In belated honor of National Book Month in October I read Ray Bradbury’s classic banned novel Fahrenheit 451. My friend over at Bryan’s Book Blog would be horrified to know that this is the first Bradbury I have ever picked up. Of course, I feel rather sheepish since I know that Dandelion Wine is widely acclaimed and have yet to pick up a copy.
Well, let me assure you dear reader, I will be picking up a copy of Dandelion Wine as soon work is over and I can log into my Amazon account. The straightforward lean prose of Fahrenheit 451 serve to underscore the horrors of what their modern society has become, a place as bleak as the environs served up by Phillip K. Dick in Minority Report. The character of Guy struggles with monumental moral dilemmas and in the end runs smack into the futility that minorities suffer at the hands of the majority. His life becomes a waiting game, but finally, he is among like minded individuals who have accepted this way of life in a soceity ruled by fear.
2 comments:
You are right. I AM horrified, and I am sure our mutual friend over at Reading by Publight would be too.
My advice to you, drop everything you are doing and pick up not only "Dandelion Wine" but "The Illustrated Man," "The Martian Chronicles," "Something Wicked This Way Comes" and "The Golden Apples of the Sun," and do not read anything else until you have finished with these. Then, you can get "The Machineries of Joy" and "A Medicine for Melancholy," and THEN you can move onto other authors. But ONLY when you have finished with these.
Your literary education is woefully incomplete without these novels and anthologies under your belt.
So start reading missy. ;)
Bradbury just put out a sequel to "Dandelion Wine" (called "Forever Summer," or something like that...)
Yeah, Bradbury rocks... :)
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