Shark. Motorcycle. Brain-eater as pillion passenger.

Posted June 4, 2007 7:22 PM by Charlie Stross

Golly. We didn't read Farenheit 451 in my high school, but (oddly) we did read Dandelion Wine. I remember it being crushingly dull, and it was emblazoned with the blurb "World's Greatest Science Fiction Writer" on the front, as were all the Bradbury paperbacks in those days, which was tacky.

It's interesting to see how people change over time...I admire folks who can just say "I was young then, now I think something different" and not insist on taking the "oh, no, I never said that!" tack.

Posted June 4, 2007 7:33 PM by Mary Dell

All culture is popular culture. ALL CULTURE IS POPULAR CULTURE!!!

OK, I feel better now. A little.

Also: how do such intense dweebs manage to write such good books?

Posted June 4, 2007 7:35 PM by ethan

WEST LOTHIAN (11 May 2036) -- Charles Stross may be one of North Britain's national heroes, the literary idol of extropian Federalists and other varieties of post-wave bohemians. But he wants his sangfroid fans, every man Jill of them, to understand one thing: he's always been a Tory, and in fact every one of his most beloved works, including In the Ocean of the Old, the global Disney multimedia hit Sing a Singularity for Me, and of course The Atrocity Archive and Accelerando, were all written to support and promote the Tory worldview, right down to the Blue Party's last position paper on sunrise clauses for the kneedeep camp. "There's some as'll tell you I was some kind of liberal!" Stross raises his voice to say, brandishing his Zimmer frame threateningly. "Them has nothing true to offer. We were all Tories back in the day. That's what the whole com-dot thing was for, High Blue Bloody Toryism. I was a pharmacist! And a turtle! Get off my lawn, ye miserable eyeball!"

Posted June 4, 2007 7:36 PM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

There was a bit of "TV makes you stupid" in F451, but the censorship-via-political correctness was there, too. Undeniably.

As I recall, the only things being published were comic books and trade journals, both of which were bland enough not to be worth censoring.

* * *

I get the impression that Bradbury is, or was, "English Teacher Science Fiction."

Nice and safe and literary.

I remember my 9th grade English teacher dutifully telling us that "the theme of The Martian Chronicles is Man's inhumanity to Man."

Eh? Even back then this struck me as clueless.

Posted June 4, 2007 7:45 PM by Stefan Jones

Odd how Bradbury's fever for Bush now gives "Fahrenheit 451" that same disagreeable feel that Michael Richards appearances in Seinfeld reruns do. What makes Bradbury think Bush doesn't owe his all to a version of popular culture that thinks it can wish upon a president?

Posted June 4, 2007 7:48 PM by Pierre Tristam

I like his early work better than his later.

For an author, the words !!!MY BOOK!!! are always picked out in rainbow-colored coruscating light. Bradbury was smart enough when he wrote Fahrenheit 451, but given how many copies of his work are in school libraries, he's undoubtedly had books complained-of by this group and that. He isn't talking about political principles. He's talking about !!!MY BOOK!!!.

Posted June 4, 2007 7:49 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

*snort* Patrick, that's twisted.

I'm always unpleasantly taken aback when people who I took to be smart turn out to be Bushites. Bradbury? That's just too frisson-y for me, and I'm going to choose to disbelieve it, for my own good. Surely I misread all that.

That was the greatest damage to the world after 9/11 in my book. It took otherwise undifferentiated groups of people (at least in my mind) and drew a horrible, indelible line down the middle. And you know, obviously it could have been much worse, had our President been a divider instead of a uniter -- good thing Mr. Bush was there to heal our national wounds.

Sigh.

I'm never going to get over this, am I? Bradbury. Damn. Never been any censorship here in America. Or torture, I'm sure; we're the good guys, after all.

Posted June 4, 2007 7:59 PM by Michael Roberts

Why bother burning books when you can just redefine what they say?

"Freedom is Slavery"
"Ignorance is Strength"
"Censorship is Popular Culture"

Posted June 4, 2007 8:03 PM by Bruce Cohen, SpeakerToManagers

The quoted Coda reminds me of Connie Willis' "Much Ado About [Censored]." Her story highlights what I disagree with in his claim: even if minorities are demanding censorship, it doesn't happen until the government (school boards, department of education) agrees.

This also makes me think about the general issue of how to change your mind gracefully. Seems like when famous people change political philosophies, they often go all out to insult their previous beliefs. Or at least that's what gets the media coverage. cf the blogosphere discussion of people who not only became conservatives after 9/11, but started agreeing with every conservative conspiracy theory (Clinton murdered Foster, etc.).

Posted June 4, 2007 8:07 PM by Kathryn from Sunnyvale

I confess I had my doubts about Bradbury back in the 90s, when I saw him on some late-night talk show or other having a rant about political correctness and saying that "we" have to fight it by insisting on using whatever kind of language "we" like. I couldn't have articulated it at the time, but it was a classic case of "privilege means your social progress is less important than my ever having to be uncomfortable with myself."

As for his current absurd claim, I can only say that the implication that even a bad book is preferable to good television is one of the weirder notions to come out of centuries of the (often justifiable) veneration of vellum and pulp.

Posted June 4, 2007 8:08 PM by Dan Layman-Kennedy

How does Bradbury reconcile his book with his being such a fan of Bush, who is the very epitome of the dumbing-down of America so decried by conservatives?

Posted June 4, 2007 8:10 PM by Serge

Serge @ 12: That's easy: "It's Clinton's fault."

Posted June 4, 2007 8:17 PM by Aconite

Would it be wrong to note that Bradbury has had several strokes, and that strokes can affect personality and judgment as parts of the brain of varying size and importance stop working?

Posted June 4, 2007 8:18 PM by Owlmirror

Michael @ 8: Who was the blogger who summarized such people as saying "I used to be a liberal, but after 9-11, I am outraged by Chappaquidick?" Atrios maybe.

I too am horrified to learn that Bradbury is a bush fan. Ugh. There's never been censorship in America? Huh? Did he take stupid pills or something?

Posted June 4, 2007 8:21 PM by Emma Anne

I don't think it was entirely 9/11 that did it for Bradbury. I can remember pre-2001, when I was still active on rasfw, that there was a Bradbury interview that left a deeply unpleasant taste in my mouth. The details of what it was he said have entirely vanished into the haze, and I only recall the sickening vertigo of realizing that someone you admired was really not a nice man.

Posted June 4, 2007 8:23 PM by tavella

Oh golly. I hadn't read about the strokes when I talked about stupid pills. Sorry.

Posted June 4, 2007 8:23 PM by Emma Anne

Emma @ 15: it was Michael Bérubé.

Posted June 4, 2007 8:30 PM by Sam Kington

#10: the general issue of how to change your mind gracefully.

As Eric Van has been quoted as saying, "This is what in politics is called 'flip-flopping,' but is more familiarly known as 'learning.'"

Posted June 4, 2007 8:33 PM by veejane

I found I Sing the Body Electric a lot less interesting than The Martian Chronicles. Of course, I read the latter at 17 and the former at 13, which may explain it. I saw Fahrenheit 451 as about censorship more than anything else.

