FAHRENHEITย 451: AUDIOย INTRODUCTIONโ
Ray Bradbury
I think itโs always fascinating (at least, itโs always fascinating to me) to discuss the genesis of a short story or a poem or a novel. I look upon ideas as great big bulldogs that bite me, grab me, hold on, and wonโt let go, and when I get a good idea it simply seizes me and holds on very tightly. And maybe an hour later or ten hours later or two days later, it lets go and Iโm ๏ฌnished with it. Iโm not in control; I have no schedule for my life, these ideas just come up and beg to bite me, and I let them. . . .
Iโve learned, over the years, to go with this sort of thing. . . . I was walking with a friend, and a police car pulled up and asked us what we were doing, and I made the mistake of saying, โPutting one foot in front of the other,โ which was the wrong answer. ๎e policeman interrogated us, thinking that we were up to some terrible criminal activity; the whole logic of the situation was beyond him. I became so enraged with the encounter, the fact that my innocence was doubted, that I ran home and wrote an angry short story called โ๎e Pedestrian.โ Well, now, if it hadnโt been for that encounter with that policeman, a lot of other wonderful things would never have happened. When I look back now, I realize how fortunate it was that policeman stopped me that particular night, because it set in order, and in a certain kind of emotional progression, a whole series of things rolling.
Not only did I ๏ฌnish the short story โ๎e Pedestrian,โ but then, a number of months or perhaps a year later, I took that pedestrian out into the streets of the city of the future and I wandered that pedestrian
around. And along the way, I changed the s*x of that pedestrian from a man to a girl named Clarisse McClellan, and I had her out walking late at night, scu๏ฌng the leaves, looking at the stars, smelling the wind, waiting for rain. And she smells kerosene. Around the corner, from the other direction, comes a man smelling of kerosene, and she speaks to him, and says, โOh, I know who you are. I know what you do. I can tell from the smell of the kerosene on your uniform. You are a ๏ฌreman. Youโre one of those men who goes to places to start ๏ฌres.โ
Well, my gosh, I didnโt know she was going to be saying that, I didnโt know Montag was going to be coming around that corner. I became very excited, and within seven, eight, nine days I ๏ฌnished the ๏ฌrst draft of a short story that turned into a novel, that turned into a longer novel, called โ๎e Fireman.โ And in order to ๏ฌnish the novelโI had no o๏ฌce, I looked around for a good place to write this fantastic story that was coming to birth, and I thought, โWell, whatโs a better place to write a novel about book burning in the future than a library?โ And I discovered, in that time, that wonderful downstairs basement room in the UCLA library with a typewriter that you fed a dime into every half hour. So I sat there and fed dimes into this typewriter for eight or nine days, twenty cents an hour, and ๏ฌnished the short novel โ๎e Firemanโ on that typewriter in a room with ten or ๏ฌfteen or twenty other students who didnโt know what I was up to.
But what a wonderful place to write a novel about the future and about books and about libraries. Also, I wrote very quickly, because I wanted to be very honestโI wanted to be emotionally honest. Iโve always believed in quick writing, so that I could get things out before I had time to think about them. I wanted to be true to whatever inner logic there was in myself. I didnโt want to be true to any one group of people in the world. I wanted to be true to my own anger. Iโve always been afraid of belonging to groups. I donโt want to be a Democrat or a Republican or a Communist or a Fascist, orโjust an all-American. I wanted to be, as far as I can be, myself, and ๏ฌnd out whatย Iย think, and get it out in the open andย thenย intellectualize about it. And see what I think.
So suddenly here I am, writing an angry short novel because I lived, that particular year, in 1950, at a time at the end of World War II when politics in the United States were going through a very di๏ฌcult period, when we had Joseph McCarthy, the strange senator, on our hands, who
was trying to browbeat us, and trying to scare us. So it was a combination of many things that went into my anger and caused me to write the novel. And when I ๏ฌnished it and published a short version of it, we were still in the midst of the scare period in our political history; even President Truman was running scared at that time. I decided I would like to do a longer version of it, and I sat down in a similar nine-or ten-day period, added another ๏ฌfteen, twenty, twenty-๏ฌve thousand words to it, again with the same sort of emotional resources. I wanted to be emotional so I could get all of my own truths out, so that I wouldnโt be slanting toward any one particular group.
