by Ray Bradbury
Posted on 02/15/2019 5:12:17 AM PST by CharlesOConnell
In the fall of 1978, a Missouri high school English teacher and his students discovered that student copies of Fahrenheit 451 differed from the teacher’s personal copy–certain words or phrases deemed controversial or offensive had been eliminated from the special edition printed for school-age readers more than a decade earlier. This class may not have been the first group of readers to notice the differences, but they were the first to write to Ray Bradbury, who was unaware of the changes. A restored edition soon followed in 1979, completely reset and concluding with Bradbury’s final word on the sanctity of texts.
by Ray Bradbury
|
About two years ago, a letter arrived from a solemn young Vassar lady telling me how much she enjoyed my experiment in space mythology, The Martian Chronicles. But, she added, wouldn't it be a good idea, this late in time, to rewrite the book inserting more women's characters and roles? A few years before that I got a certain amount of mail concerning the same Martian book complaining that the blacks in the book were Uncle Toms and why didn't I "do them over"? Along about then came a note from a Southern white suggesting that I was prejudiced in favor of the blacks and the entire story should be dropped. Two weeks ago my mountain of mail delivered forth a pipsqueak mouse of a letter from a well-known publishing house that wanted to reprint my story "The Fog Horn" in a high school reader. In my story, I had described a lighthouse as having, late at night, an illumination coming from it that was a "God light." Looking up at it from the viewpoint of any sea-creature one would have felt that one was in "the Presence." The editors had deleted "God-Light" and "in the Presence." Some five years back, the editors of yet another anthology for school readers put together a volume with some 400 (count 'em) short stories in it. How do you cram 400 short stories by Twain, Irving, Poe, Maupassant and Bierce into one book? Simplicity itself. Skin, debone, demarrow, scarify, melt, render down and destroy. Every adjective that counted, every verb that moved, every metaphor that weighed more than a mosquito - out! Every simile that would have made a sub-moron's mouth twitch - gone! Any aside that explained the two-bit philosophy of a first-rate writer - lost! Every story, slenderized, starved, bluepenciled, leeched and bled white, resembled every other story. Twain read like Poe read like Shakespeare read like Dostoevsky read like - in the finale - Edgar Guest. Every word of more than three syllables had been razored. Every image that demanded so much as one instant's attention - shot dead. Do you begin to get the damned and incredible picture? How did I react to all of the above? By "firing" the whole lot. By sending them rejection slips to each and every one. By ticketing the assembly of idiots to the far reaches of hell. The point is obvious. There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist / Unitarian, Irish / Italian / Octogenarian / Zen Buddhist, Zionist/Seventh-day Adventist, Women's Lib/Republican, Mattachine/FourSquareGospel feel it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse. Every dimwit editor who sees himself as the source of all dreary blanc-mange plain porridge unleavened literature, licks his guillotine and eyes the neck of any author who dares to speak above a whisper or write above a nursery rhyme. Fire-Captain Beatty, in my novel Fahrenheit 451, described how the books were burned first by the minorities, each ripping a page or a paragraph from the book, then that, until the day came when the books were empty and the minds shut and the library closed forever. "Shut the door, they're coming through the window, shut the window, they're coming through the door," are the words to an old song. They fit my lifestyle with newly arriving butcher/censors every month. Only six months ago, I discovered that, over the years, some cubby-hole editors at Ballantine Books, fearful of contaminating the young, had, bit by bit, censored some 75 separate sections from the novel. Students, reading the novel which, after all, deals with the censorship and book-burning in the future, wrote to tell me of this exquisite irony. Judy-Lynn Del Rey, one of the new Ballantine editors, is having the entire book reset and republished this summer with all the damns and hells back in place. A final test for old Job II here: I sent a play, Leviathan 99, off to a university theater a month ago. My play is based on the "Moby Dick" mythology, dedicated to Melville, and concerns a rocket crew and a blind space captain who venture forth to encounter a Great White Comet and destroy the destroyer. My drama premiers as an opera in Paris this autumn. But, for now, the university wrote back that they hardly dared to my play - it had no women in it! And the ERA ladies on campus would descend with baseball bats if the drama department even tried! Grinding my bicuspids into powder, I suggested that would mean, from now on, no more productions