Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451 is about How TV Destroys Literature

[Sequoia]

Here's a news flash for those who have interpreted Fahrenheit 451 (Ballentine, 1953) as a protest against censorship: Ray Bradbury says that it just isn't so. The author, interviewed last week by the L.A. Weekly, says the novel is actually about how television destroys interest in reading literature.

"Useless," Bradbury, now 86, complained to the Los Angeles publication about the ubiquitous tube. "They stuff you with so much useless information, you feel full." He adds that his fear about television—when he first published his book 54 years ago—has been partially confirmed by its effect on the news.

Fahrenheit 451 fans watching widescreen TVs are sure to think back to the book's central character, Guy Montag. The fireman—which in this case means a book burner—begins to wonder why he's burning books to pay for a living room featuring three wall-sized televisions, with his wife pressuring him to buy a fourth. The title, Fahrenheit 451, is stated as "the temperature at which book-paper catches fire, and burns."

As everyone who's ever loved the book (or the 1966 movie starring Julie Christie and Oskar Werner) knows, Guy Montag eventually gives up burning books and considers joining a secret community of book-lovers who "become" their books by memorizing them to pass them down to future generations.

http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6450954.html

[MNDemNY]

1. Poor Ray, so addled he doesn't remember his own book.

[GreenPartyVoter]

2. He's been a freeper for a while. Sad, but sometimes you do get more

conservative when you get older.

[ellenfl]

7. he's been a freeper for a LONG while.

he was my favorite author for a very long time when i was younger. i was truly disappointed that he freeped. it was surprising too considering his writings usually had a humanitarian bent to them.

ellen fl

[Shakespeare]

16. He's not a freeper.

And yes, I've actually spent time with the man. An iconoclast, to be sure, but in no way, no stretch of the imagination is he a freeper.

[Hong Kong Cavalier]

36. Indeed?

http://archive.salon.com/people/feature/2001/08/29/bradbury/print.html

What do you think of President Bush?

He's wonderful. We needed him. Clinton is a shithead and we're glad to be rid of him. And I'm not talking about his sexual exploits. I think we have a chance to do something about education, very important. We should have done it years ago. It doesn't matter who does it -- Democrats or Republicans -- but it's long overdue. Our education system is a monstrosity. We need to go back and rebuild kindergarten and first grade and teach reading and writing to everybody, all colors, and then the whole structure of our education will change because people will know how to read and write.

(emphasis mine)

:shrug:

And I'm someone who stood in line for an hour to get my tattered, well-read copy of The Martian Chronicles autographed by the man in October, 2000.
But he sound rather freeperish in that article to me. If it talks like a freep...

[MNDemNY]

3. Flash: Will Shakespeare said today,

"Romeo and Juliet is a tale about the evils of assisted suicide."

[Bucky]

5. And to think I always thought it was an anti-teen-sex rant

That whore Juliet had it coming, you know.

[Bucky]

4. So there's no validity in the anti-censorship interpretations of his book?

Sorry, but any decent student of literature will tell you that the importance of a work of literature is not what diktats the author issues about it. It's interesting, but the ideas are always bigger than the book, and the meaning and understanding of hte book is always a separate thing from the author's thesis.

As Orwell pointed out twenty years before Fehrenheit 451, destroying books in favor of broadcasts is exactly censorship.

[Kerrytravelers]

6. Maybe Bradbury should turn off the Faux news and read his own book.

451 has been taught in school for over 20 years now. He is well aware of how it is being taught. And now he decides to say something? :eyes: Ok, Ray.

[Ezlivin]

8. Ray clearly wrote about the acidic effect of television in "The Pedestrian"

The short story tells of a man arrested for not returning home to watch television like everyone else.

Ray Bradbury was damned good in his day.

[Sequoia]

22. Sometimes when I'm reading and the tv is on

I'll hear: "You should really watch this." "You're missing a great shot.", "You always escape inside your books." (Ha, as if TV isn't an escape)"TV does NOT use up a lot of electricity if I have it on all day."

Remember that movie "Matilda" with Danny DeVito who yelled at his daughter for not watching tv but wanted to read instead?

I had a boss once who saw me reading "Little Big Man" and said why read the book when you can watch the movie.

Another boss: I don't like you reading at your desk, even if you're on a break.

