The strange thing about Fahrenheit 451 is that the bits I found most moving, and that I remember most clearly, are all quotations from other books. The passage where Montag is trying to memorize "Consider the lilies of the field" over the sound of the toothpaste ad is one of my favourites. I also love the scene where he reads out Dover Beach to his wife and her friends, and they become weepy and distraught without understanding why.

Given that it's all about how wonderful books are, that seems entirely right. He made the correct artistic choice in gracefully ceding the floor to his more distinguished colleagues at the critical moments, rather than trying to hog the limelight himself, and I greatly respect him for it. Applause, Mr. Bradbury!

The Wall Controls You - The Silent Take-Over Of Screen-Time!

What does "Fahrenheit 451" mean to me? Most of all, it is a declaration of love for books in an era of fast entertainment and instant gratification as a means of political control of the masses.

I used to think Brave New World and 1984 - or a combination of those two - had a more accurate take on human mind-slavery in the age of technology than "Fahrenheit 451". But increasingly, I see the world as Bradbury saw it, with people sitting in front of screens, absorbed by meaningless entertainment without purpose or fulfillment, losing their ability to talk to each other. And with the dialogue, reflection disappears from our homes and schools.

Students do "research" without ever touching a book and spit out slogans they find online, but they can't put them into context. They write their essays on screens and unlearn how to spell. They dream of a career which makes them visible on screens as well: they want to be athletes, singers, movie stars. Out of the 200 teenagers I asked, only 2 had read a book during their ten weeks of summer holidays, and most of them couldn't even say what they had been doing instead. Time passes without being noticed in front of a screen - a WALL, as it is called in the novel.

If you do not practice the skill of reading and of appreciating literature, it is lost. The book burning that takes place in "Fahrenheit 451" is not even necessary in the real world of today. Those rare students that like reading can't share their interest with anyone anymore, and it doesn't spread:

"With school turning out more runners, jumpers, racers, tinkerers, grabbers, snatchers, fliers, and swimmers instead of examiners, critics, knowers, and imaginative creators, the word 'intellectual,' of course, became the swear word it deserved to be."

What Bradbury meant as satire is my work reality.

So what have I done myself, hopeless book lover that I am? I have taken to the woods, figuratively speaking, like the characters in "Fahrenheit 451". Barring television screens and computer games - the walls - from my home, I have made sure reading stays alive. My walls are filled with books, not screens. I waste no opportunity to talk about books with my children, and I make them learn poems by heart. To develop a lasting love for literature, it has to be nurtured. You are not born a reader, just like you are not born a football player or a dancer. Accessibility, motivation and training are necessary prerequisites for any interests to form. It takes time and care.

Fahrenheit 451 - the temperature at which books burn. I think Bradbury got that wrong. It is what happened to books in the past, when politicians actively tried to destroy specific books. There is no need for them to do that anymore. In our world, books drown - in the flood of quick information and easy entertainment.

The year of the flood... after the fire came the water, and it caused more damage!

This is one of those books that I love the idea of it a lot more than the read itself.

I "read" this in high school and understood nothing (I barely knew a few words in English!) and honestly would not recommend it if you're just starting out since even now it's not an easy read!

The dystopian world depicted is frighteningly too close to where we're going...

CW/TW: arson, murder, physical violence

"Stuff your eyes with wonder. [L]ive as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. Ask no guarantees, ask for no security. . . ."

United States of America (ca. 1990s)¹ — The times have significantly changed. People do not read books anymore; instead, they spend time excessively watching television on parlor walls. They don't walk outside to appreciate nature, for they have cars that drive so fast requiring billboards to be two hundred feet long for the passengers to read them. They don't like to think independently nor participate in meaningful conversations, as they prefer listening to music that continuously blasts from the seashell radio sets attached to their ears. However, these are far from the greatest change society has experienced.

The biggest change lies on the job of the firemen: they aren't tasked to put fires out anymore, they rather start them. Guy Montag is a fireman employed to burn outlawed books, and sometimes houses if the book owners resist to leave them. One fall night, Montag encounters his new neighbor, the carefree and gentle seventeen-year-old Clarisse McClellan, whose free-thinking ideals inspired him to reflect on the emptiness of his life and his non-pursuit of happiness. As Montag ruminates about the depths of life and its meaning, he starts to do the forbidden and reads what should be left Fahrenheit 451-burning.

Ray Bradbury's 67-year-old classic Fahrenheit 451 burns still, and even brighter, in the contemporary age of social media and entertainment as it provides a timeless critique on mass media, censorship, ignorance, and restrictive political correctness.

Told in the third-person limited omniscient point-of-view following Guy Montag, Fahrenheit 451 successfully manages to set a distant, seemingly disconnected proximity of the narrative that works well in amplifying the harrowing and gloomy tone of Bradbury's lyrical and descriptive prose. This allows Bradbury to accentuate the mystery of the world he created through the introduction of his protagonist as seen in the novel's opening paragraphs:

It was a pleasure to burn.

It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the 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. With his symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his stolid head, and his eyes all orange flame with the thought of what came next, he flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black. He strode in a swarm of fireflies. He wanted above all, like the old joke, to shove a marshmallow on a stick in the furnace, while the flapping pigeon-winged books died on the porch and lawn of the house. While the books went up in sparkling whirls and blew away on a wind turned dark with burning.

