Agora Road Book Club: Fahrenheit 451 edition.

[Remember_Summer_Days]

I finished Part 2. Maybe it's because I got all my criticisms out in my first post, but I enjoyed it more than Part 1. There were fewer forced similes and the writing felt better overall. Faber's monologue on the three things missing from modern society, Montag's struggle to read on the subway, and the scene where he finally snaps and starts reading to Mildred and her friends were all great. The poem he reads was written by Matthew Arnold, a Victorian cultural critic who argued for the preservation of "the best which has been thought and said in the world" as a cure for modern social problems, and who probably had ideas similar to Bradbury's on his mind when he wrote about the "Sea of Faith" retreating off into darkness. The poem's Wikipedia page quotes a four-line response from William Butler Yeats, which takes a more optimistic view of the same situation:

Faber's acknowledgement that TV and radio could be used to convey the same things as old books was interesting, as was the fact that Bradbury never really follows up on it. It made me wonder why he and Montag never considered going into the TV business and fighting cultural decline by making a really good TV program. It sounds silly in the context of the story, but many artists have adopted the same subversive (or un-subversive) attitude in real life and succeeded in elevating pop culture a bit. In a way, it's what Bradbury is trying to do by delivering his social commentary in the form of a science fiction story - a pop culture genre that most people in 1953 would have considered to be low-brow garbage on the same level as television.
Instead, Faber says they should just wait for the atomic bombs to drop in the hope that a better culture will rise from the ashes. Spoiler: this is pretty much exactly what happens at the end, if I remember correctly. It's a reasonable response given the dystopia the book is set in, but it also reminds me of /pol/ types who claim that the best way to resist cultural decline is to "ride the tiger" i.e. sit on your ass and contribute nothing to society while you wait for it all to collapse. Bradbury's views weren't that extreme, but his pessimistic depiction of pop culture as a monolithic thing that manages to exist without any human involvement (Who's producing the TV shows? What actor plays "the white clown"?) points in the same direction. There's no hope for reform, the only way to fix things is to blow everything up and start over. I can see the logic of this argument but I don't like it at all. Personally, I think it's better to remain productive, optimistic, and try to focus on "the rattle of pebbles under the receding wave." Call attention to the good things other people are still creating and bringing into the world, and try, even in a small way, to create something yourself. This is still possible, even on the internet - which in many ways is far worse than any TV Bradbury could have imagined 69 years ago.

The ´hyper-reality´stuff that the internet is made about feels like what everyone feared the worst excesses of TV would lead to, but on very 'entertain yourself to death' steroids.

Your question about why it didn't occur to Montag to just try and work with the current TV-addicted culture is a very good one. I got the impression that there was some sort of totalitarian government-thing preventing people from doing that sort of geez this makes me think television, after all the root cause for burning books was that they tend to upset people. So I guess it makes sense for Montag to never try that. Though that point I just wonder if that would've been a more interesting plot. How would a society that's so in love to bare-bones and superficial television consumption react to a thought provoking TV program. To expand on the idea that this society sees TV characters as family, how would they react to the exposition of a Television program that kills off main characters? Heck that could be a great way of manipulating society by a totalitarian government, emotionally manipulating a given population into feeling what they want by shaping the direction of the TV shows they consume. And you could add to that a commentary about how people are so detached and dejected from IRL, that they need the 'As shown on TV!' exaggerated melancholies to feel any sort of human connection. People can only feel human when they interact with fiction, that strikes me more true to our age.

I've never seen any evidence for this correlation, bot how both right and left wing activists blame or take credit, respectively, for propagating positive LGBT representations in media, and thus moving society into accepting IRL LGBT at large. Again, I'm not sure this is true. But everyone seems to recognize that TV or media in general can easily shape our perceptions of reality.

Anyways, I veered away from the main topic of your paragraph lmao. But it was fun to brainstorm these ideas.

