Bradbury and Authorial Intent

It’s been around the web for a while (and I guess the regular news, too, but I’m not a regular news person), but Ray Bradbury has spoken out against the common interpretation of his book Fahrenheit 451 as an anti-censorship novel. Instead, he says, his intended target was television, which he believed would destroy interest in reading books. So now that we know what he meant, there shouldn’t be any more problems “misinterpreting” it, right?

I’m sorry, maybe I’m becoming too entrenched in contemporary literary criticism mental patterns, but I have a problem with this. Now, I don’t have a problem with Bradbury saying what he intended to write. I don’t have a problem with people taking another look at the book in light of an anti-television theme. What I have a problem with is Bradbury’s apparent desire to eliminate the anti-censorship reading altogether in favor of an anti-TV reading. I’m still working on my thoughts on authorial intent versus reader’s interpretive role, but I’m pretty sure I’m not in favor of an author shutting down any alternate views of his work that are clearly supported by the work.

I can’t go very deep into the topic without rereading the book, but here’s a few off-the-cuff thoughts.

  • As I said, his statement holds very little water with contemporary critical theory–Roland Barthes declared “the death of the author” over twenty years ago, and the importance of authorial intentionality has been steadily eroding since at least the 1950s. He has as much right to interpreting his own work as anyone else, but no more. Now, that’s a critical position that can be agreed or disagreed with–so let’s move on.
  • Millions of people have read Fahrenheit 451 as an attack on censorship since its 1953 publication. My copy of the book proclaims it “the classic bestseller about censorship” right on the cover in type as big as Bradbury’s name. If that’s not what Bradbury intended, why has it taken him fifty years to speak up?
  • If Bradbury did originally intend a polemic against television rather than censorship, he obviously did a crappy job of communicating his point, since almost nobody has read it that way. I figure an author’s chance to express himself is when he writes the text; if they fail to communicate what they mean, they’ve lost control over it. Crying “but that’s not what I mean” after the fact is far less effective, and rightfully so, than communicating clearly in the first place.
  • I don’t have a problem with an interpretation that sees an anti-television attitude in the text–I’m sure that’s there, though I haven’t read the book in a while. I remember the walls of television screens broadcasting mindless drivel. I remember the sense of Montag being freed from a life of enslavement to the mollifying screens (something his wife was subject to, I believe) through his involvement with the book-saving community. In the article linked above, Bradbury claims the book-burning wasn’t censorship because the people had already turned away from books in favor of television–that the government wasn’t imposing screens for brainwashing purposes as in Orwell’s 1984. However, and I’d probably need to read the book again to see how this plays out, why would the government start burning the books at all if it were merely an issue of the people giving up books in favor of television? It seems that if no-one were reading books, the mere existence of books would become a non-issue. Since the government IS burning books, that leads me to believe that the government feels that in some way televisions are less dangerous than books, and thus preferable to them, whether or not it was the people or the government that began the migration from books to television. And the book is, after all, titled after the temperature at which paper burns, thus focusing on the book-burning itself rather than whatever social changes led to it. It’s more than the government following the people, too, as Bradbury seems to suggest in the article…it’s against the law to read or keep books around, which would be stupid and pointless if the government didn’t have some interest in mandating the move from books to television. Book-burning by an authority is censorship, whether Bradbury likes it or not.
  • I’ve seen a few people really take to Bradbury’s anti-television polemic, but I’m not concerned about which interpretation is correct. I think both are possible readings, even at the same time. The question of “is he right” to me isn’t a question of “is he right about the dangers of censorship” or “is he right about the dangers of television”, but “is he right to try to mandate the way his book is understood.” And I think in this particular case, at least, he is not. In fact, if I wanted to be really cynical, I would suggest that he’s seen the growth of television’s ubiquity over the past fifty years and latched onto that, making himself seem extremely prophetic. But that would be overly cynical.

Now I want to reread the novel. But I don’t have time. So, someone who’s read it more recently than I have, if you’d like to help me understand how a government burning books isn’t censorship, and how a book whose very title evokes book-burning doesn’t foreground censorship, that’d be great.

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8 Comments

  1. For the record, I didn’t think the TV reference eliminated censorship. But, for example, the entire discussion of the presidential candidates was a scathing attack on TV and political campaigns that had little to do with censorship. And when the fire chief explains how censorship came to be, he makes it clear that there was a popular demand for it.

    And who can forget the chase scene? Reality television and the OJ Simpson police chase all predicted decades earlier.

    The message of Farenheit 451 is that mass media produces a market demand for censorship and spreads intolerance of eccentricities in society.