Bradbury is pretty typical of people whose politics shift rightward as they age. I don't think, though, that Charlie Stross will be saying 'there's some as'll tell you I was some kind of liberal'... More likely he'd say 'there's some as'll tell you I was some kind of socialist'...

Posted June 4, 2007 8:39 PM by Fragano Ledgister

For some reason, the part of the clip that stuck in my mind was when he's telling the librarians not to enlist his help when his books are banned.

"I'm a big frog in a little pond," he says.

"Were," I thought. "You were."

I tried to be a Ray Bradbury fan, but even when I was 14 and read his books, I felt that here was a man who liked to hear himself talk and would repeat the good parts to make sure you got them.

Posted June 4, 2007 8:50 PM by pb

Charlie would say right now that he's not some kind of a socialist - it's just that the world is fo far right that he looks a lot further left than he really is. So "liberal" might be more appropriate, despite being a more US term...

On the other hand, I'm delighted to see that as Charlie ages into a bent-backed spittle-mouthed old conservative, he will develop a slight Scottish brogue (or is that just a stereotypical "old British man" accent? I guess he didn't say "cannae" or anyhing.)

Posted June 4, 2007 8:52 PM by Peter Hollo

#16: It definitely wasn't just 9/11; the Salon interview PNH links to is from August, 2001.

...which leads me to wonder: has he said specifically pro-Bush stuff lately? That one clip was just about F451 not being about censorship, and didn't have any pro-Bush views that I heard. Admittedly, I watched the clip about censorship, but don't really have the heart to watch the others... damnit, when I was a kid, I *loved* Bradbury, even if it's been a number of years since I've read his work... So I might have missed something.

Tangentially related: has anyone read the sequel (!) to Dandelion Wine that just came/is coming (not sure) out? Is it any good?

Posted June 4, 2007 8:54 PM by Stephen Frug

I'm sorry. My computer hung up, hence the posting in triplicate. I suspect it's tutelary spirit is a bureaucrat.

Posted June 4, 2007 8:55 PM by Fragano Ledgister

Sam @ 18 - thanks for doing my research for me. I miss Michael's blog . . .

Posted June 4, 2007 8:56 PM by Emma Anne

I wouldn't bet on Charlie shifting at all as he ages; he's damn near as politically ornery as I am. I started out as a Red Diaper kid, and I'm still way left of what the US calls "Liberal", and I'm older than Charlie by quite a bit to boot. So if he follows my example, he might even shift a little left as he ages, just to be contrary.

Hey, neocons! Get off my lawn!

Posted June 4, 2007 9:00 PM by Bruce Cohen, SpeakerToManagers

I owe Bradbury a debt of gratitude; the only thing that ever reconciled my mother to the fact that I was writing "that rocket ship stuff" was Bradbury, whom she wildly admired. I love some of his work; other things bore me to tears. But I have been reading and working long enough to know that there are actors I love who are morons offstage; there are writers whose work I adore who are idjits in person; there are painters who are right-wing nutjobs. I shake my head in sadness, because it doesn't seem that it should be that way, but there you go.

Posted June 4, 2007 9:00 PM by Madeleine Robins

I hope I'm in better shape than that when I'm 87.

Posted June 4, 2007 9:04 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Fragano, are you having browser problems?

Posted June 4, 2007 9:08 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Thanks for that, Patrick. You said it.

Posted June 4, 2007 9:09 PM by Cory Doctorow

@#25:

Tangentially related: has anyone read the sequel (!) to Dandelion Wine that just came/is coming (not sure) out? Is it any good?

I have not read it, but Cory Doctorow is wildly enthused about it.

Posted June 4, 2007 9:09 PM by Owlmirror

The man's 87 years old. If he has any hills left to go over, their little ones at best, maybe speed bumps.

And here I was about to drop $325 on a Hill House special edition Martian Chronicles.

Posted June 4, 2007 9:10 PM by Keith

And it irritates me that someone who names his novel with a line from Whitman's poem can then turn around and get upset because someone alludes to his novel in a movie title.

Posted June 4, 2007 9:12 PM by Elaine

Um...wow. I think I'm going to unlock that post now...

(I admit it. If given the chance to be linked from Making Light, I'll take it.)

Posted June 4, 2007 9:12 PM by Will "scifantasy" Frank

I see I successfully smoked Will Frank out. Post amended!

Posted June 4, 2007 9:19 PM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

There's a big distinction among:
"This is what I meant while I was writing it."
"This is what I wish I had meant while I was writing it."
"This is what the words on the paper as published actually say."

Posted June 4, 2007 9:21 PM by C.E. Petit

The link to Bradbury praising Bush was from August 2001. I'd like to know if he still feels that way. Perhaps, given Bush's reading of My Pet Goat, he's even more pleased that he has a President who understands the importance of reading.

I'm quite willing to let Bradbury move the goalposts all he wants. Eventually he'll look up from pushing those things here, there and yon and discover that the game isn't being played around him any more.

Posted June 4, 2007 9:21 PM by Stephen Granade

TNH #29: I think I may be. Firefox has been acting up lately.

Posted June 4, 2007 9:22 PM by Fragano Ledgister

I take my characterization of Mr. Stross's current-day politics from the quote from him that has been in the "commonplaces" sidebar of Making Light for years: "I'm a fuzzy-headed warm-hearted liberal, and I think fuzzy-headed warm-hearted liberalism is an ideological stance that needs defending--if necessary, with a hob-nailed boot-kick to the bollocks of budding totalitarianism."

As for the rest of it, that wasn't a "Scottish brogue," that was exabyte-speak. Like in the hit immersive, The Mill on the Floss. You know, for kids.

Posted June 4, 2007 9:25 PM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

I would also like to say just for the record that I don't really think Bradbury's terrible taste in Presidents merits tossing him out the airlock of the starship Parnassus. Many of my favorite artists have appalling political views. I'm giving him grief for his risible revisionism regarding Fahrenheit 451; the Bush business is small in the greater scheme of things.

Posted June 4, 2007 9:30 PM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Hypothetical question over here:

If Robert Heinlein had ever said that Starship Troopers was not about preparing for and waging war in the future, but instead said that it was about (I dunno, something relatively trivial and at least partly non-sequitural) the dangers of invasive insect species like fire-ants...

Would anyone believe him?

Posted June 4, 2007 9:32 PM by Owlmirror

Oy.

I hate it when people I admired wildly do things like this. It's like watching God in his nightgown get drunk, grope the waitress, pass out and soil his underwear on the sticky bar floor.

Posted June 4, 2007 9:37 PM by Leah Bobet

Owlmirror (41): An author? Make an inaccurate statement? About his own work? Gad!

Posted June 4, 2007 9:39 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

PNH @ 40

Yep, smart people can say some really not-smart things.

I still remember, during the licensing hearings for the nuclear power plant at Diablo Canyon, that Bucky Fuller did this, saying that the only safe place for a nuclear power plant is 93 million miles away. Which ignores little things like them not even being the same kind of nuclear power, and that 92,999,980 miles of that 93 million is vacuum and not worth much as shielding (and the other 20 miles is air, and not worth much more: when was the last time you got sunburned?).

Posted June 4, 2007 9:41 PM by P J Evans

> Then again, we are talking about the guy who pitched a first-class fit over a certain filmmaker calling his documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, an act of callous expropriation completely different from naming your story collection I Sing the Body Electric.