 

[Remember_Summer_Days]

I guess this post will be my P2 review of the book. I'm really tired rn so this probably will be some sort of semi-coherent unabridged rant. I've been putting out for so long that I gotta do this! Anyways, you guys all pointed out some great criticisms at the novel. I especially loved @L. Rhodes post, he's a very good writer. But all you are really really.

So I guess I'll just spew some thoughts out as they come.

Clarisse. Holy what a wasted characters. Part 1 really was some false advertisement that this was going to be some glorified YA novel. Nope, Clarisse just dies off-screen. Honestly it might've been for the better cause the cringe romance between her and Montag was one of the worsts I've read anywhere, like not even YA or Light Novel levels, that stuff was on the bad fanfiction scale of terrible romances. Now to be fair, I'm not even sure that Bradburry was going for a romance between the two characters. It's not clear where he was going with Clarise at all other than to make her a parrot for his ideas, also to be fair. But then you read stuff like this: 'But Clarisse's favourite subject wasn't herself. It was everyone else, and me. She was the first person in a good many years I've really liked. She was the first person I can remember who looked straight at me as if I counted.' He lifted the two books. 'These men have been dead a long time, but I know their words point, one way or another, to Clarisse.'

I'm just. Jesus Christ watch out. Clarrise belongs next to Empress Theresa or Ebony Darkness Dementia Raven's Way in the Mary Sue throne.

Bradburry also has this non-sequitur interpretation about how reading books make you a better person? I know about this funny mustache man that read 300 pages a day, and had a personal library with around 7000 books. Yeah I'm talking about that retched Adolf. Little known fact he was an avid reader. I guess he just didn't burn the right kind of books.

Another thing that comes to mind is the idea that the people that have read a book, in a way become that book, if only by their memory of it. Hence why Montag is Ecclesiastes at the end. God help me if that's the case, I fear that I might be some sort of Sonic High School. Though I think Bradburry was correct in pointing that fact out. In a very real sense you are what you read, ideas don't leave your mind once they've entered it. You can refute them or cognitive-dissonance them away, but they really do be living rent free like an annoying roommate.

The last important thing that occurs to me is, of course, the ending. Which sort of cames out of nowhere. Like yeah it reaaally feels like the ending was an idea Bradburry had while eating dinner and just went with it and then edited some references to a war or nuclear bombings into the earlier parts of the novel. But talking more about how bad F451's world-building is would be tired for this thread.

Like N56 pointed out, the ending was this oddly nihilistic idea that that we can ever only go back at a cultured society if we get a doomsday event and then a rebuild from the ashes party of elites to guide society into a brighter future. Gee I know of a funny mustache man who also thought like that!

Honestly I've been fascinated by these sort of ´salvation by the apocalypse' premillennial dispensationalism that many people on the right have. Like they unironically look forward to some sort of global collapse just because that will be their only chance at 'fixing' society. I find that disgusting, not because of how black-pilled it is. I mean. You are actively desiring an event that will cause millions of life to suffer just because of your abstract hope for le trad society which you have no way of making it work right. And silly me I thought those commies were the ones who leeched off fantasies of esoteric political ideas that have no utility against the facts and logics of reality! It's a very Che Guevera-pilled 'Let's have nuclear war if it means the world will become communist' way of thinking.

Anyways, political ramblings aside, I'm not gonna waste my time accusing Mr. Bradburry of nihilism. And who cares how moral the ideas on paper are really. But the idea is so dumb. I think @zalaz alaza hit the nail with why that is, so I'm not going to dwell too much into it. Though I do like the idea of intellectual hobos rebuilding society with their esoteric knowledge. Cause let's be real that's us Agorans right there. It's presented in such a 1-D way that I feel it's not even worth debating. Good luck to those academics building an electric grid.

Also, imagine if everything went the same, but Montag instead found old and tired 2020's critical theorist and postmodern academics, or instead NRX tradpilled substackers, and those were the ones tasked with rebuilding society from the ashes. Now that would be a great comedy.