    I read a blog entry but missed the full force of what Bradbury was trying to say. I gravitated toward the TV explanation because I had thought it before. People tend to see Farenheit 451 as a 1984 type novel when it is really more like Brave New World, if that makes any sense.

    So I think you’re right to deny Bradbury the authority he is arrogating to himself. The only time to look at authorial intent is when there is a legitimate ambiguity that can be settled that way. What the book means is determined by what the book says, not by what the author says. Words are used to bind people to certain things. If authorial intent determined meaning, then written words would be meaningless, binding no one.

    Also, if I knew the answer on a test question, but accidently wrote the wrong answer, then I could say I got the answer right because my intention determines meaning.

  2. For the record, I didn’t think the TV reference eliminated censorship. But, for example, the entire discussion of the presidential candidates was a scathing attack on TV and political campaigns that had little to do with censorship. And when the fire chief explains how censorship came to be, he makes it clear that there was a popular demand for it.

    And who can forget the chase scene? Reality television and the OJ Simpson police chase all predicted decades earlier.

    The message of Farenheit 451 is that mass media produces a market demand for censorship and spreads intolerance of eccentricities in society.

    I read a blog entry but missed the full force of what Bradbury was trying to say. I gravitated toward the TV explanation because I had thought it before. People tend to see Farenheit 451 as a 1984 type novel when it is really more like Brave New World, if that makes any sense.

    So I think you’re right to deny Bradbury the authority he is arrogating to himself. The only time to look at authorial intent is when there is a legitimate ambiguity that can be settled that way. What the book means is determined by what the book says, not by what the author says. Words are used to bind people to certain things. If authorial intent determined meaning, then written words would be meaningless, binding no one.

    Also, if I knew the answer on a test question, but accidently wrote the wrong answer, then I could say I got the answer right because my intention determines meaning.

  3. Mark, I figured you probably didn’t, but the way you said it was ambiguous. :p I probably should’ve asked you first, but I was also sort of including the blog you referenced. And yeah, like I said, I don’t remember the details of the story that well (it’s seriously probably been ten or twelve years since I read it). Why is there popular demand for censorship? That just doesn’t make any sense to me–hence why I need to reread. If no one is reading books, why wouldn’t they die out naturally, and why would people braindead through television care if anyone else was reading books?

    I love your test analogy…that’s a perfect way to define the difference between intention and what’s actually on the page. I may have to use that sometime.

  4. Mark, I figured you probably didn’t, but the way you said it was ambiguous. :p I probably should’ve asked you first, but I was also sort of including the blog you referenced. And yeah, like I said, I don’t remember the details of the story that well (it’s seriously probably been ten or twelve years since I read it). Why is there popular demand for censorship? That just doesn’t make any sense to me–hence why I need to reread. If no one is reading books, why wouldn’t they die out naturally, and why would people braindead through television care if anyone else was reading books?

    I love your test analogy…that’s a perfect way to define the difference between intention and what’s actually on the page. I may have to use that sometime.

  5. I got the test analogy from Professor John Frame in private e-correspondence. He now teaches at RTS Orlando

    I think the problem for the authorities in Bradbury’s novel is predictability and control. In a media-saturated culture people can be controlled. The censorship represents an attempt to make sure the influence of unconrollable people does not spread. Readers might want something more in debates than ugly and pretty candidates….

    I’m just relating the book, not agreeing with anything. I do sort of resonate with it. But I loved Atlas Shrugged, so what do I know?

  6. I got the test analogy from Professor John Frame in private e-correspondence. He now teaches at RTS Orlando

    I think the problem for the authorities in Bradbury’s novel is predictability and control. In a media-saturated culture people can be controlled. The censorship represents an attempt to make sure the influence of unconrollable people does not spread. Readers might want something more in debates than ugly and pretty candidates….

    I’m just relating the book, not agreeing with anything. I do sort of resonate with it. But I loved Atlas Shrugged, so what do I know?

  7. Evan Donovan

    The most important reason Bradbury can’t get away with this re-interpretation is that a few years back he wrote a postscript to the novel in which he talked about how bad censorship was. He made some very good points. I don’t know why he would back away from it now. I think both the anti-TV and anti-censorship themes are important in the novel.

  8. Evan Donovan

    The most important reason Bradbury can’t get away with this re-interpretation is that a few years back he wrote a postscript to the novel in which he talked about how bad censorship was. He made some very good points. I don’t know why he would back away from it now. I think both the anti-TV and anti-censorship themes are important in the novel.

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