"Monday burn Millay, Wednesday Whitman, Friday Faulkner, burn 'em to ashes, then burn the ashes. That's our official slogan." -- Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
If you have been reading my links at the top of the site, you may have noticed an article about Ray Bradbury. He has just turned eighty-seven and apparently doesn't give a rat's ass what anyone thinks of him or his work. But I don't expect him to read this anyway, so I will indulge myself. I chose Ray Bradbury because of his novel, Fahrenheit 451, but looking at his Wikipedia entry, I am stunned by how much he has written. Plays, novels, short story collections, children's books, screenplays, tele-plays, non-fiction, poetry; you name it. I'll definitely have to check out some more of his work. That has been half the fun of blogging my favorite authors. I am constantly discovering how little I know and in the process I have renewed my interest in reading. It has been fun so far.
Anyway, Fahrenheit 451, I read it a couple of years ago and it struck me as having had "come true" in some sense or another. I mean, the way that we have become so immersed in TV culture; it seems that fact and fiction often become interchangeable and that intellectualism has been transformed into a liability (socially speaking) rather than an asset. I know it is not all as bad as it seemed in the novel, but there may be more than a grain of truth there. At the time the idea struck me profoundly. How often is the topic of conversation last night's episode of whatever? Most of us follow some show or another and in some way feel that we "know" the characters whose lives we follow. At least I know I am guilty. I guess the question boils down to the age old argument of whether theater's purpose is edification or entertainment. What exactly is it that TV teach us?