This is one of those intimidating reviews to write: A book so well known, and so controversial that the amount of type about the book is more than equal to the work itself, fifty times over. I will never be able to do the amount of research a proper "full" review of such a work, which has effected and inspired and been hated by and treated with stylish disdain by many generations of readers. I don't know exactly what all the symbols mean, nor do I think I care to. I'm not here to get into a debate about "what the author meant" or all the relevant themes, though I do think the book is worthy of such debates. I can only tell you what <i>I</i> thought of the book, what my personal opinion was.
In short, I loved it. I've always been a "book person" and a book about books, where books were a thing to be saved and cherished and loved was very appealing to me. Bradbury's prose and pacing are not always my personal cup of tea, but I respect it as a relic of the era when it was written, and don't blame the author for it at all.
In this case, the sometimes dated writing style doesn't get in the way of the story at all. The pace is fluent, I find the alternating scenes of philosophical exposition, external action, and internal monologue to be well balanced and interesting. I liked the book's message, such as I perceived it, and found the ideas enough to be worth discussing with friends over late night pots of coffee.
I do think that the fact that it has generated such debate alone makes it worthy of the title of Great Art, because isn't that what Great Art is meant to do, make you think, and argue and see things a little differently than you did before?
If you haven't read this book, read it now. I'm not promising you will fall in love with it, as it can be difficult in places, and vague in others, and in many ways not satisfactory. However, one thing I can promise is that it will make you think, and ask questions, and that's much more important than simply being entertained.
"Why aren't you at school? I see you every day wandering around."
ReplyDelete"Oh, they don't miss me," she said. "I'm antisocial, they say. I don't mix. It's so strange. I'm very social indeed. It all depends on what you mean by social, doesn't it? Social to me means talking to you about things like this." She rattled some chestnuts that had fallen off the tree in the front yard. "Or talking about how strange the world is. Being with people is nice. But I don't think it's social to get a bunch of people together and then not let them talk, do you? An hour of TV class, an hour of basketball or baseball or running, another hour of transcription history or painting, and more sports, but do you know, we never ask questions, or at least most don't; they just run the answers at you, bing, bing, bing, and us sitting there for four more hours of film teacher. That's not social to me at all. It's a lot of funnels and a lot of water poured down the spout and out the bottom, and them telling us it's wine when it's not. They run us so ragged by the end of the day we can't do anything but go to bed or head for a Fun Park to bully people around, break windowpanes in the Window Smasher place or wreck cars in the Car Wrecker place with the big steel ball. Or go out in the cars and race on the streets, trying to see how close you can get to lampposts, playing 'chicken' and 'knock hubcaps.' I guess I'm everything they say I am, all right. I haven't any friends. That's supposed to prove I'm abnormal. But everyone I know is either shouting or dancing around like wild or beating up one another. Do you notice how people hurt each other nowadays?"
... i love this book.