scifantasy | Compromise, or "There Is More Than One Way To Burn A Book"

I lost all respect for Ray Bradbury when he decided to complain about the title of Fahrenheit 9/11, but this is just insulting.

"Oh, no," cries Bradbury. "Fahrenheit 451 isn't about censorship! It's about television!"

Right. Uh-huh. Sure. So, Mr. Bradbury, about this coda, written by you, in 1979...

"'Shut the door, they're coming through the window, shut the window, they're coming through the door,' are the words to an old song. They fit my lifestyle with newly arriving butcher/censors every month. Only six months ago, I discovered that, over the years, some cubby-hole editors at Ballantine Books, fearful of contaminating the young, had, bit by bit, censored some 75 separate sections from the novel. Students, reading the novel which, after all, deals with the censorship and book-burning in the future, wrote to tell me of this exquisite irony. Judy-Lynn Del Rey, one of the new Ballantine editors, is having the entire book reset and republished this summer with all the damns and hells back in place."

(Emphasis mine.)

Nice try.

See, the only thing I can think of is, when you wrote that coda, censorship was really a game of political correctness. You write at length that you will not bow to a group which doesn't like your portrayal of them: "If Mormons do not like my plays, let them write their own. If the Irish hate my Dublin stories, let them rent typewriters."

I can't help thinking that now that censorship is the provenance of the side you tend to support--besides your idolatry of our current President[1], you didn't have a leg to stand on by complaining about title theft[2] so I have to assume you didn't like the politics of Fahrenheit 9/11[3] and decided to do what you could to muddy the waters--you have a choice between retracting the novel and declaring that maybe those people you support aren't always right.

Nice to see your principles are so consistent: my guys can do no wrong, truth be damned.

[1]Of President Bush: "wonderful. We needed him. Clinton is a s***head and we're glad to be rid of him." --Salon, 2001. Ironically, the linchpin of his support was "now we can get some education reform." I doubt No Child Left Behind is what Ray had in mind.
[2] Or would you like to justify Something Wicked This Way Comes and I Sing The Body Electric?
[3] I thought it was a bad movie, plain and simple, but that's a different matter...

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Or he could be pushing 90 and going senile. Wouldn't be the first time a writer went bizarre and misinterpretted his own work.

(Hell, you don't even have to be senile for that to happen, but it definitely helps.)

I suppose...

Seriously. The outrage over the appropriation of the title can be explained as partisan politics, especially from the guy who's done the same thing to others. But to claim F451 isn't about censorship? That's... that's just daft.

Or it could be senility that makes him think people will believe that line, now that I think about it.

Pushing ninety, and watching Fox News...I can't help but think those are strong points in favour of the "losing his mind" interpretation. :P

What, it can't be about censorship *and* television?

Apparently not if you're Bradbury.

Regardless whether he's senile, a political hack, or (likely) both, I really, really hate it when authors decide to rear up and interpret their own works for me. I like to think of it as "Seawasp's Disease," because he is (or was) completely adamant on Usenet that only the author can interpret his own work (although what he really tended to say was that any outside interpretation which differs from the author's own interpretation is wrong, which is a completely boneheaded stance to take.) But he ain't the only one, just an extreme one with whom I've argued.

I mean, really-- Bradbury sets out to write a work about the evils of television and not censorship, and most of the English-speaking world says, "Ah, a brilliant book about censorship!" Someone in this picture is an idiot, and silly me, I don't think it's the whole English-speaking world, less Bradbury.

Bradbury can't tell me what his book is about. If he couldn't do it in several hundred pages, a few more sentences won't help. All he can do is tell me what he intended.

Feh. Sorry, end rant. This is obviously a sore spot for me.

Hah. I was going to type up a similar rant, but decided I was too tired to bother. So, thanks for doing it for me!

Heh. Truth be told, I could have gone on-- and on and on and on. I'm sure everyone is glad I didn't. But apparently I'm not done yet, so I offer a corresponding anti-rant:

There is an opposite viewpoint almost as extreme. I don't know if it's in every recent edition, but my copy of The Name of the Rose has a nice thirty page essay at the end, in which Eco steadfastly refuses to explain the title of the book, which has the following quote, which I adore: "A narrator should not supply interpretations of his work; otherwise, he would not have written a novel, which is a machine for generating interpretations."

Eco is offputting to a lot of people because he goes to such an extreme with it, but if I'm left with the choice of extremes, I'll take that one. Eco wants me to think for myself; Spoor wants to think for me. Evidently, and with great, great irony... so does Bradbury.

(And I will be a happy man if the phrase "Seawasp's Disease," catches on to describe this sort of thing.)

Huh. I always was bothered by Don McLean's refusal to explain exactly what "American Pie" is about--though the Straight Dope article explaining how it's probably about the changing face of rock and roll satisfied me. The justification McLean gave for not explaining was that a singer should do his thing and get off the stage, which sounds a lot like Eco's reasoning.

But yes, I'd rather have that than be told what to think.

And yeah, I think the irony could only get worse if, say, Heinlein, Champion Of Libertarianism, explained in detail how to read Starship Troopers or The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress.

And I, for one, quite like "Seawasp's Disease."

Yeah, as I said, Eco goes to absurd extremes about it. If you happen to have that essay, you'll find out that the act of titling a novel is, for him, a necessary evil, because it gives too many clues about the meaning of the novel.

Well. Okay then. But then, Eco teaches semiotics at a university. That sort of contortion is necessary for him. But I fall a lot closer to Eco than to Spoor when I actually think about it.

I remember that essay, yeah.

And, appropos of my initial response, I just waded through the ML thread.

The man has had several strokes. I'm not familiar with his pre-stroke politics (and to be honest, am not that interested) but I can very very easily believe that a stroke could lead someone to view his own prior works and own prior politics in a completely new way.

Congrats on your post getting quoted on Making Light.

That definitely threw me for a loop.

I read through the post quite fast the first time, thinking "good to see I'm not alone in this viewpoint..." then on the second read, I caught the line about "an acquaintance on LiveJournal."

Thus ensued much blinking.

Hi Wil.
I can't seem to find your mail so I figured I'd try this.
I'm going to be in the US in September and I'm looking to come up to DC for a day or 3, mostly to wander bookstores. Feel like some company?
You can respond to this or my email on my LJ.
Yehuda

Sure, send me an email--wmfrank @ stwing . org--and we can talk timing.

Compromise, or "There Is More Than One Way To Burn A Book"

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