Something revisionist this way comes

When I was a kid, Ray Bradbury was one of my favorite scifi writers, right up there with Asimov, Clarke and Heinlein. Sure, a lot of his writing was hokey and homespun—he was sort of scifi’s Sinclair Lewis, even if he aspired to be its Hemingway—but his novels and short stories were elegantly crafted and haunting, in a positive, pre-Stephen King sense. And it didn’t hurt that, back in the 60s and 70s, his politics were decidedly left-leaning. Or so it seemed. In recent years, Bradbury has challenged that assumption, first with his hammering of Michael Moore for “stealing” the title of Fahrenheit 451 for his film Fahrenheit 9/11 (guess Ray isn’t familiar with the concept of fair use), and now, for his revisionist take on 451 itself. According to an interview with LA Weekly (via BoingBoing), the book isn’t a warning about the dangers of censorship, as has long been assumed. Bradbury now insists that 451 is actually about television, and how that medium could someday obliterate all interest in books. While I have no doubt that this is at least part of the book’s subtext, I think Bradbury’s being somewhat disingenuous. After all, everyone from Truffaut to Bradbury’s own authorized Web site has treated the book as an anti-censorship parable, and the author never raised a peep (in fact, the listing for the book on Bradbury’s site still refers to it as a “classic novel of censorship and defiance”). And Bradbury, despite his anti-TV claims, has never had any problem cashing checks from producers of small-screen versions of his works (not to mention ghastly big-screen adaptations). So, I’ll take Bradbury’s comments in stride, as the ramblings of a genius in his twilight years, trying to reshape his legacy to suit his own agenda. Of course, if he follows up by saying that The Martian Chronicles isn’t about the conquest of the American west, all bets are off.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 5th, 2007 at 8:41 am