Bradbury's genius blazes with the parallels accurately envisaged by the novel on the realities experienced by the society today. As the Internet becomes more recognized as a basic need alongside the increasing mundanity of social media usage, Fahrenheit 451's fiery warning has never been warmer. Indeed, we can identify ourselves as Montag being asked by Clarisse, "Are you happy?" Does the interconnectivity the Internet and our technological advancements provide really bring us closer, making us happier or are we more prone to discord and division?

As modern society grows more obsessed with the escapist stimulation the black mirror in its hands offers, the more its members get blinded by the shallow and asinine content the media and entertainment industries provide. Our present realities may have not gone too far as to burn outlawed books, yet the congruence of this circumstance manifests in the ways we deliberately avoid seeking wisdom by harnessing the full potential of technology to effect change, specifically on the things that matter.

One controversial passage in the book highlights Bradbury's opinions on the minorities' involvement on magnifying censorship linked to the drawbacks of political correctness. Through the antagonist's speech, the author forwards how the minorities do the first step on book burning, alluding to the restrictions this obsession on political correctness does which leads to the reductionism of life's complex and pressing phenomena in the fear of being offensive and insensitive:

n  “Now let’s take up the minorities in our civilization, shall we? Bigger the population, the more minorities. Don’t step on the toes of the dog-lovers, the cat-lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico. . . .

"The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that! All the minor minor minorities with their navels to be kept clean. Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters. They did. Magazines became a nice blend of vanilla tapioca. Books, so the damned snobbish critics said, were dishwater. . . .

"There you have it, Montag. It didn’t come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God. Today, thanks to them, you can stay happy all the time, you are allowed to read comics, the good old confessions, or trade journals.”n

In the Coda of the 60th Anniversary Edition of the book, Bradbury shares his personal, direct opinions regarding the minorities:

n  The point is obvious. There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist/Unitarian, Irish/Italian/Octogenarian/Zen Buddhist, Zionist/Seventh-day Adventist, Women’s Lib/Republican, Mattachine/Four Square Gospel feels it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse. Every dimwit editor who sees himself as the source of all dreary blanc-mange plain-porridge unleavened literature licks his guillotine and eyes the neck of any author who dares to speak above a whisper or write above a nursery rhyme.

Fire Captain Beatty, in my novel Fahrenheit 451, described how the books were burned first by minorities, each ripping a page or a paragraph from this book, then that, until the day came when the books were empty and the minds shut and the libraries closed forever.n

Stahl from Slate Magazine forwards that Bradbury's great literary achievements, with Fahrenheit 451 in particular, will be remembered by the liberals as a critique of the censorship of McCarthyism. On the other hand, Stahl posits that conservatives read the novel as a sole attack on political correctness. This is where I would argue that the politicization of this novel, especially when used as a political weapon to silence dissenting sides, is what Bradbury also wanted to criticize. Censorship in the form of overtly excessive imposition of political correctness and censorship in the guise of political fanaticism as a tool for discrimination and injustice both harm critical thinking by monopolizing the intricacies of the society's narratives.

Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 may come as an ardent critique on the pressing issues of censorship and ignorance in our modern social world. Yet, Bradbury's closing paragraphs remind us one important thing: the debate on what qualifies as a book is not limited to the print-ebook argument; because sometimes, books can be people-shaped too.

Personal Enjoyment: 4 stars
Quality of the Book: 4.2 stars
- Use of Language: ⭐⭐⭐⭐+
- Plot and Narrative Arc: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
- Characters: ⭐⭐⭐+
- Integrity: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
- Message: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

AVG: 4.1 stars | RAVE

A huge thanks to my twin from the other side of the world, Shi, for buddy reading this with me!

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Note:
[1] The story is set in an undisclosed city which appears to be in the American Midwest during the year 1999 (as stated in Bradbury's Coda). However, the writing style makes it seem that it occurs in a distant future.

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[Some comments in this review are for the pre-review I posted which contained highlighted reactions from my status updates. You may check the actual status updates through the links below to understand the context behind the comments.]

Status Updates:
START | dystopian novels scare me more than horror novels do | this is us getting unverified 'facts' from social media | my younger self feels attacked | live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds | me not realizing i'm done with the novel | bradbury says that F451 is a critique to political correctness, and now i'm confused | END

"We are living in a time when flowers are trying to live on flowers, instead of growing on good rain and black loam."

Review from Aug2012 when I listened to the audio version (d/l from local library) excellently read by Christopher Hurt:

From Wikipedia: "Bradbury has stated that the novel is not about censorship, but a story about how television destroys interest in reading literature, which leads to a perception of knowledge as being composed of factoids, partial information devoid of context." That's scarily familiar, isn't it?

I've read too much old SF to expect it to predict the future, but Bradbury did a better job than most.
- It has biometrics. Montag comes home & sticks his hand in the glove on his door & it recognizes him. Wow.
- Ear shells that constantly blast entertainment into his wife's head. iPod anyone?
- TV screens that cover the walls & inane programs that are more important than real life since they also allow user input. We're just seeing that today.
- Montag's run is eerily familiar to King's "The Running Man" & 'reality' TV.
- Short wars that no one understands a thing about.
- A presidential race decided on which candidate looked & sounded better.

