Book Review: Fahrenheit 451
Aug. 18th, 2010 03:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerRead Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 this weekend. It's a little shrimp of a book, 115 pages, an hour and a half to read.
It's too long.
The book was apparently cobbled together out of short stories, and it has a short story worth of an idea in it - and no, it's not about censorship; I think people believe the book is all about censorship because book-burning is such a visceral, horrible image.
Rather, Fahrenheit 451 is about how television is creating an instant gratification culture that is CORRUPTING OUR SOULS and destroying our ability to feel and think, which degradation of the human spirit is encapsulated in compulsory book-burning.
It's alarmist - it's inevitably dated (nowadays it's surely the internet that's CORRUPTING OUR SOULS) - and, fatally, it's predictable. The plot is not predictable - I didn't know what events would take place - but I knew what those occurrences would mean, so the exact events weren't interesting. The theme never grew larger or more complicated but remained the same, all the way through the book.
It's dull.
Even the climax is not exciting. It's a ridiculous set-piece where the chief fireman (that is, the chief of the men who light books on fire) quotes from works of great literature for pages on end - quotes that would have no resonance for the protag, and are clearly meant for the reader, and God alone knows why Bradbury didn't admit he was writing a treatise and leave off pretending it was a novel.
Because it's not a good novel. The plot is unpredictable but not interesting. All but one of the characters are dull, and she dies. (Off screen. I'm pretending she went to a better book.) The story is smaller than the sum of its parts, worthwhile only for the Theme.
And it's such a simplified, spoonfed theme, too. I would expect better from a book that bemoaned the downfall of thought.
I want my hour and a half back.
It's too long.
The book was apparently cobbled together out of short stories, and it has a short story worth of an idea in it - and no, it's not about censorship; I think people believe the book is all about censorship because book-burning is such a visceral, horrible image.
Rather, Fahrenheit 451 is about how television is creating an instant gratification culture that is CORRUPTING OUR SOULS and destroying our ability to feel and think, which degradation of the human spirit is encapsulated in compulsory book-burning.
It's alarmist - it's inevitably dated (nowadays it's surely the internet that's CORRUPTING OUR SOULS) - and, fatally, it's predictable. The plot is not predictable - I didn't know what events would take place - but I knew what those occurrences would mean, so the exact events weren't interesting. The theme never grew larger or more complicated but remained the same, all the way through the book.
It's dull.
Even the climax is not exciting. It's a ridiculous set-piece where the chief fireman (that is, the chief of the men who light books on fire) quotes from works of great literature for pages on end - quotes that would have no resonance for the protag, and are clearly meant for the reader, and God alone knows why Bradbury didn't admit he was writing a treatise and leave off pretending it was a novel.
Because it's not a good novel. The plot is unpredictable but not interesting. All but one of the characters are dull, and she dies. (Off screen. I'm pretending she went to a better book.) The story is smaller than the sum of its parts, worthwhile only for the Theme.
And it's such a simplified, spoonfed theme, too. I would expect better from a book that bemoaned the downfall of thought.
I want my hour and a half back.
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no subject
Date: 2010-08-18 10:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-19 01:48 pm (UTC)I might reread some Magic Attic Club. It's about an attic! With a mirror that could send you anywhere and anywhen! At which place you would learn Valuable Lessons. (Valuable Lessons are much more fun in ancient Greece.)
no subject
Date: 2010-08-19 02:03 pm (UTC)(and you do still have to tell me the plot of that white unicorn book... I promise never to mention tiaras again if you tell me what happens in the book.)
no subject
Date: 2010-08-19 02:25 pm (UTC)But someday the unicorn book will be in, and then - when you're least expecting it - I'll tell you allllll about it.