I find this very interesting.
My daughter just read this book for her literature class and yes, censorship was the main idea but that is not what Bradbury said his book was really about.
Bradbury has decided to make news about the writing of his iconographic work and what he really meant. Fahrenheit 451 is not, he says firmly, a story about government censorship. Nor was it a response to Senator Joseph McCarthy, whose investigations had already instilled fear and stifled the creativity of thousands.I absolutely agree with him. I've seen it first hand, with myself, my husband and children. It's funny because we actually rented the movie recently, which by the way I do not recommend because it is 60's cheese whiz, but to see the big t.v. screens back then was really a premonition to what we are living with today. We've all grown accustomed watching to "boob tube" and our minds have turned into mush.
This, despite the fact that reviews, critiques and essays over the decades say that is precisely what it is all about. Even Bradbury’s authorized biographer, Sam Weller, in The Bradbury Chronicles, refers to Fahrenheit 451 as a book about censorship.
Bradbury, a man living in the creative and industrial center of reality TV and one-hour dramas, says it is, in fact, a story about how television destroys interest in reading literature.
Has television killed books for you?