Written in 1953 - really? Was he such a visionary or are such problems perennial? I think both.

I love Captain Beatty's explanation of how the society came to be. Everyone wants to be happy & they don't have time for real thought, so...
...If the Government is inefficient, top-heavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it. Peace, Montag. Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely `brilliant' with information. Then they'll feel they're thinking, they'll get a sense of motion without moving. And they'll be happy, because facts of that sort don't change. Don't give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy....

On the way home I was listening to this & one of the characters says that one of the best things about books is that you can shut them when you need to think, unlike the TV & advertising of the book's world. I got home & read some of Education of a Wandering Man by Louis L'Amour. The epigraph to one of the chapters I read was "A book is a friend that will do what no friend does - be silent when we wish to think." - Will Durant, the author of Story of Civilization
Kind of neat getting the same sentiment from two such different sources within an hour of each other.

The Afterword was perhaps the best part this time around. Bradbury explains that fire isn't the only way that books get burned, every minority is a fireman when they remove words or content that offends them & he'll have none of it. This edition of "Fahrenheit 451" is supposed to be the original, complete & uncut. He said that he had been shocked to find that previous editions had been edited down until 75 sections had been missing. He received letters in the same week complaining that he was prejudiced for/against the same group in this book.

He points to an anthology that contains 400 short stories by famous authors. How did they all fit into one volume? Because they were edited until every author's writing resembled the others. They were stripped of anything that made them unique. Very scary.

There have been many remakes of this story. Beatty & his ability to quote is explained in one such contained in the afterword. What had been an unexplained weakness became chilling. Beatty really is the devil incarnate.

Anyway, fantastic read(listen) yet again. I highly recommend this version & media. Hurt does a great job picking up the rhythms of Bradbury's writing & about tore my heart out a couple of times. Almost like poetry.

----------------

Review from 2007 when I joined GR & about the paperback edition of this book:
I don't usually review classics for obvious reasons, but I flipped through this again the other day & it's still one of the most chilling books I've ever read.

Conform & remember meaningless trivia to be happy. Don't bother with the thorny problems or think for yourself! Immerse yourself in the fantasy world of TV that covers entire walls, so you can be a part of the virtual, mindless world. The shows remind me strongly of the current 'reality TV' craze.

Originally published in 1953, it strikes as close to home today as it did when I first read it over 35 years ago, perhaps more so as TV's have gotten bigger, interaction with the shows is more commonplace & the virtual worlds of social networking sites have become as important to some people as their physical world. (No? What about the teenager who committed suicide because of MySpace harassment?)

The idea of running around with flame throwers to burn books (451 degrees F. is the heat at which a book combusts, according to the story) is a little weird, but shredders weren't around then (first manufactured in 1959) & it's a cool twist to have firemen who burn things. It also makes the point of the government's violent opposition to uncontrolled information - another current theme.

That's why this is a classic. It contains ideas that are still quite pertinent today, perhaps more so than when it was written.

This is part of a series that protests the banning of books. The series will focus on books that have been banned, burned, or challenged. It will also feature books that discuss the banning and burning of books. In addition, this series will include books about ostracized groups since banned books are frequently written in support of those groups. This series might even include some groups who mistakenly believe they are ostracized.

Before I proceed any further, let me introduce myself. My name is Tim Null, and I'll be 75 on my next birthday. I'm a white boomer, straight male, USA citizen who's a small and big "D" democrat who votes in every election. I have the social skills of a turnip,  and the religious preference of none. Some might call me a "family man," but others would say I'm just "square."

In my book reviews in this series, I will attempt to be fair and accurate, except when I have no desire to do so.

Now, let's talk about Ray Bradbury's book Fahrenheit 451. In the introduction to the book, Neil Gaiman said that when we read this book we must first imagine the world that existed in 1953 then project that to the future world that Ray Bradbury has constructed in Fahrenheit 451 in order to understand how the one world made the transition to the other. It's easy for me to imagine the world of 1953 because I can remember Christmases that happened in my life back in 1951 and 1954.

My first memory is from Christmas Eve in 1951. I remember this Christmas Eve because it transformed itself into a nightmare that has haunted me for a lifetime.

In 1951, my family didn't have a television, so Christmas Eve my three siblings, and I sat on the carpet in front and a gigantic radio listening to a Christmas story. Mom and Dad were there too, of course, and old photos show that Granddad and Grammy were also present.

A man on the radio, perhaps Santa Claus, told the story of Santa's preparations for Christmas. I'm sure Mrs. Claus, the elves, and the reindeer were also in the story, but I don't remember those details. When the Christmas story was over, someone suggested we call Uncle Bob and Aunt Peggy.

Understand that my father would never have agreed to a long-distance phone call if his in-laws had not been present. Long distant phone calls weren't cheap in those days, and my father considered them a frivolous expense.