I thought F451 was about burning the books because they offered worlds and hope that people weren't allowed to have, just watch TV and vegitate. One thing true: Those Bluetooth gizmos in the book/movie and now stuck like a cockroach on people's ear.

[SteelPenguin]

9. Uh, isn't this what Al Gore is also saying?

Granted Bradbury took a turn, but isn't this him agreeing with Al Gore's Assault on Reason? Why some of the disparaging remarks?

[NYCGirl]

11. No, Al Gore isn't against TV. He owns a network. He's against BAD TV. NT

[BikeWriter]

10. Sniff! It's sad when old people lose it. Uh, where was I?

[Richard Steele]

12. If you can't rewrite the book, just rewrite HISTORY.

Nice try, Ray. What else ya got?

[dmallind]

13. Wait a minute

He wrote it.

He knows what he intended it to mean, and anyone else who starts hypothesizing is simply reading more into the work than was put there. Yes it's possible an especially acute mind can use critical analysis to detect subconscious influences on the author that caused more meaning to be there than he intended, but it's far more likely that a pseudo-intellectual can guess wrong or just parrot what others have said.

He makes a fair point - does anyone want to defend the impact of television on the cultural and political awareness of the average citizen?

As has been pointed out, the two posited meanings - the marginalization of literature and the warning against censorship - are far from mutually incompatible. We KNOW the first is explicitly there because we know what the guy who wrote it was saying when he did so. We can with varying levels of credibility try to prove that the latter is there too, but there is no argument that the first is NOT there.

What does it matter if he's a freeper? He can't write well or can't with genuine merit and feeling lament the soporific retarding effect of televized pablum just because he disagrees with us politically? From all I've read Hitler loved dogs. I do too. I have no hesitation in saying that, on the subject of dogs, I agree with Hitler; or that on the subject of television's detrimental impact that I agree with Ray Bradbury. Only a total dolt would say they disagree with an author on what he intended his book to say, regardless of his politics.

[muriel_volestrangler]

15. Sure, there can be more than one message in a book

but it seems strange for Bradbury to say people are concentrating on the wrong message, when he put book burning so much to the fore - starting with the title, and then making the protagonist's job 'fireman'. We can take this as his admission he screwed up a bit in his approach, if the dangers of television were what he really wanted people to take as his message.

[valerief]

14. Bad content and misinformation can be found on teevee and in books.

The medium is NOT the message.

[RaleighNCDUer]

17. I beg to differ.

These are two vastly different mediums. They act on the brain in different ways. Reading stimulates different parts of the brain than TV does.

That's not to say there aren't bad books or good TV - but they really cannot be equated, experientially. Hot vs cold. Active vs passive. Conscious vs subconsious.

And I have always said that F451 was not about censorship - perhaps my perspective is a little different because I grew up without TV, for the most part, living on military bases overseas. AFRS didn't have the 'T' in it yet, then, so I didn't really get much TV at all until I was an adult consumer of entertainment, and had read F451 years before that.

The point is also made in the film, with Oscar Werner and Julie Christy. Werner's wife is deeply involved in the fictional lives of the on-screen family, and completely disociated from her real life - pointed out in her drug addiction, obviously equating TV with drugs. And the only government you see is represented by the firemen - no massive, overbearing government controlling what you can or cannot read (censorship is about the authorities choosing WHAT you read, not IF you read), but just ordinary people who are helping their society by removing disturbing influences - and "Huckleberry Finn" is no worse than a Betty Crocker cookbook - it't the reading that makes the difference, not the material.

[Shakespeare]

19. GREAT post.

And I'm stunned at the speed with which some folks around here want to jump on Bradbury. Having actually spent time with him, I can tell you they don't have a fucking CLUE what they're talking about.

[Sequoia]

25. That must've been cool.

I've always liked "The Martian Chronicles" one of my top Sci-Fi books ever.

[Shakespeare]

29. He's an absolute sweetheart.

And perhaps the most generous and encouraging writer I've ever had the pleasure of meeting (and I've met many).

[valerief]

20. A Bill Moyers series vs. Ann Coulter books. Those are your only choices.

Is the world a better place with Ann Coulter books only?

