Celebrate our freedom to read what we please

Everyone likes to blow things up. Just ask the kid in your driveway who’s doing her best to level your house with bottle rockets and smoke bombs in celebration of truth, freedom and all things American. 

Sadly, I couldn’t find a way to work an actual pyrotechnic into the paper today, but I’ve opted for the next best thing: devoting the column to a book about setting things on fire. In honor of the Fourth of July, I’m writing about Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451.”

This book became one of my favorites as soon as I opened it. I’d like to think everyone in the audience has read it, but I know how it is with classics. Lots of them slip through even the most ambitious literary education. The shorter-than-your-Cliff’s-notes version of “Fahrenheit 451” is as follows. 

In the distant (from 1950) future, books have been outlawed and televisions have taken over entire rooms of houses. Reckless driving abounds. Everyone has a tiny portable radio in his or her ear, general moral apathy has seized the land, and the nation is embroiled in a mysteriously distant but terrifying war. Most importantly, though, is the fact that Firemen don’t put out fires. They set them, using books as kindling. 

The plot follows fireman Guy Montag through a crumbling marriage and a crisis of conscience to a point where saving books from the clutches of his colleagues and escaping the “justice” system are the least of his worries.

“Fahrenheit 451” has been tucked into a niche as a science fiction classic, and there’s no doubt that Bradbury’s speculations about the role of technology in the future were eerily accurate. This may have added to the endurance of the book’s popularity, but an aspect of novel that doesn’t get as much discussion is its role as a horror story. 

Society has managed to survive just fine in a world of cell phones, iPods and plasma TVs, so it’s not the presence of technology that lends the creepy tension to the book. What’s really terrifying about Bradbury’s “future” is the fact that books aren’t allowed there. Combine Bradbury’s rich vocabulary and vividly crafted characters with sinister figures like Captain Beatty and the Mechanical Hound, and you’ve got a piece of fiction that epitomizes the word “nightmare” to anyone who likes to read.

But what, besides a tenuous and unnerving comparison between fireworks and setting houses full of books on fire, does all of this have to do with the Fourth of July? Independence day has become a celebration of our nation’s beginnings and also of what makes it a place to be proud of. I can’t think of a better way to show your patriotism than by simultaneously celebrating and defending intellectual freedom. 

This Independence Day, take a moment to appreciate a book. Read one for fun. Read one for school. Read silly vampire novels if you must. Just read something. And don’t forget to enjoy the fireworks.