For a book lauded as one of the great commentaries on society Fahrenheit 451 was not what I expected. Before this I had never read any Ray Bradbury nor seen the movie based on his novel, so I like to think I’ve come in pure and untainted.
What I’ve left with is nothing really. The book I struggled to read, and not because it was bad but because it didn’t hold me. The point it makes is valid though at the same time hypocritical because of its own dismissal of other forms of media.
Books like television, movies, and other mediums can be dumbed down to an equal degree as well as be used to supplement free thinking, family, and other connections that we make as a society. Ultimately his argument is flawed by his dismissal of these other mediums but he still manages to get his point across.
In the end Bradbury undermines his argument further with the scholars destruction of the books and their carrying on of the memes within. What’s to say that the writers of parlor screen stories weren’t attempting to put those very ideas across but because of the way society was they had to be more subtle than some books are.
Yes books are necessary, particular since I would like to write som and really enjoy reading them, but mere censorship of them isn’t where any of it stops. Movies, TV, video games, music, art, theater – all of it gets censored and yet we don’t scream nearly as much as we do with books. I think if anything it stems from the length of time which books have been a part of our culture in comparison to the others. Books have a couple hundred years on everything when it comes to a replicable format. Books also have the bonus of being used for other purposes – pushing other memes, providing documentation, education, etc.
I feel that Ray Bradbury gets his appoint across far better in the afterword provided in the 50th Anniversary Edition in his complete railing against any censorship that people attempted to put on his own works. Read it to understand. I also think that he may have a point in whether or not an author should ever go back an edit or add to a piece of work that he/she did when they were younger – different person, different time after all.
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