Ouch! Nice observation.

Posted June 4, 2007 9:41 PM by Steve Taylor

Mrfl. Another vote for being mildly shocked that Bradbury is a Bushite. Alas for feet of clay. (Is it just Bush's education measures he's enthused about? It seems from his statement in Salon, he's enthused about the educational measures....Or is he for the war in Iraq and the Patriot Act as well? The weird alignments within Bush's followers always strike me as interesting...for example, my parents are very much against No Child Left Behind and Patriot, but they support the war in Iraq, which is weird because the other two issues affect them directly much more, but I can't get them to see it.)

re: Changing your mind gracefully - I was raised Republican. I was also raised to think logically and to vote for issues, not parties. It's just that at the time my parents were teaching me that, they were also dragging me to Republican party conventions in Utah, which is where I gained a nascent enthusiasm for politics. Thus it was when I found myself on the threshold of adulthood, ready to vote for the first time, I voted for Dole nationally and a Democrat at home. I think this was the result of me seeing the local issues easier than the national ones. I probably would have voted for Bush the first time round....because I was partially taken in by the nonsense about Al Gore inventing the internet at the time, and because my lingering vestiges of Republicanism were still....well, lingering. I didn't see any functional difference between him and Gore. I didn't end up voting for Bush because I happened to be out of the country, but within a year, I was already grimacing at the job he was doing. I admit to this cheerfully, because it's my secret weapon in disarming the folks who claim that I would have given Bill Clinton a pass for his behaviour or politics. I can point to my history as a Young Republican and working with various reps in Utah during campaigns. While it never works against the die-hard choir members, sometimes people who are willing to vote issues and not parties give me a chance to talk without assuming I'm completely brainwashed by the liberal propaganda. Being upfront about my evolution from prim Mormon kid to punk secular humanist is just easier than trying to figure out how I'd shoehorn past behaviour and belief systems into my current.

Posted June 4, 2007 9:47 PM by PiscusFiche

Stephen Frug @23: I checked out the sequel in question from my library, and returned it largely unread because I found the first few chapters both dull and vaguely unpleasant. It was a large disappointment after my fond memories of Dandelion Wine. But then, I read the latter when I was much younger, and I don't know how well it would stand up to my current tastes. As I like keeping those fond memories, I haven't sought it out again to find out.

Posted June 4, 2007 10:01 PM by Fade Manley

Sometimes books are wiser than their writers.

That's all there is to it.

Posted June 4, 2007 10:29 PM by JonathanMoeller

Funny, the title I always flash on when thinking of the "Fahrenheit is mine" silliness is The Golden Apples of the Sun (Yeats.)

I liked a lot of Bradbury's writing; he's not uniformly good, but then who is? Unfortunately, we do not all get to stay at our best as we age.

That was driven home in an unpleasantly personal way this spring, when my mother apparently had a small stroke. Her doctor and neurologist say nothing is wrong, because she tests better than average for her age, but this woman who in January had a mind like a razor and could muse over folk singers she saw 40 years ago, who has a Ph.D. and a house full to the brim with books, now can't remember what day of the week it is or when her kids' birthdays are.

Posted June 4, 2007 10:42 PM by Clifton Royston

Wiscon had a "when Good Books Happen to [be written by] Bad People (Or why I hate liking Orson Scott Card)" panel

Os some similar title.

Posted June 4, 2007 11:17 PM by Josh Jasper

I'd be tempted to pop It Came From Outer Space, which Bradbury wrote, if it weren't getting late and I'd be likely to nod off all too quickly. There is a great scene where the scientist comes across two phone repairmen in the middle of the desert, and they tell him they can hear some really weird stuff on the lines. He climbs up the ladder, takes the earphone. And listens. We in the audience can't hear, but his expression conveys that there is indeed something strange going on.

Posted June 4, 2007 11:23 PM by Serge

He's just a guy. Who cares what he thought about Howdy Doody in 2002? Does it make us wiser to say he was wrong?

Ten days ago Bradbury gave his annual talk for The Southwest Manuscripters in Torrance, CA. The strokes have taken a heavy toll. He no longer hears well. He has difficulty pressing down firmly with a ballpoint pen. Bradbury is just a frail elderly man in a wheelchair -- who has been writing professionally a little longer than I have been alive. Some of his work has been great. Some has been very good. Yes, some has been less good. But the story he told of Fahrenheit 451’s origin had to do with police harassment during a late-night walk during the days of HUAC and McCarthy. Memories slip and slide as we age. Deliberate or not – who can say?

Bradbury signed books for an hour before his talk. He spoke for forty minutes. He went back to signing books after his talk. He's 87.

Do I ask you to give the man a pass? Hell, no. I do remind you that when your health and energy begin to fail, and then continue to fail, and the love of your life dies, those Simple Solutions to Big Questions are awfully tempting. I also remind you that something in even polite bloggish discourse seems to encourage piling-on.

Patrick is correct. We should not be rigidly judgmental, nor should we ignore unpleasant truths. Here's my true wish for all who gather here: may we all be so hard-working, so talented and so fortunate that we produce an oeuvre such as Ray Bradbury's.

Posted June 4, 2007 11:30 PM by Tom Barclay

I'm always unpleasantly taken aback when people who I took to be smart turn out to be Bushites. Bradbury? That's just too frisson-y for me, and I'm going to choose to disbelieve it, for my own good. Surely I misread all that.

Michael Roberts @ 8: Thanks for summing up my feelings. It's a little easier to tackle that mental challenge after having practiced it on some of what I think about Card, and similarly with a few of my friends' political views. Of course, I tend to evaluate people's political views in proportion to their political blast radii, and since my most crazy-conservative buddy is kind of a recluse, I've learned to let his stuff just slide off my back.

Bruce Cohen @ 26:

So if he follows my example, he might even shift a little left as he ages, just to be contrary.

Hey, neocons! Get off my lawn!

My partner (in his forties) has done the same. I keep having to tell him not to say that to his libertarian friends, given that I'm an anarchist with some libetarian tendencies; he says he's an honest hypocrite (my paraphrase) and his opinions on other people will never extend to family; I say that's not the point. *grin*

Today I sat in Powell's and read Lolita, inspired to do so by the Livejournal censorship foofarah; and now my head is filled full of thoughts about books as creatures in their own right, with their own inhuman moralities and aesthetics, questions and answers similar to ones I harbored long ago on my own before discourse gave birth to dissonance and had me running around looking for Message everywhere.

Now the "a book is an alien and its context and morals are entirely found inside of it" mode is running simultaneously now in my mind with the "a book is a product of its place, time and culture, and what it is is what it gives to that culture" mode. It's startling and faintly refreshing.

Posted June 4, 2007 11:34 PM by A.J. Luxton

I could have sworn that back in the late 70s or early 80s, Bradbury made some comment that nuclear weapons were the "most Christian weapon ever created," or something similar. A Google search for "Ray+Bradbury"+"christian+weapon" turns up a single hit: a blogger who mentions that someone visited his site after running a similar search string. But he doesn't know anything about the quote. So I dunno, maybe I didn't imagine it. Unless that was me doing a previous search, which I've since forgotten.

