’t known fire could look this way. He had never thought… it could give as well as take.”

The descriptions of fire are also the best feature of Bradbury's short story A Sound of Thunder which I reviewed HERE.

Dangers of Books

Many of the reasons given could just as easily apply to TV shows; Faber says as much to Montag, “It’s not books you need, it’s some of the things that once were in books” and that those same things could be in the TV shows, but aren’t. Instead, the TV shows are specially designed to numb minds to all except vague pleasure.

•t“Books aren’t people… my family [soap stars] is people”.
•t“None of these books agree with each other… The people in those books never lived.”
•t“It didn’t come from the government down… Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick… Today… you can stay happy all the time” because only comics, confessions and trade journals are permitted.
•t“The firemen are rarely necessary. The public stopped reading of its own accord.”
•t“We must all be alike. Not everyone was born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal… Then all are happy”, protected from the “rightful dread of being inferior”.
•t“Our civilization is so vast that we can’t have our minorities upset and stirred”, so everything that might upset anyone is destroyed.
•tFilled with facts, people “feel they’re thinking… they’ll be happy because facts of that sort don’t change.”
•t“All the silly things the words mean, all the false promises, and all the second hand notions and time-worn philosophies.”

Dangers of VR

There is bitter irony in a “living room” where the only “living” is that of fictitious people, passively observed on the huge screens on the walls.

•tEntering the bedroom “was like coming into the cold marbled room of a mausoleum after the moon had set.”
•t“Her eyes fixed to the ceiling by invisible threads of steel, immovable. And in her ears the little Seashells, the thimble radios tamped tight, and an electronic ocean of sound… coming in on the shore of her unsleeping mind. The room was indeed empty.”
•t“People don’t talk about anything… They name a lot of cars or clothes or swimming-pools and say how swell.”
•tBrainwashing: “It’s always someone else’s husband dies.” and “Nothing will ever happen to me.”

General Quotes

•tClarice’s face had “a kind of gentle hunger that touched over everything with tireless curiosity”.
•t“He felt his smile slide away, melt, fold over, and down on itself like a tallow skin, like the stuff of a fantastic candle burning too long and now collapsing and now blown out. Darkness.”
•tA stomach pump: “looking for all the old water and old time gathered there… Did it drink of the darkness?... The impersonal operation… could gaze into the soul of the person whom he was pumping out.”
•t“The world had melted down and sprung up in a new and colorless formation.”
•t“He slapped her face with amazing objectivity.” (It is not being condoned.)
•t“She made the empty rooms roar with accusation and shake down a fine dust of guilt that was sucked into their nostrils and they plunged about.” That’s why owners shouldn’t be present.
•t“Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine.” A line from a poem by Alexander Smith that Montag glimpses, “but it blazed in his mind for the next minutes as if stamped there with fiery steel.”
•t“His hand had been infected [by picking up a book], and soon it would be his arms. He could feel the poison working up… His hands were ravenous. And his eyes were beginning to feel hunger, as if they must look at something, anything, everything.”
•t“I don’t talk things… I talk the meanings of things.”
•t“If you read fast and read all, maybe some of the sand will stay in the sieve.”
•t“The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies.”
•t“They were like a monstrous crystal chandelier tinkling in a thousand chimes, he saw their Cheshire Cat smiles burning through the walls.”
•t"There was a crash like falling parts of a dream fashioned out of warped glass, mirrors, and crystal prisms."
•t“We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over.” From Boswell’s The Life of Samuel Johnson.
•tA buzzing helicopter “like butterflies puzzled by autumn”.
•tA ten-lane highway: “A boatless river frozen there in the raw light of the high white arc-lamps; you could drown trying to cross it.”
•t“His nose was suddenly good enough to sense the path he had made in the air of the room.”

Homework

I choose to inhale and absorb the atmosphere of the book, without stopping every few sentences to investigate each possible reference and quote, but those who enjoy literary detective work will find plenty of material here.

The other mystery is Captain Beatty: he is remarkably well-versed in the classics of literature, philosophy and history. “I was using the very books you clung to, to rebut you… What traitors books can be.” But is that explanation enough?

What Book Would You Be for Posterity?

The obvious question is, if you were going to become a book and memorise it for posterity, what would you choose? Would it be cheating to pick "Fahrenheit 451"? Should it be for personal comfort or something that will be useful in rebuilding society?

The hardest questions is, would you give up everything for literature?

“All we can do is keep the knowledge… We’re no more than dust jackets for books, of no significance otherwise… You’re not important. You’re not anything. Some day the load we’re carrying with us may help someone.” When people ask what we do, “We’re remembering”.

In Summary

I love the fact that this book is a paean to the power of the written word: that people will live and die for it, and will wither without the transformative power of fictional worlds and the insights of others. The lure and love of literature is irrepressible. Books "stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us."

