Fahrenheit 451

As hard as it is to believe, I never read Fahrenheit 451 before.  As a matter of fact, I never read anything by Ray Bradbury deliberately because he helped design that god-awful Epcot Center ride and he also wrote some of the worst Twilight Zone episodes ever. 

 

He also wrote "Robocop 3"

But then, one day, while I was teaching 10^th Grade English, we had to read “A Sound of Thunder” and “The Gift” in the short story unit.  They’re both really well put-together and thoroughly enjoyable stories.  So I thought, much like Frank Miller, maybe this guy is really good, but only in one genre.

 

So I picked it up for $4 at Wal-Mart (or somewhere like it.  I forget where) and read it in a couple sittings. 

I am amazed at Bradbury’s level of foresight.  If you’ve never read it, he describes how people just go on about their lives because they haven’t many cares.  They’re so meticulously distracted by various personal forms of entertainment that they can’t remember much of anything for very long (as a teacher, I can attest to this.  Does anyone out there know how hard it is to teach something to someone, have them forget it almost immediately, and then try to build on that something the next day?) and these forms of entertainment are ridiculously expensive.  He even talks about iPods way back in 1953 (except instead of using “earbuds” they use “ear thimbles”).

But I didn’t want to talk too much about the book.  It’s a fun read and a little creepy to see how someone more than 50 years ago could see how we would end up.  What I wanted to talk about was the little interview at the end.

 

This guy says we all love books.

This guy says we all love porn.

I bought the “50^th Anniversary Edition” which includes a new afterward by the author and an interview where he talks about the impact of the novella.  At one point the interviewer asks Bradbury about how he would get kids into reading.  I thought I would see the normal “Everyone likes reading!  You just have to get them to read something they actually like!” (which is bullshit.  Authors always say that because they (we) LOVE reading.  They can’t get enough.  They think about words so much that they actually start making up stories because they can’t consume enough.  It’d by like a fluffer saying, “Everyone likes porn”) But I didn’t.  What Mr. Bradbury said was something like, “Put one of my books in front of that kid; he’ll like to read after that!”

 

That, my friend, is a bold statement. Reading is a skill; albeit a skill that everyone should have a firm grasp on – like zipping your pants up – but a skill nonetheless.  We all have skills we’re bad at and we don’t like doing.  I, for instance, can’t work on cars. I know how they work, I know what parts do what, but I can’t fix one to save my life; therefore, I hate doing it.  Reading is the same way.  For a lot of people, it doesn’t matter the author or the subject or the environment.  For some, reading just plain sucks. 

What I want to know is, at what point can I become that proud of my work?  At what point will I be able to go, “If every school in America simply adopted the Nick Jones reading system (consisting only of Nick Jones material), we would wipe out illiteracy within a year!” 

I want to be that crass. 

Help me to get there.

Buy Tiny Life l(a.