Fic rec

[neadods]

I'm not the only one cranking out the post-Human Nature/Family of Blood fic. Oversight is a beautiful piece.

honorh theorizes that Heroes is happening in the alt!verse and thus has an intriguing Rose/Claude piece with Survival.

parrotfish has What Must I Look Like To You, one of the few to go into the Doctor's thoughts on his side of things (as opposed to the Doctor's thoughts about John Smith's side of things).

Outside of Who fandom, apparently there is some shock and horror that Ray Bradbury says that Fahrenheit 451 is about how TV ruins the love of literature is not just a polemic about government censorship. That anyone can be even surprised by that only goes to show that they haven't read anything else of his... and the backlash makes me understand why Bradbury has gotten so sniffy about intellectuals. Ya think maybe a prolific author who wrote about one concept in the context of another has just maybe gotten a tiny bit pissed off that people keep telling him that he doesn't actually understand what he wrote in his "one good book"?

ETA: I rather think it's proving Bradbury's point that people want to reduce the meaning of his book into a single phrase in the first place. Any book with sentences longer than "See Spot run" is capable of handling more than one concept.

Comments

[harmonyfb.livejournal.com]

Actually, they're just saying what Bradbury originally said about his own book. He's just come to regret it now that he's an elderly supporter of the current Bush administration. So very sad. ::shakes head::

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I'm not buying that line of thought. The hatred of TV for isolating people and the dismissal of books is a leitmotif that has run through his writing since long before Bush was born. It has nothing to do with his politics.

Yes, it is about censorship, but it was never *only* about censorship, and he certainly hasn't discovered this "new" theme over the last six years.

[chelseagirl.livejournal.com]

Having recently burned a copy of Fahrenheit 451 for my art exhibition on censorship, I am among those who felt a bit let down by his statement, but also rereading The Martian Chronicles for book group a few months back has made me realize that Bradbury is an icon of my youth who really ought to stay there.

Oh well.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Ever read Dandelion Wine? That's been in my top 10 favorites for decades.

Although I do wonder how many people "got" the Bradbury reference in Heroes this last season.

[chelseagirl.livejournal.com]

Oh, of course. When I was in 7th grade I'd have called him my favorite writer, and I spent all of junior high/high school devouring everything of his I could get my hands on. The Martian Chronicles reread, with my book group, taught me once again that it's sometimes disillusioning to revisit the passions of one's youth. But one of the things we talked about at the meeting was that the things about his writing that have held up best (for a number of us in the discussion, anyway) are his lyrical nostalgia and sense of childhood wonder -- and I actually said that if I decided to reread anything else by him it would be Dandelion Wine because it was the work that best played to his strengths.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Dandelion Wine because it was the work that best played to his strengths

It was. He wrote emotion, not action, and it worked so beautifully. Particularly in Dandelion Wine.

[shawan-7.livejournal.com]

Must be annoying to an author to be told what he said in his own book...

[shawan-7.livejournal.com]

What also strikes me about the article and the comments, is that there must be one true interpretation of the book. He says it's about TV; the world says it's censorship.

How about both? I deplore the tendency to say there's only one answer -- and that's what I find more and more nowadays because people don't want to consider more than one aspect - they don't have time.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

How about both?

No kidding! Any book with sentences longer than "see Spot run" can compass more than two concepts. It can even maybe consider one concept within the context of another, or show how they can be interrelated, or simply layer ideas.

That people need to reduce a novel to a soundbite is pretty much proving Bradbury's point.

[bill-leisner.livejournal.com]

Uh... except in the LA Weekly article, you have the line, "Fahrenheit 451 is not, he says firmly, a story about government censorship." Not "Fahrenheit 451 is not primarily about government censorship," or "Fahrenheit 451 is not only about government censorship." How is Bradbury saying "The book is about TV destroying literature, period, nothing else" any less of a reduction to soundbyte level??

