Burning Books

Fast forward 67 years. The same thing could be said today, which all by itself in incredibly curious. If Bradbury was right in 1953, then shouldn’t we be further along in the destruction of books and learning than we are? How have we spent nearly three-quarters of a century right on the verge of the book burning apocalypse?

Actually, it isn’t just the last seven decades. Plato complained about the same thing.

The importance of Fahrenheit 451 is thus not about banning and burning books or the death of reading. Books and reading (like cockroaches?) seem to keep finding a way to survive. But, what is obvious when pondering Bradbury is that reading has neither become more nor less widespread over the decades. There are still readers, to be sure. But, people who regularly read for pleasure day in and day out are, and seemingly always have been, a small percentage of the population.

I read this book in an independent study with a couple of ridiculously bookish students—I am pretty sure they both read more than I do. We ended up spending an incredible amount of time talking about Millie, the wife of the protagonist in the novel. She spends her days watching her interactive television; three full walls in the room are occupied by the television, and her fondest dream is to get the fourth wall also converted to a television. Truly immersive TV! She has friends over, and they all sit and immerse themselves in this all-consuming TV. (Don’t laugh; it would look just like four people sitting in the same room all looking at their phones.) Our protagonist pulls the plug on the TV and reads to them the last two stanzas of Arnold’s “Dover Beach.”

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Millie is annoyed and frightened by this book thing, turns in our hero to the book burning authorities, and flees. She is one of those people who really see no need for books. Here is the question: what can we do to convince Millie that she will be happier or better off if she shuts off the TV and reads?

Truth be told, I was greatly disturbed by the end of my conversation with my students. I want to say I am absolutely certain that Millie would be much happier if she was a reader. But, how do I know that she would be? How do I know that Millie will be better off reading the poetry of Matthew Arnold than she is by watching the latest mindless TV show? As my students (who are too clever for me) were very quick to point out, the fact that I am better off as a reader than I would be if I just watched TV all day is not the question. I, as they love to tell me, am weird.

How about this: Books make you think. Is that a good thing? One of the book burners in the novel notes:

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….We stand against the small tide of those who want to make everyone unhappy with conflicting theory and thought.

So, what if someone doesn’t want to think? What if someone likes simply being entertained and knowing there is good and evil and so you always know the right answer to everything without having to think about it? (Cue a reference to the cable channel your political opponents like.) Then I come along and say: “Look, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy and you should read all these books and be endlessly tortured by never really knowing the ultimate answers to all of the multitude of ultimate questions.” Have I just made that person’s life better off?

Fahrenheit 451, the book, is a great example. We have here a book that says we should not burn books. Lots of people have read this book. It is popular in high school English classes; it isn’t hard to guess why English teachers like to assign it. Everyone loves the message that those evil people over there want to take away the books we good people should read and we should fight against them. (One of my kids had a unit on banned books in 9^th grade English; each student had to pick a banned book, read it, and then present it to the class.  But, the teacher assured us at Parents Night, don’t worry.  She would not let the kids choose any inappropriate books. As hard as it is to believe, the teacher said this with zero awareness of the irony.)

Quiz Time: How many people after reading Fahrenheit 451 and its message that reading all these great books is the most important thing in the world, have gone out and read “Dover Beach”? The novel has the excerpts quoted above; when the poem is read in the story, the characters are stunned and brought to tears. But, what percentage of the readers of Bradbury do you suppose set out to find the full poem and read it? And if they had, would they really be happier and better off?

OK, maybe it is because people don’t like poetry. But, Bradbury also makes use of the books of Ecclesiastes and Revelation. He argues they are so vital to the preservation of civilization that it is massively important that people have those books so cemented in the mind that they will survive nuclear war (or coronavirus?). Did the readers of Fahrenheit 451 find those books and read them?

I am, truth be told, a bit surprised how hard it was for any of us to come up with a compelling argument that Millie’s life would be better if she was a reader. I know it would be; deep down inside, I have no doubt about it. But, finding the articulation of that knowledge, finding the way to show that reading and books are important, vitally important, not just for the knowledge, but vital in and of themselves, finding the way to articulate that is difficult.

I keep coming back to Hamlet:

Sure, he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and godlike reason
To fust in us unused.

That is the reason we need books and reading; they are keys to unlocking the potential of that godlike reason. But, the argument that this is what we were created to be may not be not enough to persuade Millie that she should read.