Classic Sci-Fi: Should You Read It? is a self-imposed project in which I read pre-1990 science fiction novels and categorize them as “classis sci-fi you should read,” “classic sci-fi you should read if you’re all hardcore about it,” or “classic sci-fi you don’t have to read.” For background on my project, please see the introduction to my review of 1984.
Fahrenheit 451 is inevitable for my classic sci-fi reading project because it’s on EVERY must-read list, I didn’t read it in high school like everybody else, and… turns out it could maybe use a set of fresh eyes? I knew going in that the hero is a “fireman” in the dystopian future, which means he sets fire to books in their houses, and that it warns against censorship and conformity (communism). I’ve also read enough Bradbury to be side-eyeing him before I even started. (I read The Martian Chronicles last year and it has some really interesting ideas, and I was going to put it on the must-reads with I, Robot, but then Bradbury just COULD NOT avoid being egregiously sexist. Read it if you’re hardcore.)
Synopsis
Guy Montag, fireman/government tool of censorship and illiteracy, has had a weird week–his wife has to be saved from overdose by paramedics; he meets and becomes obsessed with his teenaged Manic Pixie Dream Girl neighbor; and he witnesses a woman chose to burn to death in her own home rather than give up her books. He’s disillusioned and freaked out by his weird fire chief and their creepy robot hound that hunts down subversives, so he starts hoarding and reading books. The books, primarily the Bible (of course) change his life, until he is turned in by his own wife, ordered to burn down his own home, kills his attackers, and becomes a fugitive.
He meets a group of outcasts who preserve works of literature by memorizing them, which is fascinating. This reminded me of Station Eleven, where plays and graphic novels become supremely important because of the people who remember them and how they are remembered. I want an entire book about THIS. I could take or leave the mysterious technology they have that gives people a photographic memory, but tell me everything about the surprising works that survive and what they mean to people. Anyway, this part of the book is short because town gets nuked, the outcasts survive because they were out of town, and they make plans to rebuild society.
Pros/Cons
I think we can all agree with the premise that censorship and burning books is bad, though Fahrenheit 451‘s publication history and public critiques have been pretty interesting. The novel has been subject to its own censorship and book burnings. Bradbury (sometimes) denied that Fahrenheit 451 was anti-censorship, but he later used the concepts in 451 to argue against “PC culture.” Here’s Ray: “Political correctness is the real enemy these days. The black groups want to control our thinking and you can’t say certain things. The homosexual groups don’t want you to criticize them. It’s thought control and freedom of speech control.” Y’all, yikes. Bradbury was anti-affirmative action and anti-“big government,” and apparently couldn’t tell the difference between censorship and being a decent human being.
On the other hand, art doesn’t belong to the artist, and my sister (who read Fahrenheit 451 in high school, like a normal person) loved this book and used it as a weapon against her teachers who kept a controlling eye on what literature they taught at her private religious school. So.
The treatment of both women in this novel is problematic at best: Guy’s neighbor Clarisse is a classic MPDG and does things like stand in the rain and wonder, which is mostly notable because the rest of society is completely incurious and asking “why” is considered troublesome. Montag is obsessed with Clarisse even though he’s married and she’s a teenager. Clarisse also kind of gets refrigeratored, motivating our hero to question things more often. Guy’s wife Mildred is a stand-in for society, and Bradbury portrays her as weak, shallow, and ugly. She does not join Montag in rebellion or in fleeing, refusing to leave her censored life in mass-media culture. Bradbury lets Guy be the righteous hero and Mildred be the embodiment of the entire dystopia, and we’re meant to share in Guy’s disgust for her. (Interestingly, the text’s condemnation of Mildred’s constant use of earbud-like “seashell speakers” gave me a moment of cognitive dissonance because I was listening to the book on my own seashell speakers–Bradbury would probably consider earbuds a symptom of intellectual decline, even when used to listen to his book.)
I’m probably over-generous with my benefits of the doubt, taking into account the time in which books were written and that the character’s views might not be the author’s, but Ray’s treatment of the Fahrenheit women is so typical fuckin’ Bradbury that I have no doubts to give. It’s a problem.
Verdict
Read Fahrenheit 451 if you’re all hardcore. You probably have to read it if you want people to consider you well-read in classic sci-fi, especially because most people HAD to read it when they were seventeen, but if you don’t care about that? Read Station Eleven instead.