So then everyone went into the dining room and lined by the telephone. You know what I'm talking about. You've probably seen one at your local museum. They're big and black and have a rotary dial.☎️

As luck would have it, Uncle Bob, Aunt Peggy, Skip, and Lynn were all at home when the call was made. I imagine the adults talked to them first. I would guess that Granddad talked to them first, then Dad, followed by Mom. Grammy tended to hover in the background, so she may not have taken a turn.

After Mom, my eldest sister would have spoken to our Aunt and Uncle. My brother would have been next followed by my other sister. Being the youngest, I would have gone last.

I don't know if I talked to Uncle Bob, but I clearly recall my conversation with Aunt Peggy. Like the good little boy I was, I said, "Hi, Aunt Piggy." She replied, "No, not piggy, Peggy." I retorted, "That's what I said, Aunt Piggy." According to the ensuing nightmares I have had for many years, my Aunt Peggy spent several minutes unsuccessfully trying to teach me how to correctly pronounce her name.

By the time Christmas came around in 1954, I knew how to correctly pronounce my Aunt's name, but that year had its own problems. 1954 in Michigan was the year the Republicans stole Christmas. The 1954 Michigan had a marvelous governor who was very good indeed. His name was Soapy Williams. Soapy was a doer and a builder. He helped build highways. He expanded colleges and universities. He helped towns and cities build schools, libraries, and museums. He started building a big bridge that would connect Michigan's upper and lower peninsulas so the good people of Michigan could travel between the two peninsulas in a matter of minutes instead of having to wait hours for the ferries.

The result was that everyone in Michigan was happy, and everyone loved Governor Soapy Williams. Everyone that is except the evil Republicans in the Legislature. The evil Republicans complained, "As long as people love Soapy, they'll continue to vote for him. How can we convince people they should hate Soapy and vote in a Republican governor who won't build things that will make people happy?"

The evil Republican Legislature decided they would refuse to pass the state budget. That way, state employees wouldn't get paid, and no one would get paid to build all the stuff that makes people happy. They decided to do this evil thing in November, so regular folks wouldn't have money to buy Christmas presents in December. They figured that if everyone has a bad Christmas, they will get mad at the governor, and they will stop voting for Soapy.

Back in 1954, I was too young and little to understand any of this, but I was sad when my parents told me there was no money for Christmas presents. (When I asked, "Won't Santa still come?" My siblings replied, "There is no Santa!"). My parents added that there was no money to buy a Christmas tree either, and for Christmas dinner, we would have to eat gravy and mashed potatoes with only lime jello and cottage cheese for dessert. I was sad. My brother and sisters were sad, too. But our parents told us we would have a happy Christmas anyway, and they would continue to vote for Governor Soapy. We did have a happy Christmas, and people continued to vote for Governor Soapy.

Soapy continued to be governor of Michigan until it was time for him to go to work for President Jack. Then, after President Jack got shot and killed, Soapy came back to Michigan and became the Chief Justice in the Michigan Supreme Court.

In 1954, I learned I had to vote for good people no matter what, and I had to make my own happiness even if I only had green jello and white cheese.

[Now back to our regular programming.]

Was Ray Bradbury correct in assuming people could memorize books? Probably not. I know I can't, but people can be happy if they're given half a chance. And they can make up stories and tell jokes. When things get really bad, they can give other people a hug and a shoulder to cry on.

Read #BannedBooks
Next up in this series is
Another Country by James Baldwin
Feel free to read and review along with us if you're so inclined.

Addendum 1

As many of you know, my friend Berengaria found fault with Bradbury's writing style and his portrayal of women. As to her first complaint, I did notice my mind wandering off by itself on many occasions while I read this novella. I just assumed that was because the flame of my sci-fi fandom had burned out years ago. Regarding Berengaria's latter point: Bradbury's portrayal of Mildred and her friends did seem a bit like a caricature of a caricature performed by Lucille Ball and Vivian Vance. Also, Bradbury's portrayal of Beatty, Guy's boss, did seem rather like a caricature of a caricature that Arnold Schwarzenegger might do.

Addendum 2

I looked at the other books that I also gave a 4 rating, and decided that Fahrenheit 451 did not measure up to the standard established by those books, so I have reduced the rating of Fahrenheit 451 to 3.

As I write this review, the year is 2012. We do not live in a perfect world; in fact, in many ways we don't even live in a good world. But one thing I believe with all my heart is that we live in a world which, on the whole, is better than it was fifty years ago. Now, I know I'm writing with limited perspective and that progression and development hasn't been the same all over the globe and even the definition of those words can change depending on what part of the world you live in. But here's what I do know: the average world life expectancy is higher, the infant mortality rate is lower, access to education is greater and the amount of countries that hold regular, fair elections has increased.

On average, people today are smarter than they were fifty years ago. And I know this is where older generations throw up their hands in indignation and start yelling about how exams were much harder in "their day" and they really had to work for it. I am not disputing this, I have no idea if it's true or not. But what is true is that more people today than ever before are going on to further education after high school, the barriers that once stopped the working class from being as smart as society's more privileged members are slowly starting to break down bit by bit. Literacy rates have been on the rise the whole world over:



It's true. We have entered the age of computers and electronics, social networking and personal media players... and the world has not ended, the robots haven't taken over and people haven't become so stupid that they feel the need to rage a war against books. And this is the main reason why I think Bradbury's dystopian tale is out of date and ineffective. The author was writing at a time when technology was really starting to get funky, the digital age was still decades away but people were doing all kinds of crazy things like listening to music with little cones plugged into their ears. Bizarre.