Postscript

Related to this - and to 1984 - Derek (Guilty of thoughtcrime) wrote in a group discussion:
"There's a distinct echo in both books of the Garden of Eden story, with Eve tempting Adam to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And in each case, it's a denial of the dogma that this is the original sin."

Film Adaptations

1966 Film - Watch

Truffaut's 1966 version is visually stunning and broadly faithful to the book. See details on imdb here.

Riffing on This and Truffaut
See Megan Dunn’s brilliant first book, Tinderbox, which I reviewed HERE. She intended to rewrite 451 from the point of view of the female characters, but ended up equally fascinated by Truffaut's adaptation - the very process of adapting the book. The result is a fascinating, personal, and funny exploration of her attempts to adapt someone else’s work. It also includes many fascinating and sometimes surprising details about the film, such as Truffaut hand-picking the books that were burned in the opening scene.

2018 Film - Avoid

Adapting a book for screen can excuse or require changes. But the 2018 one was a travesty that exacerbates the common misunderstanding of Bradbury's intended message AND adds a ludicrous new plot in its place. There is nothing at all about the addictive and mind-numbing allure of superficial soap operas (Montag doesn't even have a wife), but there is a weird sciency thing about books being encoded in the DNA of a bird, so they'll live for ever! It wasn't even well acted or written (I presume it didn't improve in the second half). See details on imdb here.

“There must be something in books, something we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing.”

Ray Bradbury did it. He presented a world where the population is completely controlled. And it was such a simple decision. Burn!
The most frightening thing is that I could see glimpses of our society in Fahrenheit 451. And I thought about it. Are we slowly inching towards Bradbury's world?
I was left breathless by this little novel. Reaching always for another page. Feeling strange pain in my heart for those characters completely swallowed by the simple entertainment.
This novel is full of quotes I want to share and never to forget and for everyone to hear them.

“But you can't make people listen. They have to come round in their own time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up around them. It can't last.”

“We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?”

“Oh God, the terrible tyranny of the majority. We all have our harps to play. And it's up to you to know with which ear you'll listen.”


“And when he died, I suddenly realized I wasn’t crying for him at all, but for the things he did. I cried because he would never do them again, he would never carve another piece of wood or help us raise doves and pigeons in the backyard or play the violin the way he did, or tell us jokes the way he did. He was part of us and when he died, all the actions stopped dead and there was no one to do them the way he did. He was individual. He was an important man. I’ve never gotten over his death. Often I think what wonderful carvings never came to birth because he died. How many jokes are missing from the world, and how many homing pigeons untouched by his hands? He shaped the world. He did things to the world. The world was bankrupted of ten million fine actions the night he passed on.”

I read this with my grade eleven English class and I chose this as the anchor text to accompany our guiding question " What is the value of being able to think freely?" We had previously read an article text on the history of dystopian and utopian fiction and read the short stories "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" and "Harrison Bergeron. " I read this book for the first time in high school, but I am going to review it with input from my students. Surprisingly, it was my most reluctant readers that seemed to be able to grasp Guy Montag's struggle. I heard a lot of oooing and ahhhing during certain points. Most students told me that it was the love of Mildred 's lack of empathy that made the story light. But they were really creeped out by the Clarisse/Montag connection. Oh and there was much action, but once Montag arrived at the river, the story lost "some juice." I only have 11 students in my class and 9/11 said it was "Gucci." I got one " My head hurts" and another student that said " No offense to you or Mr. Bradbury, but WTF( at least she used the letters and not the words) did you have us read? Overall, my students stated that it was anywhere from a 2-4 star. Majority won the 4 star!

Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury

Fahrenheit 451 is a dystopian novel by American writer Ray Bradbury, published in 1953. Fahrenheit 451 is set in an unspecified city at an unspecified time in the future after the year 1960.

Guy Montag is a "fireman" employed to burn houses containing outlawed books. He is married but has no children.

One fall night while returning from work, he meets his new neighbor, a teenage girl named Clarisse McClellan, whose free-thinking ideals and liberating spirit cause him to question his life and his own perceived happiness.

Montag returns home to find that his wife Mildred has overdosed on sleeping pills, and he calls for medical attention. ...

تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز سوم ماه فوریه سال 1984میلادی

عنوان: فارنهایت 451؛ نویسنده: ری برادبری؛ مترجم: علاءالدین بهشتی؛ تهران، آشتیانی، 1363، در 200ص؛ موضوع: داستانهای نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده 20م

این کتاب را جنابان آقایان «علی شیعه علی» و «معین محب علیان»؛ و «علی عامری مهابادی»؛ و سرکار خانم «سارا زرگر» نیز ترجمه کرده اند

انگار یکی بوده که میدانسته، روزگاری باید هر کس، یکی از کتابهای خوشگوار را، از بر کند، و تا هستیم و هست، نگذارد و نگذاریم، واژه های داستان و شعر و نثر بمیرند، باشند و خوش ببویند، و هماره از واژه های دلدار بگویند، دارم میاندیشم اگر چنین روزی آمد، و این دل سرگشته هنوز زنده بود، کدام کتاب را برخواهد گزید، شاید: غزلیات و دیوان حضرت حافظ را.؛

داستان در جهانی رخ می‌دهد، که خواندن یا داشتن کتاب، جنایتی بزرگ به شمار می‌آید، این مشخصات جامعه ‌ای است که تحت ستم یک نظام سیاسی است که شهروندانش با قرصهای شادی بخش، و داروهای مسکن و خواب‌آور و مخدر، که نسیان‌آور هستند، دلخوشند، صفحه‌ های بزرگ ویدئویی بر دیوارهای منازل، هرگونه دغدغه ‌ای را برطرف می‌کنند؛ آزاداندیشی در آن جهان، قدغن است، زیرا تعادل جامعه را بر هم میزند، و اشخاص را ضد اجتماع بار می‌آورد، کتاب و هرچه خواندنی است، عامل اصلی انحراف شناخته می‌شوند؛ مسئولیت بازیابی و سوزاندن کتاب‌های باقی‌مانده در آن نظام، بر دوش ماموران آتش‌نشانی بگذاشته شده است؛

از آن‌جایی‌که خانه‌های شهر تخیلی ضدآتش هستند، کتاب‌های یافته شده را، در همان محل پنهان شدن کتاب، به آتش می‌کشند؛ برای کشف محل اختفای کتاب، از یک سگ مکانیکی سود می‌برند، و پس از یافتن کتاب، صاحب آن را که دشمن امنیت ملی نامیده می‌شود، به قتل می‌رسانند؛ اونیفرم و کلاه مأموران آتش‌نشانی، به نشان «سمندر»، یا «آتش‌پرست» مزین است؛ این خزنده از دوران باستان، نماد زندگی در آتش بوده‌ است؛ «مونتاگ» آتش‌نشانی است، که از کار خود لذت می‌برد؛ کار او سوزاندن کتاب‌های ممنوعه است؛ و از قضای روزگار همه ی کتاب‌ها ممنوعه هستند؛

اما او یکبار با «کله‌ریس مک‌کله‌لن» دیدار می‌کند، که به او می‌فهماند که زندگی‌اش آنطور که فکر می‌کرده شاد نیست، و این برای «مونتاگ» سرآغاز شیدایی است؛ همان شب «مونتاگ» همسرش را در حالی می‌یابد، که همگی قرص خوابها را نوش جان کرده، و رو به مرگ است، او دیگر به همه چیز زندگی خود، شک می‌کند؛ به زودی برای نخستین بار کسی را می‌بیند، که حاضر نشده همراه پلیسی که او را یافته برود، این زن مسن ترجیح می‌دهد با کتاب‌های خود بسوزد؛ این رویداد «مونتاگ» را وامی‌دارد، که کتابی بردارد و بخواند، و …؛

نقل از متن: (رنگین پوستا از کتاب کاکاسیاه کوچولو خوششون نمیآد؛ بسوزونش؛ سفیدا احساس خوبی نسبت به کلبه عمو تم ندارن؛ بسوزونش؛ هیچ کی تا حالا در مورد توتون و سرطان ریه کتاب ننوشته؟ اشک سیگاریا رو در نیاورده؟ کتابشو بسوزون؛)؛ پایان نقل

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 27/05/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 06/05/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

n  “There must be something in books, something we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing.”n

The burning of books is such an effective tool for controlling the population, so the message of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 is scarily real. If society’s wisdom could be taken away, then so could their freedom. If knowledge was burnt, then the people would be left in a complete state of utter innocent ignorance. There would be no room for free thought, that way they could be told anything about history and themselves. If all books were burnt, then they are just sheep to be led into a future dictated by the government. To make it worse the men who do it enjoy it.

Books have become illegal; thus, owning them is a form of disobedience against the state and a violation of the law. The books are burnt by a special group of firefighters, yes firefighters, which hunt readers mercilessly. When they find them, they burn their beloved collection and leave them to die. One woman burns with her books by her own choosing rather than submit to ignorance. The firefighters don’t know exactly why they do it, they rarely question it, they just do it unflinchingly because that is what they are told to do. And they cannot understand why somebody would fight to the death to defend the written word.

