Fahrenheit 451. The temperature at which paper burns; a novel by that name by writer Ray Bradbury, who died Tuesday.

Fahrenheit 451 was one of those novels I read as a kid and could never forget. It wasn’t just the frightening dystopia of a future without printed books. That future is becoming more real for us everyday.

It was something about the heart of the story, the way the characters cared for each other and for ideas. It was the elegant and practical and timeless solution they arranged to keep books alive — they memorized them. They learned them by heart. They became the books.

As we’ve all learned recently, painfully, book burnings are alive and well. And Fahrenheit 451 was often under assault for the vigor of its ideas. “The real threat is not from Big Brother, but from little sister [and] all those groups, men and women, who want to impose their views from below,” Bradbury told a Times of London interviewer (as reported in today’s Washington Post).

The way to fight fire is not with fire. Or with water. The way to fight fire is to believe,  hold fast and, ultimately, to become the solution. 


(Photo: Firepictures.net)