I think that Bradbury is one hell of a storyteller and I feel guilty carping about what bothers me in his writng. Despite my affection for Fahrenheit 451 and Something Wicked This Way Comes , I think he was better in his short stories than his full-length novels. He was also better at male characters, if you allow for the overly golden glow on Midwestern boyhood, than at female characters of any age.
Rachel Thern <[log in to unmask]> wrote: I remember Bradbury throwing in a slight against modern art too, and
anything else Bradbury doesn't like/doesn't understand about the modern
world. I guess that's part of why I thought this book had an
interesting concept but rather lousy execution. It sounds like it's
going to be relevant cultural criticism and then just doesn't satisfy,
at least not for me.
Rachel
Michael Poteet wrote:
>Deb Warner asks:
>
><< In Fahrenheit 451 , why is Montag able to read, if reading is such a forbiddeen activity? Not only does he read, he reads Dickens. He shows no doubts about his occupation early in the movie, so he's not from a family of secret readers. Now that I think of it, doesn't his superior officer imply that he has also read some books, or is he just passing along what he has been told? >>
>
>It's not that reading is illegal (the firemen have a handbook, for instance, which the narrator quotes in Part I) -- it's certain *content* that has been banned, not reading itself. Chief Beatty explains that one can still read comic books (although this seems an unwarranted slight against the medium!), sex magazines, and gossip rags. It's the great literature that has been done away with -- and not even so much banned at first as just watered down into nothingness, bowdlerized and pared down into irrelevance. Beatty does indeed tell Montag flat out that he has read the books, and one wonders if he is altogether sincere in his assertion that "there's nothing of worth in them," or if he is expressing bitterness that he, unlike Montag, has capitulated to and is now complicit in The System.
>
>Respectfully,
>Mike Poteet
>
>
>___________________
>Mike Poteet, cataloguer
>Bauman Rare Books
>1608 Walnut St., 19th floor
>Philadelphia, PA 19103
>215-546-6466
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Scanned MGW1
>
"My name is Francis Tolliver, in Liverpool I dwell
Each Christmas come since World War I, I've learned its lessons well
That the ones who call the shots won't be among the dead and lame
And on each end of the rifle we're the same "
final verse of "Christmas In The Trenches " by John McCutcheon
---------------------------------
The fish are biting.
Get more visitors on your site using Yahoo! Search Marketing.
|