The Books: “Fahrenheit 451″ (Ray Bradbury)

Daily Book Excerpt: Adult fiction:

Fahrenheit 451: A Novel – by Ray Bradbury. A good and scary book about censorship, book-burning, morons, totalitarians, and firemen. In this world, the firemen are in charge of setting books on fire. That’s their job. Guy Montag is a fireman – he never questioned his job, or the whys of it – he’s a part of that world. Until ….

My favorite part of the book is when Montag goes on the run – he’s being chased – now he knows that the world he lives in is fuuuuuuucked up and he wants no part of it. But “they” (there’s always a “they”) are after him. He flees into the woods and comes across a group of people – outlaws – sitting around a fire. Who are they? Why don’t they live in the neat little suburban world he lives in? What’s their deal??

Here’s the excerpt: This section makes me think:

If I were one of these people … in that situation … what book would I want to commit to memory? What book would I be? The first thing that comes to mind is The Federalist Papers … like: that document MUST be preserved … but Moby Dick also comes to mind. Ulysses as well. Can I have those three books in my mind at once?? I’ll keep thinking about it. It’s an interesting thing to contemplate: you realize what you value.

Excerpt from Fahrenheit 451: A Novel – by Ray Bradbury.

Granger touched Montag’s arm. “Welcome back from the dead.” Montag nodded. Granger went on. “You might as well know all of us, now. This is Fred Clement, former occupant of the Thomas Hardy chair at Cambridge in the years before it became an Atomic Engineering School. This other is Dr. Simmons from U.C.L.A., a specialist in Ortega y Gasset; Professor West here did quite a bit for ethics, an ancient study now, for Columbia University quite some years ago. Reverend Padover here gave a few lectures thirty years ago and lost his flock between one Sunday and the next for his views. He’s been bumming with us some time now. Myself: I wrote a book called The Fingers in the Glove: the Proper Relationship between the Individual and Society, and here I am! Welcome, Montag!”

“I don’t belong with you,” said Montag, at last, slowly. “I’ve been an idiot all the way.”

“We’re used to that. We all made the right kind of mistakes, or we wouldn’t be here. When we were separate individuals, all we had was rage. I struck a fireman when he came to burn my library years ago. I’ve been running ever since. You want to join us, Montag?”

“Yes.”

“What have you to offer?”

“Nothing. I thought I had part of the Book of Ecclesiastes and maybe a little bit of Revelation, but I haven’t even that now.”

“The Book of Ecclesiastes would be fine. Where was it?”

“Here.” Montag touched his head.

“Ah.” Granger smiled and nodded.

“What’s wrong? Isn’t that all right?” said Montag.

“Better than all right; perfect!” Granger turned to the Reverend. “Do we have a Book of Ecclesiastes?”

“One. A man named Harris in Youngstown.”

“Montag.” Granger took Montag’s shoulder firmly. “Walk carefully. Guard your health. If anything should happen to Harris, you are the Book of Ecclesiastes. See how important you’ve become in the last minute!”

“But I’ve forgotten!”

“No, nothing’s ever lost. We have ways to shake down your clinkers for you.”

“But I tried to remember!”

“Don’t try. It’ll come when we need it. All of us have photographic memories, but spend a lifetime learning how to block off the things that are really in there. Simmons here has worked on it for twenty years and now we’ve got the method down to where we can recall anything that’s been read once. Would you like, someday, Montag, to read Plato’s Republic?”

“Of course!”

“I am Plato’s Republic. Like to read Marcus Aurelius? Simmons is Marcus.”

“How do you do?” said Mr. Simmons.

“Hello,” said Montag.

“I wnat you to meet Jonathan Swift, the author of that evil political book Gulliver’s Travels! And this other fellow is Charles Darwin, and this one is Schopenhauer, and this one is Einstein, and this one here at my elbow is Mr. Albert Schweitzer, a very kind philosopher indeed. Here we all are, Montag. Aristophanes and Mahatma Gandhi and Gautuma Buddha and Confucius and Thomas Love Peacock and Thomas Jefferson and Mr. Lincoln, if you please. We are also Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.”

Everyone laughed quietly.

“It can’t be,” said Montag.

“It is,” replied Granger, smiling. “We’re book burners, too. We read the books and burnt them, afraid they’d be found. Microfilming didn’t pay off; we were always traveling, we didn’t want to bury the film and come back later. Always the chance of discovery. Better to keep it in the old heads, where no one can see it or suspect it. We are all bits and pieces of history and literature and international law. Byron, Tom Paine, Machiavellie, or Christ, it’s here. And the hour’s late. And the war’s begun. And we are out here, and the city is there, all wrapped up in its own coat of a thousand colors. What do you think, Montag?”

“I think I was blind trying to go at things my way, planting books in firemen’s houses and sending in alarms.”

“You did what you had to do. Carried out on a national scale, it might have worked beautifully. But our way is simpelr and, we think, better. All we want to do is keep the knowledge we think we will need intact and safe. We’re not out to incite or anger anyone yet. For if we are destroyed, the knowledge is dead, perhaps for good. We are model citizens, in our own special way; we walk the old tracks, we lie in the hills at night, and the city people let us be. We’re stopped and searched occasionally, but there’s nothing on our persons to incriminate us. The organization is flexible, very loose, and fragmentary. Some of us have had plastic surgery on our faces and fingertips. Right now we have a horrible job; we’re waiting for the war to begin and, as quickly, end. It’s not pleasant, but then we’re not in control, we’re the odd minority crying in the wilderness. When the war’s over, perhaps we can be of some use in the world.”

“Do you really think they’ll listen then?”

“If not, we’ll just have to wait. We’ll pass the books on to our children, by word of mouth, and let our children wait, in turn, on the other people. A lot will be lost that way, of course. But you can’t make people listen. They have to come ’round in their own time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up under them. It can’t last.”

“How many of you are there?”

“Thousands on the roads, the abandoned railtracks, tonight, bums on the outside, libraries inside. It wasn’t planned, at first. Each man had a book he wanted to remember, and did. Then, over a period of twenty years or so, we met each other, traveling, and got the loose network together and set out a plan. The most important single thing we had to pound into ourselves is that we were not important, we mustn’t be pedants; we were not to feel superior to anyone else in the world. We’re nothing more than dust jackets for books, of no significance otherwise. Some of us live in small towns. Chapter One of Thoreau’s Walden in Green River. Chapter Two in Willow Farm, Maine. Why, there’s one town in Maryland, only twenty-seven people, no bomb’ll ever touch that town, is the complete essays of a man named Bertrand Russell. Pick up that town, almost, and flip the pages, so many pages to a person. And when the war’s over, someday, some year, the books can be written again, the people will be called in, one by one, to recite what they know and we’ll set it up in type until another Dark Age, when we might have to do the whole damn thing over again. But that’s the wonderful thing about man: he never gets so discouraged or disgusted that he gives up doing it all over again, because he knows very well it is important and worth the doing.”

“What do we do tonight?” asked Montag.

“Wait,” said Granger. “And move downstream a little ways, just in case.”

He began throwing dust and dirt in the fire.

The other men helped, and Montag helped, and there, in the wildnerness, the men all moved their hands, putting out the fire together.