I bet you're all probably jumping up from your seats like, "Ooo, ooo, I know this one! It's censorship! [That's why they had the limited edition version made with special paper that could only be read if it was burned] because it's all thematic and stuff!"
And I would say, "No, you're wrong, it's actually 'kids always be on they phone and eating hot chip and lie.' " And here is the proof, from the man himself! [source]
Bradbury, a man living in the creative and industrial center of reality TV and one-hour dramas, says it is, in fact, a story about how television destroys interest in reading literature.
“Television gives you the dates of Napoleon, but not who he was,” Bradbury says, summarizing TV’s content with a single word that he spits out as an epithet: “factoids.” He says this while sitting in a room dominated by a gigantic flat-panel television broadcasting the Fox News Channel, muted, factoids crawling across the bottom of the screen.
...
As early as 1951, Bradbury presaged his fears about TV, in a letter about the dangers of radio, written to fantasy and science-fiction writer Richard Matheson. Bradbury wrote that “Radio has contributed to our ‘growing lack of attention.’ This sort of hopscotching existence makes it almost impossible for people, myself included, to sit down and get into a novel again. We have become a short story reading people, or, worse than that, a QUICK reading people.”
HE SAYS THE CULPRIT in Fahrenheit 451 is not the state — it is the people. Unlike Orwell’s 1984, in which the government uses television screens to indoctrinate citizens, Bradbury envisioned television as an opiate. In the book, Bradbury refers to televisions as “walls” and its actors as “family,” a truth evident to anyone who has heard a recap of network shows in which a fan refers to the characters by first name, as if they were relatives or friends.
This is, of course, objectively hilarious. His thesis had always been "kids need to face a book instead of being on face book 🤣🤣🤣" "Radio is destroying the children" is such a boomer take.
But this isn't what you were taught the book meant in class. Now, we could argue that there is issues with teachers telling you there is only a singular, correct interpretation of a text. But the truth of the matter is that's the reading most people had. We could argue that the average reader is too stupid/too shallow a reader to really understand what the book is about. But professional reviewers and academics took this reading as well. So are they all wrong, too? Have millions of readers over the decades not once managed to read carefully and closely?
"But professor Chase!" you cry out. "What about death of the author? Bradbury's intentions for the work shouldn't be taken into consideration for our reading of the text." And I would say you are correct, then I click my clicker and I throw you a treat for asking a smart question.
It's true that in the realm of literary criticism that we should err on the side of only using what's in the work itself to derive meaning from it. However, I am a writer and my hypothetical lectures are always from one creative to another. We want to see what other artists have done and apply that to our own work. So it's important for us to know what the writer's intentions were and what's the end result.
One important thing you should always keep in mind when reading reviews is that there's always going to be 1 guy who misreads a text, but that's between him and god. Saying Applejack mlp:fim would hate gays because she has "family values" since she has a Southern accent and is a farmer is more reflective on you than the work itself. No matter how clear the artist is, someone will walk away with something very different. That's not something you can control, so you need to accept that.
However. If many people misread your work, and they misread it in the same way, it's a sign that there might be something wrong with your work. You might be assuming your own experiences, knowledge, and worldview are universal, but they're not, so the reader might be lacking important background information to understand your work. Or maybe your metaphors are too obtuse. Or maybe you just suck at making your point.
As this is a silly post on cohost, I am not going to bust out the book and do citations and give exact proof as to what Bradbury screwed up in his text to give off the completely wrong themes. I bring this whole thing up to you because I think it is very funny and a good fact to bring up at parties.
But I also want to share this because I see people argue with critiques they receive. When you're sitting at your local critique group, you can tell the other person that they're wrong, your story is AMAZING and they just didn't read it right! They weren't reading it closely enough! But you can't do this with reviews on Goodreads. Well, you can, but you'll look like an ass and it'll shave years off your life, so maybe don't.
Here's a harsh truth: when a fellow writer critiques your work, they're reading it more closely than any reader ever will. They might even know you personally or know about your story, so they already have important context on what your intentions might be. An editor, agent, or random reader won't have any of this info. There's an even greater chance you'll be misinterpreted or misunderstood.
It can be hard to hear that you didn't get your point across. It sucks to learn that you didn't do a good job. But that's part of the process, it just means you have the chance to make your work even better! The nice thing about critique groups is you can ask questions, how did they come up with that reading? What did that change about how they interpreted the work as a whole? And, since this is still the critiquing phase, you have the opportunity to make changes to your work.
Bradbury doesn't have this luxury. His book has been printed millions of times and adapted into other forms. It's firmly cemented in popular culture as "that book about censorship." The horse is out of that jar and there's no putting it back inside. He can argue with people all he wants about his intentions, but it doesn't matter. Millions of readers aren't in the wrong.
