Farenheit 451

Fahrenheit 451 was written by Ray Bradbury and published in it's final form in 1953.  It originally appeared as a story entitled "The Fireman" in Galaxy Science Fiction in 1950.  Ah, Ray Bradbury.  This book is considered a pillar of the Sci Fi genre, and once you get past the idea that firemen can go from putting out fires to starting them; I suppose it is....this writing about memory and forgetting and the political transformation from normalcy to "something else" by the totalitarian manipulation of memory by "Laughter and Forgetting" predates Milan Kundera's similar political text ("Laughter and Forgetting") by some 30 years.   Fahrenheit 451 is sometimes held in the same company as Orwell's 1984, but I don't think it has aged as well, though it is still a fantastic book of ideas.  Ray Bradbury is wide awake and he wants the reader to be aware of the pitfalls of too much Government control.  Government wants the populace not too aware of the world; living on t.v. soap operas and sports programs.   Ray Bradbury sure casts a spell, and some of this text is indeed  immortal; here's a taste:

     "Number one:  Do you know why books such as this are so important?  Because they have quality.  And what does the word quality mean?  To me it means texture.  This book has pores.  It has features.  This book can go under the microscope.  You's find life under the glass, streaming past in infinite profusion.  The more pores, the more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper, the more 'literary' you are.  That's my definition anyway.  Telling detail.  Fresh detail.  The good writers touch life often.  The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her.  The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies.
     "So now do you see why books are hated and feared?  They show the pores in the face of life.  The comfortable people want only wax moon faces, poreless, hairless, expressionless.  We are living in a time when flowers are trying to live on flowers, instead of growing on good rain and black loam.  Even fireworks, for all their prettiness, come from the chemistry of the earth.  Yet somehow we think we can grow, feeding on flowers and fireworks, without completing the cycle back to reality."

Though not as great as 1984, Fahrenheit 451 is of it's ilk, and top notch in it's own way, to boot.   It was  apparently taught in U.S. High Schools, though sadly not in mine.  Required reading, as the nocturnal river ride at the end is redemptive American elision at it's finest.