Readers often choose to view Bradbury's story as one about censorship instead of technology because that allows a more modern reader to connect with the world portrayed. But taken as it was intended, I just don't share the author's sentiments. Not all technology is good, but I'm of the opinion that the good outweighs the bad: medical advancements, entertainment, access to information via the internet... I'm the very opposite of a technophobe because, in my opinion, forward is the way to go. And I'm sure it's because of the age I was born into, but I cannot relate to the apprehension that Bradbury feels when he tells of this true story (note: this is not in the book):

"In writing the short novel Fahrenheit 451 I thought I was describing a world that might evolve in four or five decades. But only a few weeks ago, in Beverly Hills one night, a husband and wife passed me, walking their dog. I stood staring after them, absolutely stunned. The woman held in one hand a small cigarette-package-sized radio, its antenna quivering. From this sprang tiny copper wires which ended in a dainty cone plugged into her right ear. There she was, oblivious to man and dog, listening to far winds and whispers and soap-opera cries, sleep-walking, helped up and down curbs by a husband who might just as well not have been there. This was not fiction."

I know many still think today that we are becoming a completely unsociable species because of mobile/cell phones, social networking sites, etc. but I have made friends from all over the world thanks to technology. I have talked to people that fifty years ago I would never have known, I have learned about different cultures and ways of life because I have access to most areas of the world through the web. So, no, I'm not scared of this so-called technological threat that is somehow going to turn our brains to mush and create a society where we cannot concentrate long enough to read a book. And here is where I (finally) get on to details of this novel.

What I am supposed to believe in here is that - because of technology - humanity has become so stupid that they couldn't concentrate on books. So books were simplified at first for easier understanding, then banned, then burnt. Why? I am okay with the realistic aspect of "people have short attention spans because of technology so they don't want to read books", but why burn books? I don't see why this would need to happen and why it would become a criminal offense to have books in your home. This is where I understand why so many people prefer to apply this novel's message to censorship, because it works so much better that way. The argument for the technological side of it is weak - even for the time in question.



The best thing about this whole book is the discussion about the phoenix and the comparisons made between the legendary bird and humanity: in the same way that the bird dies in flames only to be reborn again from the ashes, humanity constantly repeats mistakes made throughout history and never seems to learn from them. Secondly, to give credit where it's due, the writing is suitably creepy for a dystopian society and I understand why people who do actually share Bradbury's concerns would be caught up in the novel's atmosphere. But, overall, this wasn't a great dystopian work for me, I didn't agree with the point it was trying to sell me and I don't think it made a very successful case for it. Furthermore, I had some problems with the pacing. The book is split into three parts and the first two are much slower and uneventful than the last one - which seems to explode with a fast sequence of events in a short amount of time and pages. Disappointing.

This is a book about a dude named Guy. Guy is a fireman in a dystopian future where firemen find houses that have Books in them, burn down said Books, along with the houses and people in them. They do this because books are a threat to television and headphones and evil technology and my god the soullessness of modernity WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE. Guy loves his job. Then he meets this girl named Clarissa who might be the original Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Clarissa has the face of "fragile milk crystal" (I am not making this up) and an incoherent conversation with Guy about the smell of kerosene, jet cars, cows, and grass. Clarissa, now having served her purpose as one of two dickless characters in the book (the other being dude Guy's suicidal wife) gets run over by a truck and promptly dies. Guy is like holy fucking shit-sticks Clarissa HAS OPENED MY EYES: I should read books, not burn them. So he does. (Or at least I think he does? My projectile vomit chunks were obscuring the text.) Anyway so he reads books and tries to tell other people to read books but then The Government is all like WHAT THE FUCK NO and they send a giant robot dog after him, but he escapes into the woods and joins a pack of reading renegades.

I'm not sure what, if anything, happens after that. The most painful thing about reading this book (other than the freakishly bad plot) is that the AUTHOR'S MESSAGE is being rammed so far up your ass on every single page that if you make it to 157, you won't be able to walk for a week.

If this wasn't bad enough, there's the jaw-clenchingly awful overblown prose. Here's an example in which Ray is trying to tell the reader that Guy stopped smiling: "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." Dude. Seriously? HE STOPPED SMILING. Get over it. Scarily enough, this is one of the less ragingly horrible examples. The entire book is rife with this kind of thing. Sentences that go on for hours, for days, up a hill, down a hill, and you're so confused and tired by the time you get to the period that you've forgotten what the fuck the whole thing was about in the first place.

Anyway whatever. This book sucked my balls.

It probably took Ray Bradbury some courage to write Fahrenheit 451 in the middle of the McCarthy era. His novel is a book lover's nightmare inspired by all the book-burning episodes of ancient and recent history: the destruction of the library of Alexandria, the Christian auto-da-fé, the Nazi and Soviet acts of destruction of all cultural legacy that they deemed subversive.

