The year in books #13: Fahrenheit 451

Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 is one of those books that is assigned to legions of high school English classes, which has tainted it in my mind with the same presumption of musty, classical impenetrability as other such perennial book-report novels like Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird. It's a shame that so many people first encounter so many incredible books by means of being forced to read them; how can we be charmed by Mr. Darcy or luxuriate in the poetry of Hamlet's words when we're only focused on getting through thirty pages by Wednesday?

Well, like Huck, Scout, Darcy and Hamlet, Guy Montag's tale is a fine yarn far too powerful and enjoyable to deserve the scorn-inducing title of "classic," although it is certainly a classic both in American literature and in speculative fiction. Montag is a fireman in a dystopian world in which the firemen are not responsible for putting out fires, but for creating them; anyone found to be harboring books has the books and their home pumped full of kerosene and destroyed.

As Montag slowly awakens to the meaninglessness of existence in his world - an anti-intellectual America utterly consumed by a hedonism that takes the form of constant consumption of empty-headed but exciting media in the form of wall-sized televisions and "seashells", in-ear sound systems that perfectly predict the iPod - the metaphor of fire accompanies him on his way. It is destruction, and salvation, life and death and rebirth. The title, too, hearkens to the metaphor of fire; 451 degrees Fahrenheit is supposedly the temperature at which paper combusts.

I loved this book for the clockwork efficiency of its plot, the beauty of its language, and the depth of the thinking that went into it. Bradbury obviously wrote the book based on his own deep love of books, and that love will resonate with any reader who feels the same way; but I was struck by his observation that books in and of themselves do not possess any particular nobility. It is, he argues, the ideas within books that make them so precious to us. Any other medium - television, movies, even the spoken word - is capable of performing the same tasks that we rely on books for.

I'm not sure I can agree with the idea that anything could take the place of books in my life. Certainly it would be a shame if the world ever had do without this one. A quick read, and beautifully written, I can absolutely recommend Fahrenheit 451 to anyone who loves to read books.