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A review by katie_is_dreaming
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
3.0
This book seems to have entered the social consciousness at this stage. Like Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, it warns us of a future that could come to be if we aren't careful to protect books and all the forms of culture that make us think and help us to talk to each other.
Bradbury was writing at a time when television was really beginning to take off. In this novel we read about television screens that take up all the walls in a living room, where you can be immersed in the visual spectacle. Characters here can live in the television world even as they sleep, through the constant feed of drama and commercials in their ears. TV characters are relatives, but becomes clear that no one in this world is really happy, despite believing they have everything that should make them happy.
Bradbury was very much ahead of his time. This book is almost 70 years old at this stage, but it still has resonance with that sense of fear that television and other technological advances in media might end up making us soulless and unhappy, and might make us think less critically. I don't know that Bradbury's fears were entirely right, but I'm not sure they were entirely wrong either. What is important is that there is a preservation of our intellectual history, that it doesn't get drowned out by flashier new technologies.
As important and forward thinking as this book is/was, though, it's also dated. All of the key characters are men (not very heartening for a reading and thinking woman to read!), and what's perhaps even more telling of its datedness to me is that all the literary references (or most of them) are to male writers. Couldn't he have slipped Austen in there, or Brontë, or Eliot? Yes, of course the book is almost 70, but surely he was aware of great female writers he could have referenced too!
I had a difficult time with the language too, particularly in the beginning. I got used to it later, or it became less bothersome. I certainly felt it was overwritten at the start. It was a style of language for science fiction that feels very dated now. A lot of repetition and staccato sort of writing. It felt pretty stylised, rather than flowing naturally to me. Of course, all of that is very subjective, and others will love this writing style.
I did think that I would like this more than I do. I'm a bit disappointed that I don't. I think I would have had to have read it when it was written, or much earlier in its long history, to have been really gripped by it. I suppose I've read other dystopian literature that dull the impact of this (and yet, reading Nineteen Eighty-Four was the most visceral, disturbing experience, so part of me thinks that Orwell just did it better. Though I read Orwell a number of years ago too, so was maybe more impressionable then).
Over all, while I didn't love this, it is a book that people should read. If you're interested in the importance of literature and ideas, and ensuring the continuance of a society that thinks for itself, this is definitely a worthwhile read.
Bradbury was writing at a time when television was really beginning to take off. In this novel we read about television screens that take up all the walls in a living room, where you can be immersed in the visual spectacle. Characters here can live in the television world even as they sleep, through the constant feed of drama and commercials in their ears. TV characters are relatives, but becomes clear that no one in this world is really happy, despite believing they have everything that should make them happy.
Bradbury was very much ahead of his time. This book is almost 70 years old at this stage, but it still has resonance with that sense of fear that television and other technological advances in media might end up making us soulless and unhappy, and might make us think less critically. I don't know that Bradbury's fears were entirely right, but I'm not sure they were entirely wrong either. What is important is that there is a preservation of our intellectual history, that it doesn't get drowned out by flashier new technologies.
As important and forward thinking as this book is/was, though, it's also dated. All of the key characters are men (not very heartening for a reading and thinking woman to read!), and what's perhaps even more telling of its datedness to me is that all the literary references (or most of them) are to male writers. Couldn't he have slipped Austen in there, or Brontë, or Eliot? Yes, of course the book is almost 70, but surely he was aware of great female writers he could have referenced too!
I had a difficult time with the language too, particularly in the beginning. I got used to it later, or it became less bothersome. I certainly felt it was overwritten at the start. It was a style of language for science fiction that feels very dated now. A lot of repetition and staccato sort of writing. It felt pretty stylised, rather than flowing naturally to me. Of course, all of that is very subjective, and others will love this writing style.
I did think that I would like this more than I do. I'm a bit disappointed that I don't. I think I would have had to have read it when it was written, or much earlier in its long history, to have been really gripped by it. I suppose I've read other dystopian literature that dull the impact of this (and yet, reading Nineteen Eighty-Four was the most visceral, disturbing experience, so part of me thinks that Orwell just did it better. Though I read Orwell a number of years ago too, so was maybe more impressionable then).
Over all, while I didn't love this, it is a book that people should read. If you're interested in the importance of literature and ideas, and ensuring the continuance of a society that thinks for itself, this is definitely a worthwhile read.