In short, Fahrenheit 451 is about barbaric censorship, established in the name of an absolutist and nihilistic ideology, whereby any form of high culture is banned, and all sorts of mind-numbing pharmaceuticals and entertainment are promoted. Indeed, the rise of anxiolytic medications, antidepressants and mass television was a significant trend when Bradbury was writing this book; and in a way, they still are. Using value inversions just as 1984 had done before, firefighters are the ones who light up the pyres of destruction.

The story is that of a fireman who turns to the other side and decides to save the books. His escape is perhaps the most striking part of Bradbury's novel. In the end, he joins a community of dissidents where each person knows at least one book by heart, and actually is that book. There has hardly been a better metaphor for the fact that we are the books we read.

Confession: my first thought upon hearing anything about Ray Bradbury is for the Hugo nominated song Fuck Me Ray Bradbury to immediately come screaming through the speakers of my mind and remain stuck there for days. Beloved author for sure, but shamefully I’d only read Fahrenheit 451 back as a little High School freshman and the only thing I remember was fire and how I always struggled to remember how to properly spell “Fahrenheit.” Oh and that the title is a reference to the temperature at which paper ignites and burns (though I am charmed by the first Dutch translation that retitled it Celcius 233, though Bradbury was not down with that and had them change it). Written in the era of McCarthyism, the Red Scare, and rapid technological advances, Fahrenheit 451 crafts a 1950s caricature into a future where books have been outlawed, firemen burn any books that are discovered, and television has become the proverbial opium for the masses. A commentary against censorship, though Bradbury would later specify in interviews it was an outcry against ‘political correctness’ which was ‘the real enemy these days, ’claiming ‘minorities’ were trying to force ‘thought control and freedom of speech control.’ A statement that is sure to raise a few eyebrows. On the whole, Fahrenheit 451 becomes a satire against mass media and television that Bradbury fears will be so devoid of intellectuality that it will cause social devolution. A classic work of sci-fi with some thorns, Fahrenheit 451 champions a love for literature that has been critiqued as “elitist” but it is alive with symbolism and pertinent themes.

‘It was a pleasure to burn.’

The world probably doesn’t need yet another commentary on Fahrenheit 451 and I don’t know if I have anything to offer but this book is sitting in my mind the way a rough meal can’t quite sit right in the stomach. It’s a touchstone classic for many and comes fully loaded with a lot of great themes, metaphors, and symbolism that makes it a fun one to dissect and teach I’m sure. The section titles practically list the symbols for you, with the salamander and ancient beliefs that it lives in fire unaffected by flames, the sand that is the truth Montag grapples for but also the sieve that is the human mind making any firm grip on the truth elusive. Its a book that employs paradoxes to great effect, where blood is representative of our primal instincts, and the religious imagery illuminates the pages. Particularly the purifying fire. In his essay on Bradbury, folklorist Jack Zipes discusses the fire as a larger statement on America:

‘[Fahrenheit 451 is] structured around fire and death as though it were necessary to conceive new rituals and customs from the ashes of an America bent on destroying itself and possibly the world.’

This destructive force is not unlike Montag’s firehose ‘this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world.’ For Bradbury, much of this destruction comes from television and mass media which, he argues, is leading to a dumbing down of the populace making them ripe for controlling and leading to brutality. Clarisse complains of the education system being gutted and all it becomes is ignorant teachers who ‘run answers at you, bing, bing, bing, and us just sitting for four more hours of film-teacher’ (Montag’s encounters with the teenage Clarisse had a vibe that made me keep doing the side eyes meme in my head…). It’s a futuristic world, yet Bradbury brings the anxieties of the 50s to life in caricature to create a future as a warning.

‘Our civilization is flinging itself to pieces. Stand back from the centrifuge.’

Through the book burnings, the symbolic helmets, salamander on the arm and phoenix disc on the chest of the uniforms, Bradbury invokes images of abusive power that call to mind the Nazis and their book burnings of the 1930s. Yet Bradbury’s America of the 1950s was rampant with the book bans, burnings, and celebrity blacklists of the McCarthy Era and these are just as integrated into the novel. 1948 had just seen internationally regarded psychiatrist Dr. Fredric Wertham begin a campaign against comic books as immoral and bad for kids which led to several incidents of massive book burnings of comic books. In a Senate Subcommittee Hearing on Juvenile Delinquency, Wertham stated ‘I think Hitler was a beginner compared to the comic-book industry,’ and in 1954, one year after Fahrenheit 451 was published, came the creation of the Comics Code Authority which was de facto book banning (fun fact: comic artists realized if you bound a book and gave it an ISBN it no longer fell under the jurisdiction of the CCA and Graphic Novels were born).
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1948 Binghamton, N.Y.: Students of St. Patrick’s parochial school collected 2,000 comic books & burned them in the school yard.

