I've recently made it a priority in my life to start reading more fiction. I'm sick of endlessly reading the New York Times and the Economist in a futile attempt to stay up to date on government and politics. Not only is it the reiteration of facts on a daily or weekly basis, but reading the news doesn't necessarily facilitate thought. I never really expected it to, but I expected it to at least keep my brain active. Apparently, that isn't the case. Reading facts, and even opinion, can't stimulate the thought required to maintain a keen mind. The words are either telling you stuff that you should remember or telling you how to think. There isn't any work being done or creative thought being spurned. So I decided to introduce more fiction onto the plate.
I decided to start off with a shorter book. I wasn't going to jump into Joyce or Faulker without something to warm up on. Hell, I'm not sure I could have finished Ulysses in college when my reading skills were at their summit. Anyway, I started with Fahrenheit 451 by science fiction writer Ray Bradbury. It was only about 150 pages and I remember reading it in high school but not really retaining anything. It didn't resonate with me like books such as A Brave New World or The Great Gatsby. Part of the reason may have been that the subject matter wasn't relevant to me then. But the more likely answer is that I really didn't care or was too ignorant to appreciate Bradbury's work.
The first thing that struck me was Bradbury's prose. He has a special talent for presenting writing that is smooth and quick while also being descriptive. The dialogue between characters flows without much interruption and is quite adept at developing the characters. Needless to say, Bradbury is considered a great writer for a reason. But I'm not qualified to critique a novelist, and this wasn't meant to be a book review.
The second, and more important, thing that struck me was the subject matter of the novel. Bradbury constructed a world where people burn books because they have been found to facilitate thought and therefore take away from communal happiness. The people of Bradbury (dis)utopia are constantly entertained and move so fast that thinking is an afterthought. They constantly listen to radio shows through earpieces, drive at excessive speed in order to concentrate on survival rather than wander in thought, and watch TV on their walls. Sound familiar? Depends on your perspective on the world I guess.
The Atlantic Monthly wrote an article this past summer asking "Is Google Making Us Stoopid". Are we so engorged in a culture of instant gratification that we fail to have deep discussions with each other? Does the instant acquisition of information through the internet take away from the depth of knowledge that we attain? All these are pretty fair questions of society at present. Everywhere I go people are playing games, listening to music, talking mindlessly to others, or playing games on little gadgets. It seems like nobody just takes time out to think anymore.
Bradbury assaults this phenomenon directly. Its quite impressive for a novel that was written in the 1950s before the Internet and telecommunications age. His ancillary characters are so preoccupied by stuff that elitists would consider trivial. The main character's wife constantly talks about her TV shows with her friends and refuses to acknowledge anything else. They talk of war like its some distant subject that doesn't affect them (even though one of the characters' husband at war). The society that Bradbury portrays is one of trivial selfishness. They have a false sense of happiness through ignorance of anything but their own lives. They don't worry about others or anything that goes on outside their television parlor. And ultimately, they are nothing more than drones living their lives at the mercy of consumerism and sleeping pills.
Hopefully we aren't falling into Bradbury's world. Sometimes I wonder.
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I found it satisfyingly ironic that my first novel in my fiction renaissance dealt with consequences of society without books and thought. Here I was worrying about becoming stupid because I wasn't reading books and the first book I read told me my assumption was correct. Bradbury's has inspired me to read what are considered the best fiction novels of all time. I'm going to use this list by Random House to determine what those are. The first one? You guessed it...Ulysses.
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