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Ray Bradbury on Fahrenheit 451: ‘I wasn’t worried about censorship—I was worried about people being turned into morons by TV’
June 4, 2007 | 1:54 pm
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By David Rothman
A writer’s ultimate revenge against know-it-all academics is to be able to say, “Look, this is my work, and this is what I really meant.”
Now, decades after the writing of Fahrenheit 451, novelist Ray Bradbury says his main target there was not censorship but the future dumbing down of civilization by big-screen TVs, more reliance on television news and the like. Even during the McCarthy period, he says, Eisenhower said, Put the books back.
From a selfish viewpoint, I’m delighted by his assault on TV factoids and superficiality. After all, one of the main justifications of TeleRead is the desirability of the libraries and schools using e-books and other e-texts as promoters of sustained thought. Multimedia has an important place—check out QuickTimes of Bradbury’s words on (non)censorship and other topics—but text should be the star.
In fairness to academics and other interpreters
Of course, if censorship weren’t the main threat on Bradbury’s mind in F451, he should have spoken up in major forums long before now. A reasonable person could read F451 and conclude that censorship was his real target. Outside academia, I guess Wikpedians can look forward to some spirited debate on revisions of the present items on Bradbury and F451.
Related: News stories via Google, following Bradbury’s winning a Pulitzer. Especially check out an LA Weekly item to which Bill Janssen pointed on the eBook Community list. Also see Dan Poynter‘s depressing statistics on the book industry.
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Comments:
1. Frankly, F451 is about both censorship and (what Bradbury saw as) the idiocy of TV. For him to just outright deny the censorship angle is silly.
2. I’m not sure Bradbury would be a fan of e-books. He’s previously said the Internet is a scam by computer companies and told Salon, “A computer is a typewriter. I have two typewriters, I don’t need another one.”
3. I’ve never understood the TV vs. book “factoid” claim (full disclosure — I am a complete TV addict). Fine, I can watch the evening news or watch a documentary and find lots of nonsense and numerous errors.
But you know what happens when I read a book — yep, I find lots of nonsense and numerous errors.
TV has its problems, but look at how urban legends have taken off thanks to the largely text-based medium of e-mail.
Great thoughts, Brian. I agree that Bradbury has both targets in mind. How bizarre he’d play down his censorship angle. I guess he writes enough words to have forgotten what he said
As for errors in books, yep, as someone who’s worked in the sausage factory, so to speak, I agree. That’s one reason I’m so keen on interactivity for e-books. It isn’t just a techie thing; rather, it’s a way to hold authors accountable to traditional standards of accuracy and fairness. Imagine if Bradbury’s responses to readers had been embedded in F451.
David
He does in fact gripe about the “factoids” presented on quiz shows. But his more relevant gripe (if you read my article you’ll see it) is about the short attention spans caused by more visceral forms of presentation — in 1951, they were radio and television.
More on e-books and e-book readers…
I came across a new and interesting blog this morning – in fact I was directed to it by Chark Blog -…
I wonder if his politics have changed over the years and if he doesn’t choose to remember his earlier stands?
On a recent rereading, I found F451 a profoundly antiwar book, with the destructions of books being part of government’s manipulation of popular opinion to bring them into support of a war that any knowledgable person could have seen would be hugely destructive. That came out more clearly than the censorship angle, although certainly those go together, don’t they?
Rob Preece
Publisher, http://www.BooksForABuck.com