Posted June 4, 2007 11:34 PM by D. Clark

OT: When asked for a YA fantasy, a WashPost Bookworld writer offered Dandelion Wine.

As to strokes, many of you know I had some. My neurologist says I was lucky because I got a better personality and most people get worse personalities. It's hard to predict with strokes because you never know what part of the brain will be damaged and how much may re-route, if at all.

Clifton, I have tested the same post-stroke, but I've been clearly much more stupid (not to your mother's level) for about seven years. The neurologist determined I was having brain seizures and put me on phenobarb and I do appear to be getting smarter again. I don't expect to get to pre-stroke, but I'd like to get back to the four-or-so-years-after-stroke level.

Posted June 5, 2007 12:16 AM by Marilee

I've been out all night playing music and drinking caparinhas, so I'm feeling all provocative and may have trouble constructing sentences, but....

Fahrenheit 451 is not a science fiction novel, but a horror novel.

Those of us (we happy few) who read horror with an analytical bent have always recognized that horror stories (novels, short stories, movies, TV, etc.), when they are good (and Fahrenheit 451 is good), are representative of the unexpressed anxieties of the age, not of the author's conscious intention. Bram Stoker didn't know he was writing about Victorianism any more than Richard Matheson knew he was writing about the Cold War any more than Steven King knows he is still writing about consumerism.

When writers deal with horrors, and do so honestly, they don't analyze the content through a political filter. They find some way to express unnamed anxieties directly and unmediated. The result, often as not, is a powerful expression of anxiety that has no bearing on the author's intention. Horror is a meta-genre; it's the id-monster that suckles at the teat of SF, Fantasy, Romance, Gothic, Adventure, Western -- any genre it can feed off of is fair game. Bradbury can wear the mantle of SF all he wants, Fahrenheit 451 -- indeed much of his ouvre -- is horror, whatever else it might be. Don't get me wrong -- I love SF -- but I read The Illustrated Man and Something Wicked This Way Comes and Fahrenheit 451 because they were scary, not because they were scientifictional (if soft SF rather than hard).

Fahrenheit 451, the horror novel, is about totalitarianism. It's Hitler and Mussolini and Franco and Stalin and Mao and Hirohito. It's loss of humanity and ahistoricity. This is not related to Fahrenheit 451 the science fiction novel, or Ray Bradbury, the latter-day reactionary. He no longer owns that novel. No matter what he says, it's not his book anymore.

Posted June 5, 2007 1:07 AM by Howard Peirce

In SF mode, inventing immortality or life extension is not a great idea unless we can rejuvenate people's brains as well as their bodies. Imagine how conservative 900-year-old people would be. They'd return us to the age of Methuselah, as in the OT.

Posted June 5, 2007 1:11 AM by sara

"I do remind you that when your health and energy begin to fail, and then continue to fail, and the love of your life dies, those Simple Solutions to Big Questions are awfully tempting."

Five years ago, ten years ago, that was invisible to me, unimaginable, over the curve of the Earth. Now it's visible, in the very, very far distance.

It's a very frightening cliff and I'd hate to be hanging off of it. But it's visible, and imaginable. Yes.

Posted June 5, 2007 1:22 AM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

sara @ 57

I think on average you're right that old age brings conservatism, and the trend may indeed continue as we extend lifespan. But average is only average; there will always be people whose attitudes change because they actually learn more over time, about themselves and the world. You know, the "young at heart".

They do exist; I've known a few. And now that I'm officially old, I'm working at being one of them myself. One thing that makes it easier than it's perceived to be is that as you get older you do tend to get more confident in your own estimation of the world, and less willing to follow other people's examples purely from peer pressure. Well, I do at any rate, and my partner feels that way too.

I suspect a lot of what we believe about aging has to do with the slow deterioration that most of us suffer in our mental and physical facilities as we grow older. We extrapolate that out to longer lives, and assume that's the way it has to be. It seems to me that any really extended life, say beyond 110 to 120 years, is going to have to reverse that process and restore at least some of the character of youth. Not doing that will leave us like the Struldbugs, old past tolerating but unable to die. Of course, modern medicine has become quite good at leaving us in predicaments like that, hasn't it?

Posted June 5, 2007 1:28 AM by Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)

Patrick @ 58

I've been watching my parents-in-law go over that cliff in the last few years. If there's a lesson I've learned from the experience it's this: make sure that the experience of your life means something to you, so that the ending of it doesn't become an unrelieved tragedy.

What I mean is that you should be able to say "I have lived, and that won't be taken away when I cease to live." You don't have to be famous, you don't have to leave an eternal legacy, and you don't have to have done great works. But you do have to gotten enough satisfaction from your life that you can say it was worth the doing.

Facing the end can't be done with complete equanimity, I think.* But to not be terrified and "unhumanned"**, you need to find some acceptance of the shape of your life as it will be. And it should be OK to shape it yourself, if the alternative involves unacceptable suffering.

* and in any case, I'm with Dylan Thomas on this one, "do not go gentle". But then, Eva keeps telling me I'm not ready to get off the wheel yet, so I'm going to have to come back a few more times anyway. Just not as a cockroach, OK? I am not a verse libre poet.

** OK, give me a better non-gendered form of "unmanned".

Posted June 5, 2007 1:43 AM by Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)

More thoughts on Fahrenheit 451: Actually, I'm sympathetic to the notion that that book isn't about censorship, because books aren't about just one thing. If anything, the main thing that book is about might be something like the sheer sensual force of reading*, and the personal power and excitement of connecting with some big ideas that someone else put down on paper a long time ago. But censorship is also a big part of the book, the way TV and passive media pull people away from reading is indisputably part of the book, social conformity is maybe an even bigger part of the book... and of course really it's all about the story, and the characters.

Marilee, I'm hoping that my mom's brain will rewire itself a bit over time and that she'll get some of it back. It's good to know that the factoid we learned as kids, that the brain can't grow and can't repair damage, is simply wrong. Mostly she lost short-term memory and orientation, but she's also picked up some judgment problems and impulsiveness.

[*] I just re-read Possession for the first time in 10 years. Man, what a book!

Posted June 5, 2007 1:49 AM by Clifton Royston

Howard Pierce: To put it mildly, I would grant the truth of this only with very substantial reservations: Those of us (we happy few) who read horror with an analytical bent have always recognized that horror stories (novels, short stories, movies, TV, etc.), when they are good (and Fahrenheit 451 is good), are representative of the unexpressed anxieties of the age, not of the author's conscious intention. So many, in fact, that I may as well just say "I disagree, and yet I read horror with an analytical bent."

I think that much of the very best horror is in fact so thoroughly personal that its age is almost irrelevant - if it connects to readers, it does so because of individual circumstances that have very little to do with the general state of society. Not all of it, of course - some work succeeds exactly because it taps into general fears and hopes very much anchored in the state of society. But enough to matter for any taxonomy. (Two examples that happen to be within eyeshot of me right now: anything by Ligotti, and Tim Lebbon's "The Naming of Parts".)

Back at Bradbury...

