Machineries of joy, oblivion machines: Reading Ray Bradbury

Despite modernity’s eclectic assortment of distractions, it feels good to know that some people still find time to read. I say this with what may well be a misplaced convenience, because every now and then I manage to get hold of a heap of second-hand books which I then sell online. I’ve been into this "book business" for some years now, since getting the idea during my college heyday. 

Always, there will be buyers. To further the idea, there will be readers (assuming, of course, that these people don’t just leave the books to gather dust somewhere. Or worse, burn them, for some symbolic reason). In an essay by Mario Vargas Llosa, he mentioned that Bill Gates, in a bid to re-define his electronic empire, once said that his aim was to "put an end to paper and to books."

The scenario is outright ridiculous, reminding me of Ray Bradbury’s classic sci-fi novel, Fahrenheit 451. In this dystopian tale, Bradbury posits the idea of future firemen, whose main job description is the burning of books. ("Fahrenheit 451" refers to the level of heat it would take for paper to burn.) An equally acclaimed movie adaptation was made years ago, while Michael Moore redefined its potentials of a pun with Fahrenheit 911, his harrowing documentary on the New York twin towers tragedy.

The book, of course, is allegorical in nature, and was handled with a serious, critical eye by one of the few remaining sci-fi moralists alive. It made a curious, if not prophetic statement about the death of literature in a society that valued conformity.

It’s quite incorrect to find most of the soft-bound books of Bradbury sold in thrift shops and book sales with the title, "the world’s greatest living science fiction writer" next to his name. Most of Bradbury’s works are deceptively set in the other worlds of science fiction, but are largely commentaries on the human condition and society in general. The celebrated Martian Chronicles, for example, is a loosely-strung collection of stories set in Mars, but tackles basic human frailties like greed, fear, hate. 

One of Bradbury’s classic short stories, "A Sound of Thunder," was recently expanded into a movie. It was lost in translation (it did not do so well in the box office), but readers looking for the vintage Bradbury style should find interesting epiphanies in this tale of time travel and butterfly effects.

In the last two decades alone, a number of Bradbury’s stories and novels have been adapted by different media. Some were made into graphic novels (Martian Chronicles), films (Something Wicked This Way Comes, The Halloween Tree) and television series (in the ‘80s Twilight Zone run and The Ray Bradbury Theatre).

Even with the rise of other names working in the non-realist mode – Haruki Murakami and Neil Gaiman are two – many friends and former students have themselves become avid readers of the old fellow; there are some who’ve discovered the appeal of his stories in more recent offerings like Driving Blind, Quiet Than The Eye, and Cat’s Pajamas.

Bradbury’s story-riddled life should inspire young, aspiring writers out there. He sold his first short story in 1941 at the tender age of 20, funded by a meager amount he got from selling newspapers. And he did so at a time when fantastic and sci-fi writing were still generally frowned upon and relegated to the domain of escapist, pulp fiction. What was going for him, though, was that his influences included Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft. His persistence eventually led to Dark Carnival, his first collection of short stories that religiously followed the mixed fantasy-horror mode, forwarding the tradition set by his self-proclaimed masters. 

In the last half century, Bradbury has helped reshape the attitude of readers and critics alike toward the fantastic and surreal, and he has done it quicker than the lazy writer’s eye can follow.

"Speed is everything," Bradbury once said. "Those voices may be gone before you hit the shower to align your wits. The 90-minute dash to your (writing) machine is a sure cure for life rampant and death most real." Well, we can learn something from Bradbury’s idea of verisimilitude; now already in his mid-nineties, Bradbury is still furiously attacking his typewriter, adhering to his dictum of churning out at least one story per week.

It’s truly amazing that until now, when I get to read Bradbury’s newer works, I do not feel that he has sold out and succumbed to formulaic writing. There are hits and misses, of course, but as Bradbury himself said in the afterword of Quicker Than the Eye, what’s important is for the writer to "make haste to live," to dedicate a few minutes of each waking day to writing down the plots and twists going on in his head the whole night.

And for the reader to continue looking to literature for awe and wonder, I should add. Never mind all the Bill Gates of the world; forgive the inutile propositions that books be taxed. In Fahrenheit 451, the main premise is that people will always want to read, yes, but then there’s something more: it declares that books liberate, that they are more than just machineries of joy, that they are powerful tools for change. This should be enough for books to survive all the taxing and burning oblivion machines that surround us.