Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, part 2

This is about a time in the future when people don't read books any more. Books are too long; they try to make you think; only strange, superior people read books, instead of watching short soaps on Tv or listening to the chatty voices on the radio (which people fix in their ears and the little ear-buds chatter away to them.) And so it seems right to burn all the books. This story is about a fireman (Montag) whose job it is to destroy books, but who becomes curious as to what might be in the books he destroys.

Guy Montag's wife has three walls covered in screens so that she can pretend she is really involved in the TV shows. She loves these but Montag doesn't: and one day he meets a young girl who likes leaves and flowers and conversation more than artificial amusements, and then his troubles and doubts, which already existed, become an issue. 

In this future, life is cheap and destruction is an entertainment. People love watching a real live cop chase on TV. and seeing an oddball getting his just deserts. "Their indifference and fear feeds into every aspect of their lives." Being unhappy about the way his life is, and wanting to know what is in the books, Montag starts to put himself and his wife in danger. 

The writing is gorgeous for the first part, vivid and magical and energetic. The book doesn't hang together very well as a story and there are ideas that go nowhere; but this is a fascinating book about the way wise books (not all books) humanise people and how we will all go to the bad if we don't make any effort to take on the difficult heritage that teaches us to be wise.

From the handout at the Southbank Centre:

Bradbury's bookless world is a stultified, conformist place entirely free from independent thought, knowledge, self-knowledge and imagination. It's extreme, of course, dystopias always are. And we today don't live in a society without words, books or stories: you could argue in fact we have too many of them. Novels still sell in their millions. The internet is one vast, sucking, swamping mass of words and opinions. Some people even still read proper old-fashioned newspapers. Yet Bradbury's novel is a terrific (and gorgeously written) warning against neglecting the importance of reading and writing properly, of not treating written language with care, consideration and love. When we stop bothering to read difficult books and instead opt to graze on a Facebook post; when we ignore a newpaper article for a news tweet; when we dismiss reading novels or poems because we just don't have time, what we are really saying is that we no longer want to listen."