of Boys in the Band (no women), or The Women (no men), Or, counting heads, make and female, a good lot of Shakespeare that would never be seen again, especially if you count line and find that all the good stuff went to the males! I wrote back maybe they should do my play one week, and The Women the next. They probably thought I was joking, and I'm not sure that I wasn't. For it is a mad world and it will get madder if we allow the minorities, be they dwarf or giant, orangutan or dolphin, nuclear-head or water-conversationalist, pro-computerologist or Neo-Luddite, simpleton or sage, to interfere with aesthetics. The real world is the playing ground for each and every group, to make or unmake laws. But the tip of the nose of my book or stories or poems is where their rights and my territorial imperatives begin, run and rule. If Mormons do not like my plays, let them write their own. If the Irish hate my Dublin stories, let them rent typewriters. If teachers and grammar school editors find my jawbreaker sentences shatter their mushmild teeth, let them eat stale cake dunked in weak tea of their own ungodly manufacture. If the Chicano intellectuals wish to re-cut my "Wonderful Ice Cream Suit" so it shapes "Zoot," may the belt unravel and the pants fall. For, let's face it, digression is the soul of wit. Take the philosophic asides away from Dante, Milton or Hamlet's father's ghost and what stays is dry bones. Laurence Sterne said it once: Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine, the life, the soul of reading! Take them out and one cold eternal winter would reign in every page. Restore them to the writer - he steps forth like a bridegroom, bids them all-hail, brings in variety and forbids the appetite to fail. In sum, do not insult me with the beheadings, finger-choppings or the lung-deflations you plan for my works. I need my head to shake or nod, my hand to wave or make into a fist, my lungs to shout or whisper with. I will not go gently onto a shelf, degutted, to become a non-book. All you umpire, back to the bleachers. Referees, hit the showers. It's my game. I pitch, I hit, I catch. I run the bases. At sunset I've won or lost. At sunrise, I'm out again, giving it the old try. And no one can help me. Not even you. |
Fahrenheit 451 bump!
Nice:
“By ticketing the assembly of idiots to the far reaches of hell. “
I had no idea they were changing authors’ books without their permission. Wonder what they’ve done with Tom Sawyer?
I heard Mr. Bradbury speak one time and have never forgotten one thing he said: “There’s a free Ph.D education available to anyone who wants it. It’s at your local library.”
One of the last public things he did before he passed away in 2012 was object strenuously to Michael Moore's use of the name Farenheit 9/11 for one of his movies.
Also, his books (particularly Dandelion Wine) are appreciative for the America he grew up in.
Sublime
When I was reading Huck Finn to my grandson tonight, I had to use the phrase “n-word”, at his request.
From June 2004 edition of Catholic Light:
“Ray Bradbury was very clear that he considered Moore a dishonest thief, but refused to answer if he would press charges in any way. I think Moore is an intellectually dishonest, unimaginative ninny, too.”
Believe that Bradbury got some sort of settlement from Mikey over the use of the title.
Ping
When I taught English III I would read Scarlet Letter, Red Badge of Courage, Huck Finn, and Sun Also Rises to my students.
That’s one of my favorites.
I remember he was quoted as referring to Moore as "that terrible man," although those words weren't recorded electronically.
The left uses man shaming, political correctness, and hate speech memes to cower us into self censorship. Course it ain’t necessarily working on rednecks like me Babycakes.
EXCELLENT rant by Ray Bradbury.
WIKI-—Bradbury stated the novel Fahrenheit 451 worked as a critique of the development of political correctness:
Q: How does the story of Fahrenheit 451 stand up in 1994?
R/B: It works even better because we have political correctness now. Political correctness is the real enemy these days.
Black groups want to control our thinking and you can’t say certain things. Homosexual groups don’t want you to criticize them.
It’s thought control and freedom of speech control.
In a 1982 essay, he wrote, “People ask me to predict the Future, when all I want to do is prevent it”.
This intent had been expressed earlier by other authors, who sometimes attributed it to him.
I read Dandelion Wine when I was the same age as the book's main character Douglas Spaulding, who experienced and articulated so many of the same things I was experiencing, but in a much nicer environment than mine.
"A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it."Our Mission Statement in National Review (19 November 1955).
I'm not aware of any evidence that Ray Bradbury ever met William F. Buckley or read NR, so he may have come up with his statement independently.
National Review has gone to hell since Bill Buckley died...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.