As a result of writing the novel in this wayโitโs a great adventure, thatโs the ๏ฌrst thing it is. It has things to say politically, it has things to say aesthetically, it has things to say about literature. It has all sorts of intellectual things to say along the way. But they are enclosed in an emotional framework, which is very important. I believe in having fun ๏ฌrst, and along the way, if you teach people, if you in๏ฌuence people, well and good. But I donโt want to set out to in๏ฌuence people. I donโt want to set out to change the world in any self-conscious way. ๎at way leads to self-destruction; that way, youโre ponti๏ฌcating, and thatโs dangerous and itโs boringโyouโre going to put people right to sleep.
So instead of doing thatโIโve always loved adventure stories, Iโve always loved adventure ๏ฌlms. Iโve loved murder mysteries and science ๏ฌction adventures. I took a framework, then, of a suspenseโactually a pursuit and escape thingโand you then hang on all the things that you want to say, all the things that you want to do, about a particular time that you live in, about a time that you would like to prevent, because Iโm a preventer of futures, Iโm not a predictor of them. So Montag is myself running through the future, as afraid as I am at times. Brave only because heโs angry (Iโm not a brave person; Iโm an angry person on occasion). And along the way, meeting other people who are really myselfโa character like Faber, who pops up in the novel later on, and is Montagโs conscience speaking to him in the night through his little Seashell radio. Well, that really is myself, hiding awayโthe writer whoโs afraid to come out in the open and has to get all of his kicks and do all of his in๏ฌuencing of the world by whispering in peopleโs ears. And I suppose thatโs what I do. Iโm like Faber, whispering in peopleโs ears and telling them what to do, here and there, along the way. So Faber is a part of myself. Even the ๏ฌre chief, I suppose, when you come right down to
it, is a part of myself that could be destructive if I allowed that destructive self to come to the surface.
So here we have, then, Montag running through the future, pursued by book burners, trying to save knowledge. And all this goes back into my own background when I was a child. Iโm a library-educated person; Iโve never made it to college. When I left high school, I began to go to the library every day of my life for ๏ฌve, ten, ๏ฌfteen years. So the library was my nesting place, it was my birthing place, it was my growing place. And my books are full of libraries and librarians and book people, and booksellers. So my love of books is so intense that I ๏ฌnally have doneโ what? I have written a book about a man falling in love with books. How unusual that isโitโs not a love story on any other level. And when the ๏ฌlm ๏ฌnally came out, it wasnโt a love story,ย exceptย it was the love story of Montag and literature. I think thatโs quite unusual in the history of the world. I donโt think there are very many writers around who have written that many books about books, about libraries, about knowledge, and how precious it is, and how we must keep it.
And ๏ฌnally, how did I title this? Well, I called it all sorts of things along the way. At one time it was called โLong After Midnight.โ It was called โ๎e Firemanโ for a while. But I didnโt like any of those titles. And then I asked myself, โWell, whatย isย the temperature that books catch ๏ฌre at and burn?โ And I called the UCLA physics department, and I called the chemistry department. I called several other universities. Nobody knew, and nobody seemed to be able to look it up for me. And ๏ฌnally a light went on in my head, and I called the ๏ฌre department. And I said, โPut me through to the ๏ฌre chief.โ I got hold of the ๏ฌre chief here in Los Angeles, and I said, โAt what temperature does book paper catch ๏ฌre and burn?โ He said, โJust a moment, be right back.โ He came back and said, โ451 Fahrenheit.โ And I thought, โOh, thatโs beautiful.โ ๎atโs absolutely beautiful. Itโs perfect. So I reversed it, and said Fahrenheit 451, and there you have the title. And if we start using Celsius in the next few years, I will be severely disappointed.
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โIt was a pleasure to burn.โ A limited issue of two hundred signed and numbered copies ofย Fahrenheit 451ย were bound in white asbestos boards and released (without dust jackets) along with the ๏ฌrst-edition trade hardbound issue in October 1953.ย ๎ey are easily distinguished from the red cloth binding of the trade edition. Approximately ๏ฌfty of the asbestos-bound copies were sold in the Los Angeles area with trade dust jackets.
From its initial publication in 1953 until 1967, editions ofย Fahrenheit 451ย carried no authorโs introduction at all. Bradbury composed his most extensive introduction in 1982 for the Limited Editions Club; in 1989 it was titled and reprinted forย Zen in the Art of Writing, a collection of Bradburyโs essays on creativity, and this version serves as the source of the present text. ๎e essay eventually became the afterword to the 1996 Ballantine trade paperback edition ofย Fahrenheit 451, con๏ฌrming Bradburyโs abiding enthusiasm for the stage and ๏ฌlm versions that emerged from the original novel.
