It's Thursday for another half hour or so, and I know I didn't post a usual Your Turn Thursday question. That regular feature might have run its course.
Finally finished Fahrenheit 451 so I can go to the library book talk tomorrow. It was okay. Lots of ideas there, but not a lot of beauty, no one to really care about or feel for. I like a book that pulls at me. Two books whose saddest scenes just turned me inside out were Kingsolver's Poisonwood Bible and Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany. I remember holding those books in my hand in their toughest scenes and saying, "No! No! No!" They made me sick from crying. I wanted to care that much about this book because it is about such a devastating idea. But it is a much cooler book. It's not about people. It's about things. Those of you who read it recently care to comment?
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6 comments:
I really liked the young girl he encounters early on, but she doesn't stick around.
I enjoyed the book, and got a lot of talk time out of it w/ Zoe. It strays a little at times, and appreciated the comments at the end that although books are written that should help us understand the world in a broader sense, we somehow make the same mistakes regardless, and go in cycles of growth and destruction. It read like a fable.
Personally, I rather like Montag, and I don't think you're supposed to like anybody else (except Clarisse, poor Clarisse), because everybody else are the people who've rejected books and knowledge and lives that are anything more than mindless entertainment. DRD
Some very interesting things came up at the book talk this afternoon. What if Clarisse is planted there to set up Montag? What if she isn't genuine? What if it's all in Montag's head? There is definite emotional distance throughout the whole book.
That was my biggest problem with it, that it didn't completely engage me. It's more like an exercise in What If.
Why, if books are so forbidden, is Monatg able to carry some in public without causing a scene? Why is his wife willing to read his hidden books with him when she learns his secret? Isn't it more likely that she would freak out, leave, or turn him in right there? Why do the few who have kept books alive by memorizing passages not relish the written word? Why do they not use it for themselves? They seem to have made a job of it.
I just wish a book about taking away one of my favorite things in the whole world would have made me feel somthing in my gut and not just in my head.
I did have a problem with the scene where Montag has the Bible out on the train--it seemed wrong. But you get hints throughout the book that the physical paper-and-ink-and-cardboard-and-glue book forms are not forbidden. Don't they even suggest that firefighters have a training manual in book form? And comic books are allowed. Maybe we're expected to believe that the people on the train think it's a handbook of some kind? I know it's a bit of a reach, but a lot of the book is surreal, and this is just one more aspect of it.
Sorry. One of my favorite books. I have to defend it. DRD
I'm sorry that I can't comment much because it's been years since I've read this book. I didn't even remember the characters' names.
But what I do remember even after nearly everything is hazy is how clearly Clarisse seemed to see the world, and how quickly and quietly she was snuffed out for...I guess...her genuineness? (not a word, I realize). Also, Montag's wife being disconnected from people and addicted to "the family" the way people now seem addicted to their TV's and computer screens and iPods, and how she ultimately tried to take her own life...and how the free-thinkers of the world essentially had to divorce themselves from the rest of the world and start over with the oral tradition.
Not sure why I chimed in with that, but I thought it would be nice to share what stayed with me after years of not even looking at the book.
~Lisa
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