I read this book a while back after hearing the universal praise for it, and ended up not enjoying it. The prose was often confusing, with some parts that I’m still not sure what exactly was happening. Characters felt one-dimensional with rarely any development and the female characters were so useless that it’s borderline misogynistic. The themes of the story had no nuance, being either shoved in your face constantly or literally explained to you in a long-winded monologue by characters made only to spout these facts. Not only that, but the whole message of “book good tv bad” is just incredibly overdone, with the fact that various television shows, along with video games and music, can tell powerful stories that change the lives of those who experience them on the same level, if not better, than books do. Now books are important and are an amazing medium, but disregarding everything but books is extremely elitist, leading to the entire book sounding like the rambling of an old man who complains about every bit of technology while being told that vaccines cause babies to turn into reptoids by Facebook. Outside of the book itself, I see many people defending it vehemently, calling everyone who didn’t like the book “part of the problem”, basically belittling them for not being a snob who reads nothing but dry, lifeless literature from 400 years ago. What did you think about the book? Why did you like/not like it?
by ChemicalPanda10
7 Comments
It’s one of those books that introduces a new concept, and so is foundational; but over the years the concept is built on, and the original seems stale in comparison.
When Fahrenheit 451 was written, the idea of anti-intellectualism, that book-banning wouldn’t be some huge fight but simply a matter of people not wanting to read books anymore, was relatively unexplored. The book pioneered that.
You say “the whole message of “book good tv bad” is just incredibly overdone” but this book was written in 1953. I can assure you that this message was not “incredibly overdone” at the time. Rather, it was prophetic. I’m not telling you that you have to like it, but could you at least put it into the context of the time it was written?
Bradbury loved writing for TV and movies… his point was assuredly *not* “book good tv bad.” The point was more “the media is the message” in that different formats affect us differently so that TV is not a *substitute* for reading.
You don’t have to like the book, but you’ve got to put it into historical context. It’s 70 years old at this point. As another commenter mentioned, it was an unexplored idea at the time for the most part. TV in a normal person’s house would have been a new thing. It wasn’t saying TV is evil, it was painting a picture of a future where we become so consumed by our fake realities that we cease to care about the real world and are apathetic towards the destruction of knowledge.
Sometimes classics can feel like they’re full of cliches to people who have now seen those ideas dozens of times, but it’s because they pioneered those cliches that they’re important.
Masterpiece. It’s not just about books. It’s about single-minded society we have today. He predicted cancel-culture long time ago. Disagree with everything you wrote.
I think it’s popularity among the public is just a result of its popularity in school curricula. Tons of people in the American school system had to read it. Most people don’t read outside of or after leaving school, so it’s common to a see a list of favorites that just looks like an English class reading list:
Great Gatsby
Fahrenheit 451
1984
Animal Farm
Brave New World
Lord of the Flies
Of Mice and Men
I like some of these more than others, but I don’t really think of them as these masterpieces (except for maybe the Great Gatsby), but just that they are widely taught, and since they’re widely taught, there are countless resources available for teaching them, whereas more recent books that might seem to have advanced beyond the scope that these books explore don’t have as much a precedent for being taught, don’t have as many available resources to teach them, and don’t have as much of a “settled” opinion on what they mean.
So, it’s the English programs.
Best hype when I read it is that it should happen again ( Nazi Germany during the 30’s). Sad thing is it’s happening in America.