And to shill L.Rhodes again, the irony of how lofty and circle-jerky F451 is about le reading and the supposed Marianna Trench books have, while F451 is a book that does a lot of disservice to that idea. Because F451 isn't a deep book.

'Ironic, then, that one of the main dialogues in this book is about finding deeper meaning in books, and having a higher standard for the messages of creative output, and for this book to so often congratulates the reader for reading in an almost circlejerked manner, yet the book doesn't contain the very depth of thought that Bradbury is trying to write about.'

And also to add to what Rhodes said. Even if this novel sucks, it makes me sort of depressed to know that I'll probably never write something that's close to being as good as F451. It really puts into perspective how hard writing truly is. But we all got each other to cope about this 'Ill never be a good writer´ looming sadness.

 

[Remember_Summer_Days]

Lmao I just noticed how my first and last paragraph contradict each other. Well excuse me I did say I was really tired. I'll not even gonna edit it out xD Leave there to show how my emotions sway. Honestly, I'm not sure how much talent any of us has, but the fact that we like to tryhard when we write makes me really happy idk.

 

[№56]

Finally finished the last part of the book. I don't have anything to add that hasn't been said already. The reveal that Beatty had a death wish made his character more interesting in retrospect and made me wish Bradbury had fleshed him out a bit more. The Mechanical Hound wasn't nearly as scary as I remember it being when I was a kid, but I still think it was one of the cooler sci-fi elements of the book. I liked the descriptions of nature in the final scenes when Montag escapes the city, especially the part where Bradbury compares the smell of the forest to pickles, mustard, licorice, etc. The ending was bad.
F451 has gotten two different movie adaptations. The first one, from 1966, was directed by Francois Truffaut. I haven't seen it, but from what I can gather it's a pretty straightforward adaptation. The special effects look a little corny and Montag's actor has a ridiculously thick accent, but the retro-futuristic aesthetic matches the way I imagined the setting almost exactly. Clarisse and Mildred (she has a different name) are played by the same actress with different haircuts. Bradbury thought this was a mistake, but apparently liked the film and thought it was a good adaptation. Nagolbud agrees.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9iyKI2pJbE

The second adaptation was done in 2018 by HBO, stars Michael B. "The Guy From Black Panther, No Not Him The Other One" Jordan, and makes significant changes to the source material. I had never heard of it until I started searching for information about the 1966 film, and ended up watching it out of curiosity. In this version of F451 society revolves around a futuristic social media-esque internet ("The 9"), and the firemen's job is to defend loyal citizens ("natives") and prevent dissidents ("Eels") from uploading old media ("graffiti") to the net. The dystopia jargon is fun and I don't mind them lumping other forms of media in with the books (I don't think Bradbury would have minded either), but making the plot revolve around internet censorship completely misses the point. There's barely anything in this version that touches on the idea of people leading shallow and distracted lives because of pop culture (Mildred is written out of the plot entirely, Clarisse is a punk girl who smuggles contraband and never does any cute stuff with dandelions.) There are a number of scenes that show livestreams of the firemen's raids getting upvotes and fire emojis, but that's it. Either the director didn't understand the book or the producers didn't want the film's social criticism to hit too hard. It's pretty telling that the punishment for "Eels" in this version isn't imprisonment but having their fingerprints burned off so they can't sign into "The 9" anymore. You would think this would be exactly what they want, but the movie treats it like a terrible human rights violation. The master plan of the "Eels" is to create a DNA sequence that contains every book ever written ("The Omnis") and inject it into wild animals so that the information can never be censored. They don't care about making people live more meaningful lives, they just want to spread more information around the internet. Bradbury's quote that the book wasn't actually about censorship must have fallen on deaf ears.
The one thing I did like was the portrayal of Beatty and his relationship with Montag. There are more scenes that show Beatty struggling with his job and doing things like secretly writing poetry on cigarette papers. He's a mentor and surrogate father figure to Montag throughout the film, and at the end we find out that he inducted Montag into the fireman cadets as a kid after arresting his real father for owning books. (Montag can't remember because he's been taking memory-loss eyedrops - nobody forgets stuff because of TV in this version.) The implication is that Beatty wanted a son who would be the perfect fireman, someone who would help him overcome his own doubts about the system he works for. It's an interesting interpretation and could have saved the movie for me if everything else had been better. The actor who plays Beatty also gives the best performance in the film, this scene early on where he and Montag do a D.A.R.E. type presentation at a school was what convinced me to give the movie a shot:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTz2-DyFRX4

