Ray Bradbury

I don't know what you think of when you think of the legendary author science-fiction Ray Bradbury, but I tend to think of his most famous work, which is of course Fahrenheit 451. Now this is a book that many of you probably had to read at one point in your academic career (perhaps in middle school or high school), so I'm sure that many of you will be familiar with it or at least its basic premise.

As a lover of knowledge and information, societies which practice book burning horrify me, as they should any civilized person. This doesn't just include the burning of literature in Nazi Germany or the many raids on libraries throughout history (such as the ones we just read about in Glut for LIS 2000), but also more modern examples like the burning of Beatles records and memoribilia in the mid '60s after John Lennon made his infamous and widely misunderstood statement about the Beatles being "bigger than Jesus". Other examples include the blatantly racist and homophobic burning of disco records in 1979 at Chicago's Comiskey Park and more recently, Dixie Chicks CDs being burned after Natalie Maines made an anti-war statement in London during the beginning of the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

In any case, it should come as no surprise that the author of Fahrenheit 451 should be such a huge supporter of the public library system. He's on the front page of today's New York Times in reference to the Ventura, CA public library. You can read the article here.

The article also reminds us that the current crisis facing the public library system here in Philadelphia (for those outside of the area who may not know, due to a budget crisis, Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter has threatened to shut down 11 branches, all in underserved, low-income communities, though thus far the branches have fortunately remained open) is a nationwide one as well.

I should also note that Bradbury's opinion of the internet, is well to put it generously, narrow-minded and unenlightened. Therefore, I don't agree with everything he says here, but his dedication to public libraries is admirable.

As a side note that's sort of appropos of nothing related to this post other than the name, there was a New York-based hardcore punk group named Fahrenheit 451 in the late '90s. I don't know how long they lasted or if they're still around. I guess I might have to look into that one.