Since I have a decent amount of free time on my hands this summer, having vowed to "take it easy," I promised myself I'd go back and read the good stuff: classic novels, favorite books, plays new and old. I started off this summer with an old favorite, from way back in Mrs. Adam's 8th grade English class. The only way I can justify blogging about non-theatre on this blog is to convince you just how theatrical it is. And... because it's my blog and I can do whatever I want, so neener neener neener. :)
Fahrenheit 451 is a classic, yes. I would also argue that it's theatrical and fairly metatheatrical as well. Montag repeatedly alludes to himself as an actor abandoning the play -- going off script, in other words, breaking out of this brainwashed facade. And although it's kind of a negative connotation, I can't help but agree that these living room wall t.v. screens, the "family," are nothing but scripted and planned dialogues in which one has absolutely no opportunity to genuinely contribute (unlike any good theatre! we contribute!) because the characters are soulless and situations meaningless.
Bradbury is a self-proclaimed lover of literature and has often written works inspired by and attributed to famous writers. Yet, still, this passage came as a pleasant surprise:
"For these were the hands that had acted on their own, no part of him, here was where the conscience first manifested itself to snatch books, dart off with Job and Ruth and Willie Shakespeare, and now, in the firehouse, these hands seemed gloved with blood." (105) Macbeth!!!
Years after it's original publication, Bradbury received some feedback on his Martian Chronicles. He got letters from readers who were demanding all sorts of rewrites in future publications; some felt that "the blacks in the book were Uncle Toms" and Bradbury should re-do the, a Southern white was offended because Bradbury was "prejudiced in favor of the blacks and the entire story should be dropped." (175) There were racial, social, religious concerns that each demanded attention and amendment.
In this 1979 Coda, in which the former passage is mentioned, Bradbury argues that even slight editing of a writer's work post-publication is just as bad as the act of burning books. He finds that people originally censor literature as a way to please the masses, as detailed above, each minority fashioning the work to suit their likeness. In Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury uses the Fire Captain Beatty to describe the beginning of book-burning history:
"You must understand that our civilization is so vast that we can't have our minorities upset and stirred. [...] Colored people don't like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White people don't feel good about Uncle Tom's Cabin. Burn it. Someone's written a book on tobacco and cancer of the lungs? The cigarette people are weeping? Burn the book. Serenity, Montag. Peace, Montag. Take your fight outside. Better yet, into the incinerator." (59)
Well, not only do these minor adjustments alter the text and context of the work, it dramatically changes the author's intent. Sure, maybe Bradbury's references are a little outdated, maybe some of his science fiction novels he projected what we would call a narrow minded or even, yes, prejudiced view of certain things or people. But the carefully chosen words that ended up on the page are the only clue we have to discern this novel. For example, it was written in a racist time. I say, so what? People today are offended by something that was written "way back when?" If it was written today, then that's a different story. But if Bradbury's Martian Chronicles is prejudiced it is only telling of his society, of the society that produced a man that produced such work as this. If if we disagree, then it shows us just how far we've come, and maybe in that is the greatest significance and, even, appreciation.
And now, because I want to, some favorite quotes from this read through:
"Books were the only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget. There is nothing magical in them at all. The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us." (82-83)
"Oh, there are many actors alone who haven't acted Pirandello or Shaw or Shakespeare for years because their plays are too aware of the world." (87)
::: Where do plays fit in this world? Do they fall under the category of books? Do they still exist or does only Faber remember these playwrights?
"The books leapt and danced like roasted birds, their wings ablaze with red and yellow feathers." (117)
::: I loved this line because it reminded me of a phoenix, not remembering of course that Bradbury later uses the imagery of a phoenix to describe the ways of the survivors at the end of the novel. That they, unlike the phoenix, don't have to completely rebuild each time from scratch. That they remember what they've done in the past, can learn from their mistakes, and each generation pick up a few more people that, too, remember. (163)
"He felt as if he had left a stage behind and many actors. He felt as if he had left the great seance and all the murmuring ghosts. He was moving from an unreality that was frightening into a reality that was unreal because it was new." (140)
::: Of course I loved the theatre references, but I recently came off a production of Ibsen's Ghosts, so it was doubly significant!
"The sun burnt every day. It burnt Time. The world rushed in a circle and turned on its axis and time was busy burning the years and the people anyway, without any help from him. So if he burnt things with the firemen and the sun burnt Time, that meant that everything burnt! One of them had to stop burning." (141)
"'I am Plato's Republic. Like to read Marcus Aurelius? Mr. Simmons is Marcus.'
'How do you do?' said Mr. Simmons.
'Hello,' said Montag.
'I want 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 Gautama 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.'" (151-152)
::: It must be internalized.
"The other men helped, and Montag helped, and there, in the wilderness, the men all moved their hands, putting out the fire together." (154)
::: Gah!
"Often I think what wonderful carvings never came to birth because he died. How many jokes are missing from the world, and how many homing pigeons untouched by his hands. He shaped the world. He did things to the world." (156)
I want to do things to the world.
