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The Illustrated Bradbury

Wednesday, 22nd August 2007

One of my most prized possessions is a signed copy of Fahrenheit 451. Ray Bradbury inscribed it for me, complete with flames in red felt-tip, when I interviewed him in an apartment near the Eiffel Tower back in 1993. He was in his seventies then, and an utterly engaging bundle of energy. A decade and a half later, he's still going strong, according to this NY Times interview. ("Hobbled by a stroke in 1999, he now dictates his work over the phone to his daughter in Arizona, who records and transcribes it before faxing edits back.") Incidentally, Bradbury's own website includes his video reminiscences about the inspiration for the book, and also has a lovely throwaway line about his his prolific work habits: "I hold the record for rejections from The New Yorker magazine."

François Truffaut, of course, made a stylish adaptation of Fahrenheit back in the mid-Sixties. Seems a new film version is in the works, possibly with Tom Hanks in the lead. Let's hope that the likely director, Frank Darabont, doesn't get too hung-up on using the book as a weapon to beat George W. Bush. Bradbury's story is a lot more interesting than that:

It's a rabidly anti-intellectual world — a world in which literature is destroyed or otherwise censored; the intellectually curious are chastised and punished to the point of distraction by nonstop, insipid programming... Welcome to Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451," where "fireman" Guy Montag burns books while prosecuting, and in one instance killing, those who cling to them. Welcome to President Bush's America, said director Frank Darabont, a culture that proves that there is more than one way to burn a book.

How ironic that the interview with Darabont appears on the website of MTV, an institution for which Bradbury has no great love. As he wrote in the 40th aniversary edition that he signed for me: "If the world widescreen [sic] basketballs and footballs itself to drown in MTV, no Beattys are needed to ignite the kerosene or hunt the reader." Another irony: Bradbury is now, according to the NYT, the owner of "a 52-inch flat-screen television not unlike the ones he presaged in "Fahrenheit 451."