Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Farenheit 451

This article on The New Yorker about the decline of reading brings to mind Bradbury's Farenheit 451. That book is not really about censorship: as Bradbury himself has stated -to the surprise of many- in a recent interview, it is about television destroying interest in literature. Critic David Pringle was very perceptive when he said as much in his volume Science Fiction: the Best 100 Novels. IIRC, he thought that Bradbury was being overly hostile to new forms of media; had the book been written in more recent times, it would have attacked videogames, too.

The novel was successfully adapted to film by Truffaut (gotta love the opening title sequence). Nevertheless, if Farenheit 451 is really about movies and television overthrowing literature, there is an inherent paradox in adapting it. And I very much doubt that Frank Darabont can do a better job than Truffaut.

But, who cares about what Bradbury really meant, anyway? The death of the author and all that.

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