The bit about classic books surviving as summaries written in emoji-language is never brought up again, unfortunately.
It's a bad film overall, and the few interesting changes they made to the original plot are outweighed by all the bad ones. I'll leave you with this unintentionally hilarious shot of the "Master Ridley" woman revealing a copy of Ulysses strapped to her chest like a suicide vest:

 

[Remember_Summer_Days]

Finally finished the last part of the book. I don't have anything to add that hasn't been said already. The reveal that Beatty had a death wish made his character more interesting in retrospect and made me wish Bradbury had fleshed him out a bit more. The Mechanical Hound wasn't nearly as scary as I remember it being when I was a kid, but I still think it was one of the cooler sci-fi elements of the book. I liked the descriptions of nature in the final scenes when Montag escapes the city, especially the part where Bradbury compares the smell of the forest to pickles, mustard, licorice, etc. The ending was bad.
F451 has gotten two different movie adaptations. The first one, from 1966, was directed by Francois Truffaut. I haven't seen it, but from what I can gather it's a pretty straightforward adaptation. The special effects look a little corny and Montag's actor has a ridiculously thick accent, but the retro-futuristic aesthetic matches the way I imagined the setting almost exactly. Clarisse and Mildred (she has a different name) are played by the same actress with different haircuts. Bradbury thought this was a mistake, but apparently liked the film and thought it was a good adaptation. Nagolbud agrees.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9iyKI2pJbE

The second adaptation was done in 2018 by HBO, stars Michael B. "The Guy From Black Panther, No Not Him The Other One" Jordan, and makes significant changes to the source material. I had never heard of it until I started searching for information about the 1966 film, and ended up watching it out of curiosity. In this version of F451 society revolves around a futuristic social media-esque internet ("The 9"), and the firemen's job is to defend loyal citizens ("natives") and prevent dissidents ("Eels") from uploading old media ("graffiti") to the net. The dystopia jargon is fun and I don't mind them lumping other forms of media in with the books (I don't think Bradbury would have minded either), but making the plot revolve around internet censorship completely misses the point. There's barely anything in this version that touches on the idea of people leading shallow and distracted lives because of pop culture (Mildred is written out of the plot entirely, Clarisse is a punk girl who smuggles contraband and never does any cute stuff with dandelions.) There are a number of scenes that show livestreams of the firemen's raids getting upvotes and fire emojis, but that's it. Either the director didn't understand the book or the producers didn't want the film's social criticism to hit too hard. It's pretty telling that the punishment for "Eels" in this version isn't imprisonment but having their fingerprints burned off so they can't sign into "The 9" anymore. You would think this would be exactly what they want, but the movie treats it like a terrible human rights violation. The master plan of the "Eels" is to create a DNA sequence that contains every book ever written ("The Omnis") and inject it into wild animals so that the information can never be censored. They don't care about making people live more meaningful lives, they just want to spread more information around the internet. Bradbury's quote that the book wasn't actually about censorship must have fallen on deaf ears.
The one thing I did like was the portrayal of Beatty and his relationship with Montag. There are more scenes that show Beatty struggling with his job and doing things like secretly writing poetry on cigarette papers. He's a mentor and surrogate father figure to Montag throughout the film, and at the end we find out that he inducted Montag into the fireman cadets as a kid after arresting his real father for owning books. (Montag can't remember because he's been taking memory-loss eyedrops - nobody forgets stuff because of TV in this version.) The implication is that Beatty wanted a son who would be the perfect fireman, someone who would help him overcome his own doubts about the system he works for. It's an interesting interpretation and could have saved the movie for me if everything else had been better. The actor who plays Beatty also gives the best performance in the film, this scene early on where he and Montag do a D.A.R.E. type presentation at a school was what convinced me to give the movie a shot:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTz2-DyFRX4

The bit about classic books surviving as summaries written in emoji-language is never brought up again, unfortunately.
It's a bad film overall, and the few interesting changes they made to the original plot are outweighed by all the bad ones. I'll leave you with this unintentionally hilarious shot of the "Master Ridley" woman revealing a copy of Ulysses strapped to her chest like a suicide vest:
View attachment 41827

Cringe, she should've had Infinite Jest strapped on instead

 

[Deleted member 4436]

Cringe, she should've had Infinite Jest strapped on instead

OH FUCK LOOK OUT

 

[Remember_Summer_Days]

She has the next 3 book we readin' for the book club

 

[Deleted member 4436]

She has the next 3 book we readin' for the book club

Can't wait for the Empress Theresa book club as a reprieve after immediately after reading Blood Meridian
Or the Infinite Jest book club, where we get people to try to read it in its entirety in 3 weeks
Or the Call of the Crocodile book club where we (pretend I said something funny here, I don't actually know anything about COTC besides the fact that it was written by some dude from /lit/)
Don't even get me started on the Haruhi book club, I'm sure the club members would absolutely love to read that

 

[Jade]

Can't wait for the Empress Theresa book club as a reprieve after immediately after reading Blood Meridian
Or the Infinite Jest book club, where we get people to try to read it in its entirety in 3 weeks
Or the Call of the Crocodile book club where we (pretend I said something funny here, I don't actually know anything about COTC besides the fact that it was written by some dude from /lit/)
Don't even get me started on the Haruhi book club, I'm sure the club members would absolutely love to read that

Or the "Tree and the Well" book club, where everyone can listen to me talk like a lunatic about how this book demonstrates superbly why, despite being a complete trainwreck dumpster-fire of a language, Old English is still infinitely superior to modern english and why it is essential for the spiritual health of Anglosphere that it be revived and modern english be killed

 

[Cobalt]

 

[Remember_Summer_Days]

View attachment 51802

Should be the book cover

 

[dorgon]

I read this book back in high school so I don't remember much but here are my thoughts:

I didn't really care in terms of how the book was written, although I will admit that the book didn't really hold up to that epic intro.
In terms of future implications however, I do believe that this is where the meat of the book stands. Less and less people are reading out of their own volition due to the ever-encompassing grasp of social media and short-term instant gratification. It does relate to what the book is talking about, only without the government bans. I doubt that state-enforced hedonism will become a thing but books are becoming less and less popular because if you are a teenager who spends all day looking at flashy videos, softcore pr0n, and watching family guy clips and shitty mobile games at the same time some black words on a white background will not look interesting at all to you. But what I do find interesting also is that there could be a more cynical outlook that i've developed from the book and thought of in real life, and it is what if people are purposely being made dumber so they can be easier to govern? With people who question authority less, it allows the bureaucrats to get away with things more, and take less effort to hide them. And the bureaucrats can still say that the populace still have their freedom, because they're not gonna use that freedom in any way except to further their self-indulgences. If you give many people their bread and circus and let them indulge in materialism they won't question the system, in fact they'll like it because it makes them feel good. So maybe laws to ban books aren't necessary, it's a shitty education system that promotes obedience and discourages taking risks and critical thinking. that's the way to go to tame a population. (Of course, not everyone will bend the knee. look at ourselves, posting here, for example.)