The aspects on book burning and censorship felt rather relevant to the current state of the United States where book bans are on the rise and specifically targeting queer or Black authors and narratives. According to the American Library Association, the 2023-24 academic year saw 1,247 demands to censor 4,240 unique book titles, nearly triple previous years. Book ban attempts have become a wedge issue for the right wing, a flashy and fiery way to chip away at faith in public institutions in order to privatize public goods and services in the name of profits. Bradbury would be pissed.
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2024: Missouri Secretary of State candidate uses flamethrower to burn queer books as a campaign ad

While, yes, this is more a book about television and vapid media replacing intellectual content than it is about censorship, I will get to that shortly because an aspect of this book I can’t stop thinking about is Bradbury’s explanation on how things got to be this way in the novel. This book isn’t really about big authoritarian governments, per say, only that we allow them to take over and we learn from Captain Beatty that the destruction of books ‘Didn’t come from the government down.’ No:

‘There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God. Today, thanks to them, you can stay happy all the time.’
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It was a grassroots operation and the people did it to themselves. But you’ll notice he uses ‘minority pressure’ here. One could think about it like the way that a study in The Washington Post that in the 2021-2022 academic year ‘just 11 people were responsible for filing 60 percent of book challenges’ and its small interest groups (often astroturfed by larger groups) that are taking it upon themselves to attempt censorship.

‘Now let’s take up the minorities in our civilization, shall we? Bigger the population, the more minorities. Don’t step on the toes of the dog-lovers, the cat-lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese, Swedes…The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that! All the minor minor minorities with their navels to be kept clean…Colored people don’t like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White people don’t feel good about Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Burn it. Someone’s written a book on tobacco and cancer of the lungs? The cigarette people are weeping? Burn the book. Serenity, Montag. Peace, Montag. Take your fight outside. Better yet, into the incinerator.’

Sure, Beatty is certainly not a great person and this is all filtered through his mind, though a 1967 edition of the book removed all the curse words and Bradbury wrote a Coda to the novel expressing his disgust at the irony of this novel being censored. His words aren’t all that dissimilar:

‘There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist/Unitarian, Irish/Italian/Octogenarian/Zen Buddhist, Zionist/Seventh-Day Adventist, Women’s Lib/Republican, Mattachine/Four Square Gospel feels it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse…Fire-Captain Beatty, in my novel Fahrenheit 451, described how the books were burned first by minorities, each ripping a page or a paragraph from this book, then that, until the day came when the books were empty and the minds shut and the libraries closed forever.’

In the Coda, Bradbury also says he is frequently criticized for his portrayal of women and Black people, to which he responds that he will do what he wants and people shouldn’t try to curb his speech. ‘For it is a mad world and it will get madder if we allow the minorities to interfere with aesthetics,’ he writes. In a 1994 interview for the Dayton Daily News, Bradbury stated this novel was all the more relevant in the modern day:

‘It works even better because we have political correctness now. Political correctness is the real enemy these days. The black groups want to control our thinking and you can't say certain things. The homosexual groups don't want you to criticize them. It's thought control and freedom of speech control.’

Maybe specifically saying the Black people and the gays are out to get you isn’t ideal. This book was also very of its own time and shouldn’t be conflated with the modern discourse either. He has received criticism over his segregationist approach in his short story Way in the Middle of the Air or his portrayal of Black people in The Other Foot, though Bradbury has often prided himself as being a progressive thinker for tackling these issues. But It’s a lot easier to think of a writer as “progressively ahead of their time” when those who would likely critique their thoughts on race or women were not given space or a voice to do so.

'It’s a totally lopsided ideological element of American culture, that the highest good is free speech, rather than that free speech is a side product of a just political system, but without any reference to what the content of the speech is.'
—Isabella Hammad, in interview for Tin House

Sure, Bradbury is arguing for freedom of speech, but its all in a very odd sort of way that feels like pearl-clutching “don’t tread on me” vibe. I don’t believe he is a “hate speech is cool” type and would certainly be yelling against MAGA and the modern bans, but I don’t think I’d want to know his thoughts on trigger warnings. In his book New Maps of Hell: A Survey of Science Fiction, author Kingsley Amis criticized authors like Bradbury in their discussions on censorship:

‘[T]o call the generic political stance of science fiction “radical,” as I have done, is not quite precise: it is radical in attitude and temper, but strongly conservative in alignment.’

Amis was aiming at writers from before the New Wave of sci-fi where more women and people of color began writing, but these sorts of issues still linger in the community. You may recall the Sad Puppies, the unsuccessful right-wing anti-diversity campaign that tried to block women and people of color from receiving Hugo Awards claiming the popularity of these authors was due to ‘ political correctness’ with readers ‘favoring authors and artists who aren't straight, white and male,’ as their metric over “quality.” Not that this is Bradbury, to be clear. And this novel was written under its own political climate that doesn’t resemble today enough to draw clear lines either.

‘If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war…Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of non-combustible data, chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’ with information. Don’t give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with.’

The world of the novel is one of disconnect. And television is to blame. Okay, actually its more a statement that the lack of literary value made media a bland, brainless entertainment and that spoiled the world. But its also a bit weird too. Bradbury has discussed that a big inspiration for the novel came from observing a couple walking their dog and the woman was listening to the radio. His words:

‘I stood staring after them, absolutely stunned. The woman held in one hand a small cigarette-package-sized radio, its antenna quivering. From this sprang tiny copper wires which ended in a dainty cone plugged into her right ear. There she was, oblivious to man and dog, listening to far winds and whispers and soap-opera cries, sleep-walking, helped up and down curbs by a husband who might just as well not have been there. This was not fiction.’

