I'm not sure what the point of reading the review of a classic novel is because you already know it's worth reading, but I will attempt to give my thoughts on F451 anyway.

I decided to stop by the library and pick up this small book this week because November is coming up and I wanted to make sure I knew this book well before writing my own novel about a society without books. Mostly because I didn't want to accidentally copy it. But also because it's nice to have Bradbury's style in mind when writing. Writers are usually influenced stylistically by what they're currently reading.

I hadn't actually read this book before. I'm a big fan of Bradbury, but this is the first full-length novel I've read of his. I have seen the F451 movie a couple times, though, and took it to be fairly accurate. It is actually a good movie and I recommend it, but it's not exactly the same as the book. One thing is that you're missing out on all of Bradbury's beautiful language. If only one living writer has any talent stylistically, it has to be Bradbury. Sensory detail, unique diction, perfect analogies--these are his strengths. Not that he is lacking in meaning, plot, or character. In fact, part of what is missing in the movie is some of the vivid characters. I think they're coming out with another movie in 2012 (Bradbury says something to this effect in the interview at the end of the book). I can't imagine it's going to be half as good as the first movie even if they do include the mechanical hound.


What's the book about?

Guy Montag is a fireman in the futuristic world where books are outlawed for making people think too much. Firemen go around to homes where books are said to hide and torch the place down, sometimes including the people that live there. Guy is quite content with his life until they burn an old woman to death. Then he starts to see the small collection of books he's stolen over the years in a different light. He actually starts to READ them.

This leads to thinking, a sudden waking up to the truth that he's not happy. The only person who could understand him, the neighbor girl, is killed in a car accident. His wife is a mindless consumer of their three-wall-TV. His co-workers are against him. Finally, he turns to an old man he met in the part, Faber, who he suspects is a reader too.

When Montag finally rebels, torching his home, his fire captain, his co-workers, he takes to the river in desperate attempt to flee the scene before the firemen set out the mechanical hound--a robot dog with a perfect sense of smell, eight legs, and a needle of poison.


How is it?

While reading on the subway, I haven't been as engrossed in a book as with this one. The words themselves, as I said, are enough to make any writer squirm because they are too much the right words. How does he do it?

Reading Bradbury feels comfortable in a way that is unlike reading any other author. It's familiar in the way that a new friend who you feel you've known your whole life is familiar.

But also, the story says something. I'm not going to go deep into its meaning, the need of books, the frivolous society because you can read that for yourself on sparknotes. It's interesting to see how our culture has come so near this reality fifty years later. Reading is still seen as a good thing, but people are so captivated by nonsense in the media, there literally are people like Montag's wife Mildred in the world. They suck in jabber from the lowest forms of entertainment and put nothing back into the world. I think the best bit is in the end when Montag is visualizing the death of his wife before the bomb hits the city. Staring into the TV wall, the TV goes dark and for the first time, she sees her own reflection and recognizes herself for what she is. And screams into death.

It's interesting to note that this is not the government imposing a no reading law. It's the people who have stopped reading. That's like today. Most adults do not read for leisure. We are a changing society who would rather have fun than grow intelligence, but Bradbury argues that underneath, the fun-lovers aren't anymore happy than the readers, and sometimes less happy.

I'm going to quote my favorite passage and leave you with that:

"Everyone must leave something behind when he dies. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower that you planted, you're there. It doesn't matter what you do, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is the touching. The lawn cutter just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime."