The Creative Act

Ray Bradbury. Fahrenheit 451.

Some people were recently surprised to learn that Ray Bradbury is not only still alive in 2009 but was furious when Michael Moore entitled on of his “documentaries” Fahrenheit 9/11. The issue, of course was the title which directly linked the two men without Bradbury’s consent. Anyone familiar with Bradbury’s life work knows he had good reason to be upset. One has only to read 451 (1953) to recognize that Moore is playing a role that Bradbury has long worried will lead to the end of reading. Let me explain.

Based on trends he thought he saw developing at the time, 451 offered some stark predictions about the future. One such prediction was the easiest way to appease the masses. “If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him, give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is even such a thing as war. If the government is inefficient, top heavy, and tax-mad better it be all those than people worry about it.(p.61)” an Orwellian concept (or just skeptical middle-of-the-century-English obsession?). The only question for leaders would be how to make this happen. One way, according to Bradbury, is to get rid of books.

His 451 prediction regarding the fate of books is interesting because he did not think sinister leaders would have to mandate their demise. He seems to have agreed with Hitler’s famous claim, “What luck for rulers that men don’t think.” In fact, in the book there is a gradual dismissal of reading. The books became of worse and worse quality, they had more and more pictures, lost meaning and became disposal items like consumables, not to be remembered better than a television show (which is to say not memorable at all), classics were boiled down and down until only a paragraph or sentence long synopsis remained whose goal was not pleasure but the ability to say “yeah I know that one.” (think of cliff notes on steroids or the new series “So-And-So in half the time” and you’ll see this prediction coming true). No the government did not have to ban books, people would cease to want books because they’d become unreadable and effectively ban themselves.

He predicted  change in the way we would receive news, “I remember the newspapers dying like huge moths. No one wanted them back. (p.89)”  and saw trouble in this. The effects of all this are seen in his characters  who remember nothing and are completely disconnected from each other.  The beautiful Clarrisse tells Montag (the “fireman”) that her house is full of lights because people are sitting and talking together. “But what do you talk about?” Clarrisse laughs in reply. Society has become so degraded that conversation between the members of a house is a rarity and Clarrisse and her family are rare. This didactic passage, the house is lit-up and the others are dark, where there are books there is light, begins to show us that reading offers more then reading, that conversation and society happen through it. The written word if, of course, the hallmark of civilization and without such communication, according to Bradbury, things fall apart.

So people no longer have anything to read and they deem reading useless and choose to watch and become involved in television. Here we have another cute prediction, that television would become more interactive, that there would be boxes that would respond to you, so that a person on the screen would say your name and their lips would make this look true, but really it said no-ones name, just made you feel involved, like your one of the actors (rock band or guitar hero anyone?). These fancy boxes would trick people into spending yet more time watching television and they would become less and less critical (people love themselves enough to maintain blogs like this one), remember less and less and wind up completely disconnected even from those they live with. As guitar-hero is a lazy substitute for playing guitar and unlikely to lead to the emergence of good guitar players, these sorts of television tricks were unlikely to create savvy and aware citizens, they were too-plugged in, too distracted.

If you know about Michael Moore then it should be clear why Bradbury was mad with him. Moore makes entertaining “movie news” wherein he toes the line between fact and fiction. His books are simply-constructed and time-sensitive (in that they deal with issues of the moment and after the moment may as well be thrown out by everyone but the libraries that one day have researchers looking into this. Thrown out because they are not to be read again and are simple consumer items). Moore is exactly what Bradbury was worried about, a ‘newsman’ or ‘media player’ who would dumb everything down to entertainment until people saw no point in reading or learning (and perhaps even find readers and writers antagonistic and annoying).

In the book people become angry at those who still read. They feel such people are snobby elitists out to make everyone else unhappy, or at least feel stupid for watching television. James Howard Kunstler has spoken to this. When asked if he was an elitists (an insult in America) Kunstler claimed he was. He is an elitist in the sense that he does not think everything is equal, that some books are better than others, not all poetry is equal, certainly not all music is as good to listen to (if you do not agree and are a hardcore egalitarian I suggest you line up a 3$ shot of whiskey and compare it to a 10$ one and see if you cannot blindly guess which costs more). Kunstler worries that the equality thing is going too far and that a failure to understand the good from the bad is becoming a greater and greater issue. I have the impression Bradbury would agree. The failure to realize this is that the people choose to have books banned since all are only as good as the worst ones people read. Fire departments are changed into a service of book burners and they go out and burn books, at first for everyone since they all wanted their books roasted and later they would burn down entire houses of anyone who was still holding onto books.

People had willingly given up books because they had been so degraded. This prediction is a stark one and to anyone paying attention to the book industry knows, is coming true. I have hope that enough people will continue reading and appreciating doing so because I cannot fathom a world in which we reject books outright. At Argo we see everyday students that hate books and laugh spitefully if we say “enjoy your book,” because they know they will not and by not being open to the possibility are likely right. We also sell more Dostoevsky and Stefan Zweig than any other authors so hope we maintain hope.

I will not tell you how the book ends (and where the hope is to be found). It has a strong narrative that keeps you turning pages and deserves to be read. If you read the book a long time ago i urge you to read it again and be surprised by how accurate his predictions were and how current it still is after all these years.

Next up Alberto Moravia’s Boredom.