“You don’t have
to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”
--Ray Bradbury
Bradbury's book Fahrenheit 451 is a visionary parable of a society gone awry in which firemen burn books
and the state suppresses learning. Meanwhile, the citizenry sits by in a
drug-induced and media-saturated indifference. The temperature of Fahrenheit 451 is the auto ignition of paper.
And then in the book, as with the spirit of humankind, there were rebels
who hid in the forest and each person memorized an entire book so as to save it
for prosperity.
Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451 in 1953, and now in 2013 I hear that people do not read. Yipes.
Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451 in 1953, and now in 2013 I hear that people do not read. Yipes.
Oh, people do read, but it doesn’t seem to be books, at least not paper ones.
One literary agent said she had a dinner companion who
bragged that he had not read a book since college. She vowed to never offer him a dinner
invitation, then lamented that there was a time when being well-read was a
compliment, a sign of class, something to aspire to.
We still have a Barnes and Noble Bookstore here in Eugene,
thank heavens, a place to browse, to drink coffee, to eat a snack, to have
restroom facilities—all the comforts of home.
But then maybe I am part of the problem. I do not buy new books
as I used to. I buy used or on line. And people look for free eBooks, and 99
cent ones and I can’t blame them.
And then there are the publishing companies. I actually sold a few books, It’s Hard to Stay on a Horse While You’re
Unconscious. It shocked me to have some sell, for I had about given up on them.
(I’m better off selling on eBay.) What shocked me further was that while Xlibris
collected $1,723.55 from the sales of my book, they owe me $56.92.
A friend informed me that he saw a bookstore on TV that
contained no books, only electronic renditions of them. Now that is scary, if the would-be
book-burners wanted digital books to be gone, it would only take a key stroke.
What are we doing?
On the other hand…
Remember this my dear people who read my blog, and who are
the creators of a new day.
We are the voice of creation, we speak and songs ring out.
We wave our hands and buildings spring up.
(Well, it’s almost like that.)
So I’m suggesting this: Write your life story as a fabulous fairy tale.
It is like changing the radio dial from terrible to fabulous—although sometimes
we do not make a quantum jump, but move incrementally, so move your dial
incrementally…
P. S. It’s colder than it ought to be around here—a far cry from our days
in Hawaii. About every hour, I have to replenish the chicken water for in the
last hour it froze. My friend said that the hummingbirds sit on the rim of
their feeder waiting for her to refill it.
Iced tips on tree behind our back fence
I live to delight.
Look more delighted damn it.
--Tad Williams
