Ray Bradbury: Farehheit 451 Misinterpreted
Bradbury has decided to make news about the writing of his iconographic work and what he really meant. Fahrenheit 451 is not, he says firmly, a story about government censorship. Nor was it a response to Senator Joseph McCarthy, whose investigations had already instilled fear and stifled the creativity of thousands.
This, despite the fact that reviews, critiques and essays over the decades say that is precisely what it is all about. Even Bradbury’s authorized biographer, Sam Weller, in The Bradbury Chronicles, refers to Fahrenheit 451 as a book about censorship.
Bradbury, a man living in the creative and industrial center of reality TV and one-hour dramas, says it is, in fact, a story about how television destroys interest in reading literature.
“Television gives you the dates of Napoleon, but not who he was,” Bradbury says, summarizing TV’s content with a single word that he spits out as an epithet: “factoids.” He says this while sitting in a room dominated by a gigantic flat-panel television broadcasting the Fox News Channel, muted, factoids crawling across the bottom of the screen.
His fear in 1953 that television would kill books has, he says, been partially confirmed by television’s effect on substance in the news. —Amy E. Boyle Johnston —Ray Bradbury: Farehheit 451 Misinterpreted (LA Weekly)
I’ve never taught this book, but I’ve been thinking about it, and this is actually the approach I would have taken — that it was a storyteller’s response to the rise of storywatching.
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Post was last modified on 26 May 2022 3:13 am
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Ray, Ray. The author is dead. Wicked author! The author is... wait, wrong song.
I am heavily reminded me of the scene in Annie Hall where Woody produces Marshall McLuhan from out of nowhere to refute the fellow behind him in line who thinks he knows McLuhan's work. "You know nothing of my work, you mean my whole fallacy is wrong. How you ever got to teach a course in anything is totally amazing!"
The subject was the influence of TV, even - well, assuming the guy in line even got that right.