My own feeling is that Bradbury has given me and my family so much rich satisfaction, joy, amusement, food for thought, and other good stuff over the decades that I feel obliged to forgive him much now. My parents saw his one-act plays in the '50s and loved them, and I've taken so much good out of various of his books at various stages of my life...and all that goodness is still there, no matter what time and chance have done to its maker. In Something Wicked This Way comes, there's a lot said about aging, and how the wearing of the body can wear the mind and soul too, and yet there remains that legacy to love and hold to no matter. I feel that way about Bradbury's work. He made me a better person; I'm prepared to think well of him and pray for him yet.

Posted June 5, 2007 2:05 AM by Bruce Baugh

Patrick wrote:

Five years ago, ten years ago, that was invisible to me, unimaginable, over the curve of the Earth. Now it's visible, in the very, very far distance.

Yes. The seasons are too slow, and too fast.

Posted June 5, 2007 2:31 AM by Tom Barclay

Bruce #62: I will happily admit to being drunk and full of myself, but that's as far as I'll go. (On preview, that's pretty damn far.) I can't enjoy James Whales's Bride of Frankenstein without reflecting on WWI and early 20th c. expressions of homosexuality. Day of the Dead (movie) or The Shining (novel) are as much about consumption as La Boheme (pun). Deep, human anxieties never go away, which is why Shelley's Frankenstein is still an amazing read. (I mean, check out the zeitgeist on ScienceBlogs to see that these issues are still around.) Or consider the oh-so-popular H.P. Lovecraft -- was he racist, or was he one of the few authors to successfully and aggressively confront his (and to large degree, our) generations's anxieties about race? When I read Lovecraft in a generous mood, I wish more authors would address deep racial anxieties as fearlessly as he does.

I shall read Ligotti, and get back to you on that. 'Cause I'm trying, but I can't keep up. OTOH, I've read Koji Suzuki, and am just getting exposed to Kazuo Umezz, so I can't feel too bad about the many lacunae in my reading for a North American.

I do think that Bradbury is overrated as an SF author, and underrated as a horror author. Tomorrow, when I am sober, I may have a different view. When you look at Bradbury as a horror author instead of an SF author, a lot of the seeming contradictions resolve themselves.

But I really oughta get some sleep.

Posted June 5, 2007 3:37 AM by Howard Peirce

Personally, I prefer to read Bradbury as a fantasy author; I think it's a bit stronger fit than horror, for the work of his I like the best. But then some authors naturally cross boundaries.

If you're reading Ligotti for the first time, I suggest starting with his relatively recent work. The last section of his Nightmare Factory omnibus, the Teattro Grottesco stories, is particularly good. Early on he was too much in the footsteps of Lovecraft; later he cut his nihilism free to follow its own anti-muse.

Posted June 5, 2007 3:55 AM by Bruce Baugh

Sara, #57: Or maybe we'd just all turn into grasshoppers. :-)

Re the main topic... my immediate reaction is to think, "How sadly the mighty have fallen." Unless Bradbury-now has a great deal more in the way of influence than I think he does, perhaps we should just quietly draw the curtain and replace him with the memory of Bradbury-then.

Posted June 5, 2007 4:03 AM by Lee

A book freezes a moment in the author's mind, and nobody's mind is so pure as not to include a lot of strange, unexpected things.

Critical analysis can be a forensic picking apart of that detritus, and sometimes it can be a CSI for the mind, full of the same illusions about reality as is the TV franchise.

And people get older, and change, while that frozen moment is, well, frozen.

Posted June 5, 2007 4:04 AM by Dave Bell

I seem to remember that Bradbury complained about Scholastic (not Bantam) censoring his book when they produced it for their book clubs. There was an article he wrote that I used to use in teaching. He wrote it for a California newspaper.

But as I am in Scotland and not Massachusetts, I can't put my hands on it. And of course, being within 20 years of Bradbury's age, I could be disremembering.

Jane

Posted June 5, 2007 4:15 AM by jane

Sara @ 57:

In SF mode, inventing immortality or life extension is not a great idea unless we can rejuvenate people's brains as well as their bodies.

SpeakerToManagers @ 60:

** OK, give me a better non-gendered form of "unmanned".

Posted June 5, 2007 4:27 AM by Randy Owens

PNH: "I take my characterization of Mr. Stross's current-day politics from the quote from him that has been in the "commonplaces" sidebar of Making Light for years: "I'm a fuzzy-headed warm-hearted liberal, and I think fuzzy-headed warm-hearted liberalism is an ideological stance that needs defending--if necessary, with a hob-nailed boot-kick to the bollocks of budding totalitarianism."

<bradbury>I never said that!</bradbury>

(What bugs me most about the whole thing is the personal historical revisionism implicit in what Bradbury was saying. He's denying his own earlier self, and that's never good. Criticising your earlier self for views and actions you no longer agree with is one thing -- cf. Gunter Grass and his rather serious teen-age whoopsie -- but disowning your early self seems to me to be deeply unhealthy.

Here's an author who's given the censor an office in his heart ... and refuses to admit what he's done.

Posted June 5, 2007 5:05 AM by Charlie Stross

Dave @67: A book freezes a moment in the author's mind, and nobody's mind is so pure as not to include a lot of strange, unexpected things.

Nit-pick: it takes time to create a book, so they freeze a period rather than a moment -- usually a period of several weeks to years, although there are exceptions. ("The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch" IIRC took Dick three days to write, literally non-stop on a mixture of amphetamines and LSD. But it doesn't get much shorter than that.) So it's probably best to think in terms of a very long exposure photograph, rather than a snapshot.

(Sometimes you can see this in the background; I've read two SF novels in the past couple of months where you could see Hurricane Katrina's turbid wake churning through the plot, from before to after, and I suspect there are many more. The same effect is visible in any thrillers written between 1989 and 1991 -- a huge political giant lurking in the background waits to be airbrushed from the photograph of a future history.)

(Food for thought: some of us like literary serials, but is it possible that some writers simply aren't suited to writing them? Because it takes too long, and their personalities are too flexible, so what they're trying to write about changes from book to book, rendering them disturbingly inconsistent from a reader's point of view.)

Posted June 5, 2007 5:25 AM by Charlie Stross

"unstrung"?

Posted June 5, 2007 5:44 AM by Dave Luckett

is it possible that some writers simply aren't suited to writing them? Because it takes too long, and their personalities are too flexible, so what they're trying to write about changes from book to book, rendering them disturbingly inconsistent from a reader's point of view.

This is my trouble with anything even novel-length. My focus changes in the middle. I try to grandfather in the changes, though, seeding them throughout my later revisions of the early text.

If I ever write serials I'm going to do it in the style where some other protagonist, half a world away, resumes some other part of the narrative, peppered with cameos from old friends. Or else my protagonist has a big acid trip (...death in the family, finds and loses love, finds and loses sanity...) in between books and gets a new perspective. It's the only way I could do it sanely.

Posted June 5, 2007 5:47 AM by A.J. Luxton

For a long time, I thought Ray Bradbury was dead. No reason, no logic, I just assumed. On some level, I think I thought that someone who had written something that changed my life so much OBVIOUSLY couldn't share the same planet I'm on:

Later a friend told me he was still alive, and this made me happy and I wanted to invite him over for dinner.