[neadods.livejournal.com]

How is Bradbury saying "The book is about TV destroying literature, period, nothing else" any less of a reduction to soundbyte level??

Unfortunately, you're right. Although I do wonder what else there might have been in the quote before it hit the paper.

[violetisblue.livejournal.com]

*shrugs* He can say whatever he wants to about the true meaning and intent of F451 and the readers can accept or reject his statements as they see fit, I don't see why this is all so controversial either way. It's his book and it's "our" book.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Also true. Readers bring their own shades of nuance and worldview to the reading.

But it just strikes me as wierd that people are 1) upset that he's pointing out that it contains a theme that is prevalent through the rest of his work, 2) claiming it's the only thing he's written worth reading, and 3) tying this back to politics. I loathe Bush as a President, but I've known Bradbury's attitudes towards TV since the mid-70s, and I haven't even completely read 451!

[violetisblue.livejournal.com]

Oh, it also strikes me as weird that people are losing their cookies over this (especially as one of the major themes of the book is in fact the corrosive power of TV and advertising, which they'd know if they'd reread it at all since sophomore year of high school). And it's patently fricking ridiculous to say that it's the only thing he wrote worth reading (hello, Dandelion Wine? Martian Chronicles? Illustrated Man? Something Wicked This Way Comes? Was always fond of Halloween Tree myself...), and I loathe authors and artists being pilloried for their politics, no matter how distasteful I might personally find their views. Of course, it's always good to be reminded of why I gave up on Pandagon as a pit of lame.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty much on the verge of scrubbing Pandagon off the list. I was on their side over the whole John Edwards thing, but this is pissing me off no end - particularly since I don't see a single connection to his politics here! The man's restating a theme that he's used his entire writing career, and it's other people who are getting their knickers in a knot because they can't use it to Bush-bash.

Brain hurts. Time to make another edit on the links list.

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

You might be interested in (what I think is) the more nuanced discussion of Bradbury going on over in Making Light. Among other things, it's been noted that Bradbury has had several strokes, and this often results in people's personalities and attitudes changing dramatically. And yes, there are links to him, 20 years ago, saying the exact opposite of this current assertion.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I find the comment about him talking about "!!!MY BOOK!!!" particularly telling... and probably accurate.

I'm not saying it's not about censorship too, because it unescapably is. I'm just saying that he's been ragging on TV for a long, long time and of course that was going to show up there too. Particularly since censorship and the media are so closely intertwined!

[fyrdrakken]

Thanks for the rec! (And for the links to the other pieces -- I hadn't run across "Survival" and I'm loving the idea behind the crossover before having even read it yet...)

[neadods.livejournal.com]

Wait until you read it. It's incredible, in a very creepy way.

[fyrdrakken]

It was indeed brilliant -- enough so that it wasn't till after I'd finished that I started wondering how exactly Claude had gone for so long working for Torchwood and seeing Rose without either Jackie or Mickey having ever seen him and clued him in. (Also, this weekend I was going through my sizeable backlog of downloaded-but-unviewed fanvids, and ran across this startling Torchwood/Heroes crossover vid that was simultaneously shipping Jack/Nine and Peter/Claude. Interesting concept, certainly...)

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I LOVE THAT ICON! Oh please, oh please, is it swipeable?

without either Jackie or Mickey having ever seen him and clued him in

Hmmmm, good point. I got the impression that Mickey had been sent elsewhere.

this startling Torchwood/Heroes crossover vid

Which was where? *poises to d/l*

[fyrdrakken]

Got it from sidewalk_doctor, in this post.

And I didn't figure out where Mickey was (though the way it referred to him in Claude's POV didn't seem to imply that this was a guy Claude had never met), but I figured it certainly explained why Rose advised him to avoid her mother.

No clue -- like I said, backlog of unviewed vids. From months back. Check the_reel, fan_vids, torchwood_files, dwfanvids...

[fyrdrakken]

Hang on, think I found the vid: Happy Ending.