More 451

The above story about a private high school getting rid of its library and turning it into a digital cafe reminds me of 451, which we will finish today.

If only my class was more motivated, we could really explore this issue. But this class is not the most motivated bunch. They want to be told what to think and do. That way they can get it over with asap.

Sad.

And it too ties in to the themes of 451. If they'd only see the irony.

The story on the library mutating (and I think that's an apt verb) into an internet cafe is eerily similar to how books became illegal in the novel.

Beatty - Montag's superior - explains that people just tired of reading. When technology became so fast, no one wanted to devote days to reading. Their attention spans shriveled. Thus, they wanted the condensed form of the book. As Beatty tells Montag:

"'Classics cut to fit fifteen-minute radio shows, then cut again to fill a two-minute book column . . . Out of the nursery into the college and back to the nursery; there's your intellectual pattern for the past five centuries or more . . . Digest-digests, digest-digest-digest. Politics? One column, tow sentences, a headline! Then, in mid-air, all vanishes! Whirl man's mind around about so fast under the pumping hands of publishers, exploiters, broadcasters that the centrifuge flings off all unnecessary, time-wasting thought!'"

Scary. It seems to me when Bradbury was writing this in the early '50s that there was a fear about radio and TV destroying reading. That did not happen. But it still might.

And that piece on turning a library into a digital cafe (replete with a $12,000 cappuccino machine) is disturbing. Especially when the young man being interviewed stated that he was just wasting his time reading the sources he needs for a paper when he could just be writing the paper!

Think too of how major news events are condensed into little bits of information that scroll across the bottom tracker of the screen. Gone are the days when a news radio reported got on the airwaves and claimed, "There is no news this evening. Good night."

Can you imagine?

It seems to me if there is no news, we'd invent it. Because some how, we need to know. So news becomes not just politics and major events but what so called 'experts' thought of so-and-so's dress on the red carpet or the sordid details of Tiger Woods' affairs or even our facebook status updates.

This worries me because this is fluff. It's nice to know or funny or interesting, but does it have substance? Or does it lead to one needing/wanting/craving entertainment rather than intellectual stimulation? In short, does it lead to Mildred? (Montag's wife in 451 who is a mindless zombie of sorts who simply lives to watch her 'families' on the wall to wall TV units in their house).

Ultimately you get the society of 451, which Beatty describes as

"'School is shortened, discipline replaced, philosophies, histories, languages dropped, English and spelling gradually neglected, finally almost completely ignored. Life is immediate, the job counts, pleasure lies all about after work. Why learn anything save pressing buttons, pulling switches, fittings nuts and bolts?'"

Spelling is pretty much extinct. Our computer software will do it. How many small schools carve into their liberal arts programs in favor of 'the basics' when they have to cut? Talk about life being immediate - just look at blogs, twitter, and facebook.

Reading about this society reminded me of this video from Soundgarden called "Black Hole Sun." When I read about Mildred and her brainless friends, I can't help but thing of these idiotically happy people in this video.



Later in the book, Montag seeks out a professor whom he once met. Montag wants to know why he tried reading but couldn't retain anything.

Faber explains that Montag is missing, for lack of a better word, 'context.' After a lifetime of reading, how can you pick up a book and expect to comprehend what it says? For Montag it's all just words. The ideas aren't sticking in his head.

Faber goes on to explain that to really appreciate books, we need three things -

First, books with 'texture.' By that he means books that reflect real life. Books that mean something. Books that stand up to the test of time.

Second, people need leisure. You need time to read and digest the information. You can't hope to get it simply using keyword searches on google or reading Cliffnotes.

Third, the first two things need to interact. That is, you need to read good books and have time to digest them. Then you need to be able to act or learn from what you have read. Try reading To Kill a Mockingbird and then see how that changes you. For me, it makes me try to see things from the point of view of others. It has changed me.

And I don't think I could have gotten that from a condensed version of the book or Sparknotes. I think of Scout realizing that one of the Cunninghams worked hard to get Tom's case thrown out because when that Cunningham came to lynch Tom, and Atticus stood up for him (with Scout's help), that made an impression on the Cunningham. He saw Atticus as a father and lawyer and man . . . just like him. In turn, he saw Tom that way. Thus, the Cunningham fought to have the case thrown out, though it wasn't. And when Scout realizes this, she proudly claims that she'll have Walter Cunningham (a relative of the man who fought to have the case thrown out) over for lunch all the time. Then, unfortunately, Aunt Alexandra has to have a talk with Scout where she tries to impress upon her the social codes of Maycomb. Finches do not associate with the Cunninghams, for they are white trash. The irony, of course, is that a little girl has learned how to have empathy for others while a full grown woman has never learned that.

And that is just one chapter of the book! But it's magic and it'll stick with me until the day I die.

Would I have retained that if I read it on a kindle and sipping a coffee from a $12,000 machine? I don't know. I might have been more tempted to skip the book and check out facebook or text or visit . . . and I might have been on my way to being a Mildred.