[RaleighNCDUer]

23. As I said, different mediums.

There is good and bad in each - but the passive medium envelopes you, washes through you, and goes into the subconscious. The active medium allows you to debate it - anyone with half a brain can read Ann Coulter and see the specious arguments, deconstruct the writing to see just how and where it goes wrong - but when Neil Boortz goes on a rant on TV, there is no defense except turning the channel - you cannot argue with it, if you try to ignore it, it will seep in subconsciously, and you cannot actively engage it to see where it is wrong. That's what makes TV such a powerful propaganda tool. Or a drug.

And in F451, as in 1984, you could not turn the TV off. And nobody would want to. Only the social deviate would entertain that notion.

As for your postulate, it's a toss up. I have no problem with Bill Moyers (one of my bumper stickers is his quote "Secrecy is the freedom tyrants dream of") - at the same time, I have no problem with Coulter, as written, because I can deconstruct her writing with remarkable east - she's not exactly a deep thinker. Now, Ann Coulter on TV - that's when I shut it off.

[hfojvt]

27. why can't you argue with the TV?

I was deconstructing this guy's video just the other day

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/hfojvt/49

[RaleighNCDUer]

31. You said it right there -

he talks too fast, and there's no way to rewind.

So many arguments made to the TV noise machine include assumptions just barely alluded to, that while watching you might say "but...but..." then the moment is gone and he's on to something else.

That's the power of the soapbox, that you can't interrupt them and call them on it in real time, whether it is talk radio or MSRNC commentary or political speeches - all you can do is sit back and absorb them and KNOW they're wrong, but once the moment is passed you're hard put to remember just what it was they said.

It's not impossible, but it is certainly harder than dealing with the written word which is being actively read rather than passively taken in.

[valerief]

34. So how do you argue with a book again? I missed that. nt

[valerief]

32. I "read" your answer and I still don't know what your choice was.

So content means nothing to you. And can the "wash" talk. I'm interactive with my teevee. I talk back to it. I understand they're different mediums. I understand the brain behaves differently. I also understand that information is analyzed separately, regardless of where that information is obtained.

Now, what was your answer again? Oh, yes, you dodged the question with that laundry talk.

[RaleighNCDUer]

37. That's "ease" not "east" - too late to edit. nt

[JVS]

18. Yeah, but people don't reap much, so bad books are relatively harmless

;-)

[fishnfla]

24. Right

Thats why free books are lying around everywhere you go, and the television is never on.....and evry 4th page of a book has an ad for tires, or soap

[valerief]

33. You don't know how to read books if you think they're not selling something. nt

[fishnfla]

39. no reply necessary

unbelievable

[valerief]

40. Huh? nt

[Vickers]

21. As far as dystopian novels go, that one sucks.

I much prefer The Plot Against America, 1984, It Can't Happen Here, Brave New World, The Handmaid's Tale, etc.

Anywho, what I got out of F451 was: it's easier to control TV than print media, and it's easier to control people via TV than books, so books have to go.

TO ME it's an indictment of both censorship *and* TV.

[The Straight Story]

26. Well, more people are reading now than ever before - on the internet

;)

[Jim Warren]

28. One thing lately crossing my mind

how it will be living in the old rail cars at the edge of the woods.

[ieoeja]

30. "There is such a thing as too much education."

THAT is the meme F-451 is fighting. A meme brought to you by the same people who have spent the past couple decades actively campaigning against civil rights, and who consider it an object of ridicule if a person belongs to an organization dedicated to protecting the Bill of Rights.

I will never figure out how we were losing elections to those people.

On the other hand, our first president responding to the Iranian Hostage Crisis refused to give in to the hostage takers demands and sent in our military on a failed rescue attempt. The second president gave in to their demands on his very first day in office. Yet the first is decried for his weakness while the second is held up as the standard for strength on national security issues. So I guess it shouldn't have surprised me when "you have rights" became a winning campaign slogan.

[BlooInBloo]

35. That's what's cool about art. It admits of useful and interesting interpretations....

... beyond merely the creator's own.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

38. I wonder if Bradbury felt the same about his TV show.

Probably not.

[librechik]

41. Bradbury has devolved

into a mushy right wing delusionist.

He was never all that. Mostly just fantasy crap. Science was too hard for him.

What a disappointment to see this happen to one of my heroes.