We can clearly see the inspiration for Mildred’s Seashell ear-thimbles that detach her from the world. And that is what television is doing in the novel as well, something Margaret Atwood commented about saying Bradbury’s vision ‘predated Marshall McLuhan and his theories about how media shape people, not just the reverse’ making it all the more a timely classic. Though I often wonder if Bradbury considers that the radio could be used for intellectual activities too. Would he complain about people staring at their phones, what if he saw me reading his book or writing this review on the phone, would that be offensive and detaching from the world in a way reading the physical novel or writing this by pen and paper wouldn’t? Besides, Bradbury even had his own tv series: The Ray Bradbury Theater. But this is beside the point, we see how technology not only detaches people in his world, but is also very deadly. The atomic bomb most so.

‘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.’

‘We are a democracy of readers,’ Bradbury stated in an interview for the NEA, ‘and we should keep it that way.’ Look, I love books, I value books, I work in defence of books and free access to books and I am writing this from my library desk covered in books and making sure people get books from other libraries delivered properly (RIP federal funding thought…), but Bradbury comes off a touch elitist. In his commentary on the novel, Jack Zipes writes ‘despite [Bradbury’s] humanistic intentions,’ he writes ‘from an elitist point of view’ where ‘the ethical and aesthetic ideals in Bradbury’s narrative are derived from an indiscriminate and eclectic praise of books per se.’ He continues:

‘To love a book or to be an intellectual is not, as Bradbury would have us believe, ideally ethical and humane…such an oversight short-circuits the utopian functions of his books and he remains blind to the intricacies of control in his own society.’

Ouch. Coming from a future world where part of the “issue” leading to book burning was that those who didn’t read books felt inferior and ashamed, it makes me think about the US political divide and how looking down at the opposition doesn’t make an effective social strategy. Especially when the perceived condescension only turns into doubling down on beliefs and bad takes. I found the ending particularly chilling. Bringing in the Biblical Revelations ‘and on either side of the river was there a tree of life…’ Montag joins up with an all white all men group of nomadic intellectuals and watch the city be bombed into a crater. The non-readers left behind are massacred and ‘the explosion rid itself of them in its own unreasonable way.’ Unreasonable indeed, though it does touch on the fear of technology and the bomb that was certainly on everyone's mind when he wrote it and remains there because, we still have ‘em! Not awesome.

‘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.’

Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 is a classic work of sci-fi and a staple of classrooms in the United States, yet I found it to be a bit lackluster on the reread. It’s a fun story, don’t get me wrong, and there is some fantastic imagery and creativity. It is anything but subtle though I do love the bold symbolism and motifs writ large in the tale. I don’t love, however, the aspects that feels a bit like those who snob and scoff on people’s reading choices. Yet it is also not without its merits and I enjoyed giving it a second look.

3/5

‘Stuff your eyes with wonder. Live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. Ask no guarantees, ask for no securityl.’

„Adevărata frumuseţe a focului constă în faptul că distruge răspunderea şi consecinţele”.

2 steluțe pentru povestea în sine. 4 pentru mesaj și intuiția stării de lucru actuale.

2 steluțe pentru stil. Nici o comparație nu e la locul ei. Toate sînt ori stridente, ori inadecvate: „Focul bolborosea şi spumega de parcă cineva ar fi turnat sare peste un şarpe negru şi monstruos...”.

4 pentru mesaj și intuiție. N-aș spune că locuim deja în lumea imaginată de Ray Bradbury, dar nici foarte departe nu sîntem: ne îndreptăm veseli spre stadiul zero al inteligenței. Ceva rău s-a petrecut cu (și în) mintea noastră. Statul distopic din roman încearcă prin toate mijloacele să-i împiedice pe cetățeni să gîndească. Le oferă senzații tari și distracții la TV cu nemiluita. La rîndul nostru, am înțeles că nu e bine să gîndim prea mult, fiindcă gînditul afectează grav celulele nervoase. O fac moderatorii în locul nostru, o fac influencerii. În plus, nu mai trebuie să memorăm intrigi, citate, argumente, opinii, cărți. Depunem cunoștințele într-un folder, le lăsăm să zacă acolo, uităm de ele și, astfel, am rezolvat definitiv problema. Devenim treptat amnezici, inculți și foarte ușor de amăgit.

Mulți se întreabă ce înseamnă cifra din titlu: 451. Chiar e nevoie de 451 de grade pentru a arde o carte? Nici vorbă. Se vede că n-au citit cu atenție romanul. Bradbury menționează cifra în două rînduri. Prima dată spune că numărul matricol al lui Montag e 451. A doua oară se referă la numărul unității de pompieri. Tot 451. Așadar, nu e vorba de grade.

Personaje: Clarisse McClellan, Mildred (soția lui Montag), căpitanul Beatty (șeful lui Montag, face apologia noii ordini, e un filosof în felul său), profesorul Faber din colegiul care s-a închis din lipsă de studenți și de fonduri (primul răzvrătit pe care-l cunoaște Montag), președintele Winston Noble (politician ales foarte democratic), Granger etc.