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Bradbury, Popular Media, and Nostalgia
Jan. 13th, 2014 12:42 pmThere was discussion at the campus this morning about the book for the upcoming Big Read event, Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. Talking about Bradbury makes me sad for a number of reasons.
The setting for many of his books is based on his childhood hometown of Waukegan, not so far from where I live. But it's a Waukegan that's long-vanished. Reading books like Something Wicked This Way Comes or The Martian Chronicles makes me nostaglic for a time and culture that I will never experience, and which seems quintessentially American. I hear echoes of it in my dad talking about growing up in Libertyville, not far from Waukegan. His story of going to the Liberty Theatre over and over in the summer because there was air-conditioning is an example of something that somehow gets right at the heart of what I imagine was the experience of growing up in the American Midwest in the '60s. I know it wasn't a perfect world, but the ideal vision of the vanished small town Midwest is so much a part of popular culture that I still ache for it when it's presented to me, especially in forms like Bradbury's poetic prose. I don't think even exposure to more of the dark side of the '50s and '60s -the normalizing atmosphere, the anti-communist crusades, the oppression of various minorities- would make me feel any less like I'm missing a special experience. Knowledge of reality doesn't always diminish the appeal of fantastic forms of that reality. I think what helps more than anything is the realization I made a while ago that there are an infinite number of nexuses of beauty that I will never experience, and that in light of that, I need to see and create and appreciate beauty in my own place and time.
And isn't *that* easier said than done?
Bradbury also makes me sad because I never got to meet him. I hoped for most of my life that I would. He's one of those few people who, had I found out that he was making an appearance somewhere I could get to, I would drop anything and everything to go see. Work, school, even the extended family gathering at Christmas. I think they'd understand. I used to think of writing him a letter, but I never did. Now he's dead, and it shall not be.
Finally, thinking about Bradbury makes me sad because of his seeming discomfiture with the world as it became during his lifetime. A woman researching media here today mentioned his statement that Fahrenheit 451 is less about censorship than it is about the colonization of life by new forms of media. To paraphrase him, that people don't have to burn books; just stop reading them. Other things he said and wrote give me the impression that he felt like radio and television were relatively vacuous forms of expression, and he was pained by their increasing dominance. My thought on the matter is that there are vacuous, trashy works in every form of media, and each form is worthwhile and valuable in its own way. Bradbury seemed to believe that to some extent; he was part of creating visual media based on his stories. But he seemed pretty negative about newer forms of media in general.
Sometimes I feel that way too. But I wonder if it was, for him, more about unhappiness with a changing world. And I do feel that second unhappiness sometimes as well. As I get older though, it becomes ever more important to use my past experience as a platform to look forward and embrace all the wonder that's to come in the future, rather than make futile attempts to hold onto wonder of the past. I want the time ahead of me to be as good as that behind me. Not believing in that possibility seems very cynical, and I think that occupying the present too much with the past endangers that future.
Anyway, I want to read some fiction again. I finished Discipline and Punish last night, and the next thing on my list is Robert Putnam's "Bowling Alone", about the disintegration of social organizations in America. But I may intersperse it with fiction. I can't remember the last time I read fiction, not counting quick bits of manga. And I have a couple things by Bradbury on my shelf that I (Bad, bad science-fiction fan!) have not yet read. Pleasure to Burn? Dandelion Wine? Death is a Lonely Business? I'll pick one tonight.
------
In other news, I realized halfway to school that the weather was too warm for the ski jacket I've been biking in. I have a jacket that would probably be about right, and that Danae finally brought back to me recently after I left it in Canada in the summer. That, light gloves, and ear warmers might be the plan for tomorrow.
The setting for many of his books is based on his childhood hometown of Waukegan, not so far from where I live. But it's a Waukegan that's long-vanished. Reading books like Something Wicked This Way Comes or The Martian Chronicles makes me nostaglic for a time and culture that I will never experience, and which seems quintessentially American. I hear echoes of it in my dad talking about growing up in Libertyville, not far from Waukegan. His story of going to the Liberty Theatre over and over in the summer because there was air-conditioning is an example of something that somehow gets right at the heart of what I imagine was the experience of growing up in the American Midwest in the '60s. I know it wasn't a perfect world, but the ideal vision of the vanished small town Midwest is so much a part of popular culture that I still ache for it when it's presented to me, especially in forms like Bradbury's poetic prose. I don't think even exposure to more of the dark side of the '50s and '60s -the normalizing atmosphere, the anti-communist crusades, the oppression of various minorities- would make me feel any less like I'm missing a special experience. Knowledge of reality doesn't always diminish the appeal of fantastic forms of that reality. I think what helps more than anything is the realization I made a while ago that there are an infinite number of nexuses of beauty that I will never experience, and that in light of that, I need to see and create and appreciate beauty in my own place and time.
And isn't *that* easier said than done?
Bradbury also makes me sad because I never got to meet him. I hoped for most of my life that I would. He's one of those few people who, had I found out that he was making an appearance somewhere I could get to, I would drop anything and everything to go see. Work, school, even the extended family gathering at Christmas. I think they'd understand. I used to think of writing him a letter, but I never did. Now he's dead, and it shall not be.
Finally, thinking about Bradbury makes me sad because of his seeming discomfiture with the world as it became during his lifetime. A woman researching media here today mentioned his statement that Fahrenheit 451 is less about censorship than it is about the colonization of life by new forms of media. To paraphrase him, that people don't have to burn books; just stop reading them. Other things he said and wrote give me the impression that he felt like radio and television were relatively vacuous forms of expression, and he was pained by their increasing dominance. My thought on the matter is that there are vacuous, trashy works in every form of media, and each form is worthwhile and valuable in its own way. Bradbury seemed to believe that to some extent; he was part of creating visual media based on his stories. But he seemed pretty negative about newer forms of media in general.
Sometimes I feel that way too. But I wonder if it was, for him, more about unhappiness with a changing world. And I do feel that second unhappiness sometimes as well. As I get older though, it becomes ever more important to use my past experience as a platform to look forward and embrace all the wonder that's to come in the future, rather than make futile attempts to hold onto wonder of the past. I want the time ahead of me to be as good as that behind me. Not believing in that possibility seems very cynical, and I think that occupying the present too much with the past endangers that future.
Anyway, I want to read some fiction again. I finished Discipline and Punish last night, and the next thing on my list is Robert Putnam's "Bowling Alone", about the disintegration of social organizations in America. But I may intersperse it with fiction. I can't remember the last time I read fiction, not counting quick bits of manga. And I have a couple things by Bradbury on my shelf that I (Bad, bad science-fiction fan!) have not yet read. Pleasure to Burn? Dandelion Wine? Death is a Lonely Business? I'll pick one tonight.
------
In other news, I realized halfway to school that the weather was too warm for the ski jacket I've been biking in. I have a jacket that would probably be about right, and that Danae finally brought back to me recently after I left it in Canada in the summer. That, light gloves, and ear warmers might be the plan for tomorrow.