Now I read this, and find myself sadly reflecting that I was happier with the first state of affairs. Mind you, though, that I've been known to say monumentally stupid things now, and I'm not even halfway to 87. I'll file this in the things I'd rather not know file.

Posted June 5, 2007 6:17 AM by Cynthia

My grandmother on my father's side became increasingly senile after her strokes, and her previously sharp mind rapidly deteriorated before she passed away.

At what point, I wondered (with not a little anxiety), did she stop being the wonderful woman I knew? When exactly did the person change so much that she faded out entirely?

We die in small parts before we die.

It helps to stay physically fit: I noticed that the tipping point for Grandma's mental fitness seemed to be a knee injury which crippled her ability to get exercise.

Take care of your knees. That goes for Bradbury as well as anyone else.

Posted June 5, 2007 6:45 AM by A.R.Yngve

well I've been aware of Bradbury as a right-winger for more than a decade so it's no surprise. He also has that urge to sentimentalism that one finds in right-wing writers of note (such as Halperin).

Anyway I never liked his writing all that much, although Something Wicked this way comes is enjoyable if one reads only 1 sentence out of every paragraph about the young sap on the green apple of whatchamacallit stuff.

finally "All culture is popular culture. ALL CULTURE IS POPULAR CULTURE!!!"

what about the stuff most people hate?

Posted June 5, 2007 7:46 AM by bryan

Bradbury is also 87 and not in the best of health. Often at that age and health you think a lot different than you used to, and to others including your own family, it appears you are not what you used to be.

All of us with older family members have gone through this...there's a good chance if we live as long as Bradbury people will say that about us too.

Posted June 5, 2007 8:07 AM by Attaturk

My sister had two serious strokes when she was a teenager, and my Grandma had alzheimer's for the last 7 years of her life...both of them were profoundly affected but neither of them turned into a Republican.

Posted June 5, 2007 8:16 AM by Mary Dell

You can prick your thumb, but...

Posted June 5, 2007 8:31 AM by Arthur D. Hlavaty

Yeah, Bradbury is a kind of boring long-winded writer. But so are you apparently. Your opinion of him seems to totally be because of his politics (specifically his supporting Bush, which is so rare it shoud be a protected species)--and if that isn't a literary witch-hunt I dunno what is. Should I burn all my Vonnegut novels just because he went around talking about fresh and exciting Al Qaeda was during the obviously senile last few years of his life? No, art and politics should remain separate, just like church and state--any time a celebrity actor or writer strays over the divide with their child-like opinion, it's our job to be the adult and just look the other way.

Posted June 5, 2007 8:32 AM by Hope Muntz

Hope @80: the point is not that Bradbury's a conservative republican; the point is he's explicitly disowning and contradicting positions he staked out some time ago about the real purpose of his master-work -- and he appears to be doing so because some other folks he disagrees with seem to find it a useful metaphor for some aspects of political discourse in the USA today.

(Incidentally, I read your posting as implying two points that I strongly disagree with: firstly, and subliminally, that opposition to the Bush administration implies support for Al Qaida, and secondly, that artists should stay out of politics. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but both of those sentiments get right up my nose. And I especially don't like being referred to as "child-like".)

Posted June 5, 2007 8:48 AM by Charlie Stross

Hope @80:
I see you don't really do reading "boring, long-winded writers", judged on your reading comprehension of Patrick's post.

We're concerned not because Bradbury supports Bush, but because he's asserting something that isn't true, that (a) F451 isn't about censorship and (b) never was intended to be. The first can be refuted by a straight reading of the book. The second can be refuted by a straight reading of the coda cited above.

Having identified the problem, yes, we go speculating after causes. If his books are Bradbury's professional competence, politics should be Bush's. Is there an analogy between "it's not about censorship" and "Iraq has weapons of mass destruction?" Is the analogy bad information, or deliberate deception? Or is Bradbury's age catching up with him? All these are grounds for speculation.

No one here has proposed banning Bradbury's books - unlike him (ironically), many of us here believe that censorship does happen, and that F451 is a powerful argument against it.

(Mind you, this is probably too long-winded a comment for you to read, assuming you're not a drive-by. Nice split infinitive, BTW; using "totally" to do the split makes it even more striking.)

Posted June 5, 2007 8:51 AM by abi

O noes! Crosspostz!

Posted June 5, 2007 8:53 AM by abi

It's not entirely surprising that a book can be better than its author, given that a book can be edited and groomed and repaired until it's just so. The author is as the author is, and sometimes they can present a good face, and other times they're stuck with the phiz that nature gave them. I try to remember that I am staring out behind just such a map, but much of the time my kind brain works to spare me the knowledge.

Television makes you stupid? I recall reading he gave an interview in a room with a muted Fox News crawling factoids as he spoke. I suppose it's possible.

I don't think it's fair, either, to hold Old Ray against Young Ray for the calamity of so long life. I expect I'll give the sequel to Dandelion Wine a try, and probably re-read the original first.

(Oldmanspeak, in 2036, will sound remarkably like how young people talked just a few short, short years ago, only more slurred, and simultaneously assertive and querulous.)

Posted June 5, 2007 8:53 AM by Kip W

#80: Hello there, Hope. You must be new around here - this is your first post. Patrick might be many things (I've never met him), but I could never describe his writing as either boring nor long-winded.

This isn't a witch-hunt against the 'protected species' of Bush-supporters (were that it were necessary!), but rather 'that people who write brilliant books sometimes say foolish things.' In this instance, it seems that Bradbury is flatly contradicting himself in order to make his own political points.

Posted June 5, 2007 9:01 AM by Jakob

#83 abi: double crossposts! The embarrassment! *all die*

Posted June 5, 2007 9:03 AM by Jakob

That about sums it up. The writers of fiction are not Perfect Icons. Sometimes the ones we like best will say stupid stuff.

And sometimes we will like the person who writes but find their writing to be off limits for discussion, lest we mortally offend them.

:)

Posted June 5, 2007 9:04 AM by Scorpio

#8 Michael:

[Talking about disbelief that anyone smart could be a Republican]

I guess I'm always surprised by comments like this, because I know very smart, capable people all over the political spectrum. I certainly haven't noticed political or social views that mark someone out as obviously stupid or anything. Sometimes, people have blind spots. Other times, they just weight things differently than I do. This seems even more true for writers than for others, since:

a. Writers deal extensively in ideas and words and imagined better/worse worlds.

b. You can read things from people who lived hundreds of years ago, and in distant countries and completely different cultures than you.

The idea that all right-thinking people (all people worth listening to) believe the same things as you is more-or-less a way of blinding yourself. Many people worth listening to disagree with you about everything of importance. There are insightful and smart and humane people who think homosexuality is a disease to be cured, or that a US/Europe-run worldwide empire would benefit mankind, or whatever other oddball thing you can imagine. It's possible to learn from them without agreeing with them, and it's possible to respect someone with whom you have huge disagreements. In fact, you're far more likely to learn something from a person who doesn't come from your background and assumptions than from someone who thinks and lives just like you do.

Posted June 5, 2007 9:05 AM by albatross

Every now and then, someone will claim that a writer is so different from his/her work that he/she couldn't be the real author: witness the debates about whether Shakespeare really wrote his plays, whether O.S.Card really wrote Ender's Game, etc.