Guy Montag is one such firefighter. He lives a mundane life with an equally mundane partner. He’s miserable. He carries out the book burnings, like the others, without a second thought until one day an innocent young girl changes his life forever. She is his next-door neighbour and she is a closet book reader; she asks him a series of questions that makes him realise how stupid and worthless his existence is. He takes solace in a collection of books he has stolen whilst on the job, a symbol that he and the world could one day be free. The knowledge he gains changes his perception of the world forever.

Books have fallen out of favour as other mediums have taken priority over them. People have become hostile to books because they feel inferior when faced with an educated reader; thus, if they are removed forever everyone will be the same and minorities will be removed. Individuality would die. Consequently, when Guy begins reading, he does not know what to do anymore; he has been conditioned to act in a certain way, and when liberty presents itself, he is reluctant and confused by his new knowledge. He is a reluctant hero but a hero, nonetheless. He has stolen one of the last surviving copies of the Bible but doesn’t know what it is. However, a professor of the bygone age does and what comes after is one of the most powerful and symbolic endings I’ve ever read in science-fiction.

This really is required reading for anyone who is serious about science fiction and dystopian fiction because it really is one of the best in both genres.

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This book is about censorship. GR have censored this review and hidden it from Community Reviews because they do not like what I have to say about Amazon and GR. Oh the irony!It's not like I have any influence, I'm not a professional reviewer or influencer, so I don't know why they care.

Is Fahrenheit 451 the temperature at which Kindles melt?

This book is about censorship by book burning. Fahrenheit 451 is the temperature at which paper burns. This review is about reading Fahrenheit 451 or any other book considered controversial by any group at all and the future of censorship in the marketplace.

Amazon, GrAmazon, is redefinining our experience of literature! Amazon has evaded having to pay tax and comply with labour laws in many countries, in many US states. Now it is getting around the various laws that protect free speech in order to define what people may or may not read purely for the sake of making Even More Money. America is a capitalist country, Amazon is only 'living the dream' and taking it to the extreme of that cliche, power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely. The power of the monopoly.

For Goodreads, comments and shelves are to be self-censored under pain of summary deletion of anything that offends GR, because it is off-topic or criticises the author. Which is of course at the root of it. Since my reviews are generally snippets of my life, they are mostly off-topic, however they do not offend GR and so they still stand. So from this I gather that to offend GrAmazon in any way puts your work at risk of deletion. 'Offence' is always going to be "off-topic". What stunningly clever lawyer thought that one up, it covers everything!

The world of books already for many people defined by Amazon will also in the future be limited by them into the boundaries Amazon sets. At the moment they are deleting books with overtly sexual titles and others with sexual content they don't approve of and also deleting books with political themes. And should Amazon decide to make what they think is appropriate retroactive, well no-one actually owns a Kindle book, it is only rented, and I am sure in the terms of the rental there is a little tiny bit which says they can alter the words "if necessary" or perhaps replace the entire book by another (sanitized) edition.

Most people now, when they think of Eeyore, think of Disney's loveable soft-toy donkey and have no idea of the original irascible, cynical, loner of a character that A.A. Milne wrote. Sickly-sweet Disney is all about profits. It is so much better to have a happy ending, all-American accents and nothing to offend the parents so everything is rewritten to fit those parameters and so these stories pass into folk history with their literary origins forgotten. Imagine if the Little Mermaid had ended as in the original - the Mermaid has the choice between murdering the prince's new wife or committing suicide! So it was rewritten and it is the rewritten version that has become the standard.

How soon before books featuring paedophilia, rape and violence in a positive light are banned or reworked? Nabokov's Lolita won't be first on the firing line, Neither would the Q'uran with Muhammed marrying a 9 year old, and the Bible so full of threats, violence and murder. These books are too well-known to mess with, but self-published authors - they are on the frontline.

This a review that is not at all on-topic but about the repression of books even today, Animal Farm, just as that book is.

And then with Amazon's domination of the SPA market, the eBook market and the world's biggest bookclub, Goodreads, you can forget any laws enshrining freedom of expression in books, because if it doesn't pass Amazon's ideas of what is right and fit to promote profits, it won't be published by them. Publish it any other way, and who will hear of it? Did the books still burn if the people there who saw them on fire had no means to tell anyone else? Did Goodreads censorship really happen if only 1,000 people knew and 19,999,000 don't?

So censorship is not just deleting material, it is making sure that no one knows there is any form of censorship in operation - firstly by threatening people so they self-censor and secondly by limiting drastically the number of people who know about it. Oh the irony if this review is deleted.

What we need is another book company to break Amazon's monopoly, but it won't happen, Amazon will just buy it out. I have no solution to this problem. I forsee a sort of electronic version of Russian samizdat for those 'in the know', for the other 19,999,000 well they say you can't miss what you've never had.

There you go. Capitalism without controls.

The original review on BookLikes.