Are those debates fueled by frustration with writers' personal flaws...?
:-S

Posted June 5, 2007 9:20 AM by A.R.Yngve

abi @ 82... If I may add to what you wrote... As for the assertion that art and politics should be kept separate, can one do that when a work of art makes a political point?

*hed kaputz*

Posted June 5, 2007 9:22 AM by Serge

Jakob @85:
*all die*

i can has brains?

Posted June 5, 2007 9:27 AM by abi

See, Ray can say all he wants about his book, he is the author, after all. It doesn't mean we need to read it that way. And he can support whomever he wants, I don't care.

From what I remember, somewheres about 2/3 of the way through F451, Cpt. Beatty comes on stage and gives us the info dump that explains the whole society and book, of why Clarisse was strange in society, and why Montag feels disconnected, and why Ray wrote the book (you know, besides the introduction where he says it's about censorship). His characters have betrayed him.

But I'm not at home and can't pull my well read copy from the shelf and double check that.

Posted June 5, 2007 9:27 AM by Steve Buchheit

But... but he's always had a soft spot for dinosaurs, apes, and circus freaks!

Posted June 5, 2007 9:43 AM by Del

Time for me to listen to Hermann's F451 score. Absolutely beautiful, especially the section for the final scene where people are saying books out loud as they walk in the snow.

Posted June 5, 2007 9:47 AM by Serge

#81 Charlie:

I can see two ways to think about the "artists should stay out of politics" comment.

On one side, it's pretty common for public figures (movie stars, athletes, whatever) to take some kind of political stand or campaign for some political goal, and they're given a lot of weight (at least publicity) because they're public figures, not because there's any reason to think they understand the issues better than anyone else. The fact that you're a successful actor, writer, athlete, businessman, etc., by itself doesn't say how much weight I should give your political opinions. If an obviously very smart and capable person like Tom Hanks says something about movie making or acting, I suspect he really knows what he's talking about; if he says something about the wisdom of the war in Iraq, I suspect he's no more informed than the guy sitting next to me in the coffeeshop. This doesn't mean I should discount his opinions, but they shouldn't get more weight than anyone else's. (That said, there are public figures who have taken some serious interest in some political or social issue, and are quite well informed about it. Bono probably really does have something useful to say about aid to Africa, for example, even though "successful music career" doesn't imply much about "competent to evaluate different aid programs to third-world countries.")

But art and politics are intertwined, in much the same way that religion and politics are intertwined. Movies and books give a picture of the world, and your picture of the world determines a lot about your politics. (I don't know how much connection there is between painting, sculpture, or music and politics, though there's probably some kind of connection.)

Sometimes, the connection is obvious--some books are basically propoganda for some idea or belief. You can make utopian socialism or benign facism work in a novel, even though both turn into a nightmare in real life. But it seems like every story has a backdrop that has political implications. Do people mostly arrive at their current state through luck or choices? What's the right way for parents and children, or men and women, or employers and employees, to interact? Is religious faith something that strenghens you, or something that weakens you?

To tie this back to the first point, a well-written book or well-produced movie can make water flow uphill. It can make something that would never really work seem practical--whether that's a thousand-person, super-competent criminal conspiracy that never leaks or messes up, or good guys successfully using torture to get information, or some version or another of utopia. If you're not specifically looking for the problems, you often won't catch them. Just as actors' and athletes' ideas about society should be taken with a grain of salt, so should authors' and directors'--and it's harder to do, because they can often make the impossible seem entirely plausible.

The weird thing is, I've seen movies and read books where I saw the problem, but lots of other dedicated viewers/readers never did. Sometimes, this ruins the movie or book for me; other times I can enjoy it, but with this weird bit of unreality--like I know I'm suspending disbelief, and I'm doing it provisionally for this book.

Posted June 5, 2007 9:47 AM by albatross

Some time traveler stepped on the wrong butterfly. We're now in Deutscher's universe, with that universe's Ray Bradbury.

Posted June 5, 2007 10:03 AM by Jon Meltzer

Fahrenheit 451 has always been about moronic TV, not censorship. We have always been at war with Barsoom. Our bread-and-circus ration has just been increased to 20 grams and the Pandaemonium Shadow Show. Alphas have to work so hard, I'm so glad I'm Marie of Roumania!

Beam me up, C'Mell, I'm melting.

Posted June 5, 2007 10:37 AM by Jo Walton

You have to remember that Bradbury is the guy who wrote "Forever and the Earth". Thomas Wolfe is his model for writing. That's okay for a sixteen-year-old, which is roughly where Bradbury remins frozen.

Posted June 5, 2007 11:36 AM by theophylact

#88

[Talking about disbelief that anyone smart could be a Republican]

I guess I'm always surprised by comments like this, because I know very smart, capable people all over the political spectrum.

But the comment wasn't about someone smart being a Republican -- it was about someone smart being a Bushite.

There really isn't any excuse any more for anyone smart to support George W.

Posted June 5, 2007 11:43 AM by James D. Macdonald

Tom Barclay @ #52: excellent, excellent, my thoughts exactly.

Posted June 5, 2007 11:44 AM by PublicRadioVet

Hope (#80)No, art and politics should remain separate, just like church and state--any time a celebrity actor or writer strays over the divide with their child-like opinion, it's our job to be the adult and just look the other way.

Lessee... how to sum this up... Bullshit.

One: Politicians speak on art all the time. No one seems to think this is wrong.

Two: Politics isn't some mystical sphere, like neurosurgery, or fluid dynamics, which requires some special aptitude, extensive training and the like.

It is, in fact, an interactive process. We, as a polity, need to have people (be they artists, [of any stripe, from potters to actors] schoolteachers [kindergarten to Ph.D advisors] garbage collectors, bricklayers, economists, soldiers, sailors, dog-catchers, students) to take part.

I, for one, think the idea of Plato's philosopher king is a bad one. I don't think shoving off the privelege of who gets to decide how I live (and, in some cases, die) to some annointed class of, "politicians" is a good thing.

Esp. as those who fill that role are selected in ways which, in no way, necessarily suit them to the job.

In the middle ages, it was birth. In the modern US it's a combination of birth (for the money), prediliction (for the urge to run) and one's ability to persuade the public; either through good rhetoric on important issues, or by playing to fear, predjudice and the hot-buttons of the day.

Add television and one suddenly needs charisma.

Bush, Cheney, Biden, Obama, Schweitzer, et al., aren't annointed by heaven, they were elected by people. They aren't super-beings, to whom I have to defer, they are my equals (and in some cases my inferiors, either to wit, or morals; sometimes both).

So if Bradbury, Vonnegutt, Bono, Cher, Sting, Angelena Jolie, (I ran out of one name celebrities), Tom Cruise, Andre Ethier, Vin Sculley, etc. want to take advantage of the bully pulpit their fame gives them, to militate on the causes for which they care... I say good on 'em, because so many people just sit at home and leave it to the politicians; whom they then excoriate for not making good decisions.

Posted June 5, 2007 11:46 AM by Terry Karney

Aw, Jo, and your beautiful wickedness too?

Posted June 5, 2007 11:47 AM by Bruce Cohen, SpeakerToManagers

# 59 Bruce Cohen I think on average you're right that old age brings conservatism, and the trend may indeed continue as we extend lifespan. But average is only average; there will always be people whose attitudes change because they actually learn more over time, about themselves and the world. You know, the "young at heart".

We are part of a divided species. In general, I'd say women become more radical, not more conservative. The learning of a lifetime often highlights for them just what the facts of life are -- and in a way that makes their opinions pretty unpalatable. I seriously doubt that the results could be summarized as "young at heart". Conservative is where guys go, but old women get more and more obstreperous -- and thus the whisper of "witch!" rings through history -- when it isn't a burning screech.

Posted June 5, 2007 11:57 AM by Scorpio

Terry makes a good case for why pedestals are a bad place to display politicians*. There's also a case to be made for not putting artists up there.

We in Western society** have a tendency to want to aggrandize artists, to think of them as somehow inherently special, moving in a realm the rest of us can only dimly perceive. This is why we have trouble when a respected artist says something stupid, ignorant, or flaming hateful.

To borrow Terry's succinct analysis: "Bullshit". There's nothing mystical about art, well, any more mystical than the rest of life. Art is craft, the solving of problems involved in taking raw materials and turning them into artifice. It has very little, if any, relation to your intelligence***, your personality, your politics, or your morality.

Picasso was an egocentric, selfish ass. He was also a great painter. No connection between the two. Lawrence Olivier was a Fascist and very possibly drove his wife insane, deliberately. He was also a great actor. Again, no connection. Rodin treated his finest protege like crap, and kept her from getting the praise she deserved because he was more interested in sleeping with her than helping her with her art. He was also a great sculptor. Just for contrast, Ray Harryhausen was reportedly one of the nicest people you were ever likely to meet, and he was the single greatest stop motion animator of his time, practically inventing the art form. A pattern emerges.

There's this persistent image of an artist as someone whose abilities come from living in a garret in Paris, smoking opium, and dying of syphilis. Art, crime, squalor, and the power of the mystic mind all wrapped up in one package. I'm still trying to find the PR guy who dreamed that up; I'll pay for his garret.

* aside from the difficulties in dusting, and the horror of accidentally seeing their undies.

** as opposed to, say, Bali, where art is considered a part of everyday life.

*** yes, some minimum intelligence is necessary to use whatever tools the art requires, and to plan what you're doing, but my observation is that the minimum is not high.

Posted June 5, 2007 12:14 PM by Bruce Cohen, SpeakerToManagers

Jo Walton #97: That's just perfect. You are hereby awarded one Internet (batteries not included).

Posted June 5, 2007 12:24 PM by Fragano Ledgister

how to change your mind gracefully

well, if I have a purpose in life, it might be to serve as an example for others of how not to do it.

Posted June 5, 2007 12:41 PM by Greg London

About eleven years ago, I went to a lecture at the Huntington Library by Paul Conrad, former editorial cartoonist for the LA Times, three time Pulitzer winner, and Enemy of Nixon. Conrad read some of his hate mail, and one letter that tore Conrad a new one for having the audacity to criticize Ronald Reagan came from Ray Bradbury.

And only a few years before, Bradbury had come to speak at my college. He signed my friend's lab coat and my copy of F451. And the latter experience, I'm sad to say, spoiled the former just a little bit.

Posted June 5, 2007 12:52 PM by Adam Rakunas

Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers) #104 wrote "There's this persistent image of an artist as someone whose abilities come from living in a garret in Paris, smoking opium, and dying of syphilis. Art, crime, squalor, and the power of the mystic mind all wrapped up in one package. I'm still trying to find the PR guy who dreamed that up; I'll pay for his garret."

If you shift the garret to London, leave out the opium, and have the cause of death be suicide rather than syphilis you get Thomas Chatterton.

Posted June 5, 2007 12:54 PM by Fragano Ledgister

On changing one's mind publicly and gracefully, the latest issue of the Hedgehog Review has a pretty decent article about John Dewey, his vocal advocacy of interventionism in WWI, and what it means for our current quagmire's "hawkish liberals". Made for a good read on my commute, but I kept inadvertently brushing it against the neck of the man in front of me. Sorry man!

Posted June 5, 2007 12:55 PM by Gursky

The last time I re-read The Martian Chronicles, sometime within the past few years, I was deeply disoriented by its, well, chronology. The standard version of the book was first published in 1950, so inevitably his projections didn't all pan out, esp. launching the first Mars rocket from Ohio in winter; in general, he overestimated the rate of technological development, but didn't seem to account for much sociological change.

According to TMC, by now, we should've launched manned missions to Mars, terraformed it, established self-sustaining colonies, and then largely abandoned them again to return to global thermonuclear war on Earth. At the same time, despite narrative disapproval, women were still largely relegated to subservient household duties and segregation was still in effect (incl. the lack of prosecution for recreational lynchings).

TMC is one of those works that's so deeply embedded in my childhood (I still remember begging to be allowed to stay up late to watch the tv miniseries) that I find it difficult to believe that it *had* an author; it just *is*. OTOH, it's possible that now I may never end up reading F451 after all.

Posted June 5, 2007 12:56 PM by Julie L.

Julie L @ 110... I still like the 1980s miniseries of The Martian Chronicles. (No, Tania, you may not make cracks about my cinematic tastes.)

Posted June 5, 2007 1:02 PM by Serge

Patrick:
Very likely, all of us will need posterity to forgive our stupidities and remember our better moments, so it’s best not to be completely judgmental. But it’s also important to point out the truth.

Time that is intolerant
Of the brave and innocent
And indifferent in a week
To a beautiful physique
Worships language, and forgives
Everyone by whom it lives.
Time, that with this strange excuse,
Pardoned Kipling and his views,
And will pardon Paul Claudel
Pardons him for writing well.

Posted June 5, 2007 1:27 PM by abi

A.R.Yngve @ 89: Every now and then, someone will claim that a writer is so different from his/her work that he/she couldn't be the real author: witness the debates about whether Shakespeare really wrote his plays, whether O.S.Card really wrote Ender's Game, etc.

Hm. When I read Ender's Game, knowing nothing about Card, I thought "this guy is a creep." Not being as smart as John Kessel, I wasn't able to articulate why, but nothing I've learned about Card since has come as a surprise to me.

Posted June 5, 2007 1:29 PM by Tim Walters

Guy Montag was a Replicant.

Posted June 5, 2007 1:31 PM by Dave Lartigue

I still remember reading this interview from 1999: Onion AV Club interview with Ray Bradbury

O: Fahrenheit 451 is one of the definitive anti-censorship books. What do you think of the renewed efforts to restrict or regulate the content of books, movies, music, and the like?

RB: That's not censorship. You have to have taste. You know, there's a hell of a lot in movies that doesn't have to be there. I'll give you a good example: Mel Gibson is doing a new version of Fahrenheit 451 next year some time. There are nine screenplays—nine screenplays! Now, if you know the book, you can just shoot the book off of the page. It's an automatic screenplay. Well, I gave them one screenplay, and there are eight more by various screenwriters. And to give you an example of what should not go into a film—and it's not censorship, it's taste—there's one of the scenes by this other screenwriter. The fire chief comes to visit Montag, and Montag's wife, Mildred, says to him, "Would you like some coffee?" And the fire