There has been considerable controversy lately regarding the Ray Bradbury classic, Fahrenheit 451. To the surprise of many, Ray has stated more than once in recent weeks that his 1953 opus is not about government censorship. He has been firm in several recent interviews that Fahrenheit is really about television destroying interest in reading literature. “[Television stuffs] you with so much useless information, you feel full,” he said.

Many of these articles (and the ensuing plethora of blogarrhea that I am now contributing to) have gone on to mention my own book.

“Even Bradbury’s authorized biographer, Sam Weller, in The Bradbury Chronicles: The Life of Ray Bradbury, refers to Fahrenheit 451 as a book about censorship,” one writer said.

As my name and my book have been thrown into this controversy, I thought I would speak up. Keep in mind that I worked very closely with Ray Bradbury for nearly five years and we certainly discussed the themes of Fahrenheit 451 a good many times.

Certainly, one of the concerns at the forefront of Ray Bradbury’s mind when he wrote Fahrenheit 451 in 1953 was the misuse and overuse of television and how it could greatly contribute to the dumbing down of society. In his fictional dystopia, people don’t need the government to censor things for them, they are censoring themselves by retreating from anything and everything that stimulates intellectual thought. One needs look no further than the character of Mildred for proof. She doesn’t need Big Brother telling her to eschew books for T.V., she has done it all on her very own.

That was one of the many themes Ray so wisely addressed in his groundbreaking cautionary tale. For certain, Ray Bradbury, the great visionary, was warning us all of the growing threat of T.V. And to think, he wrote about this when the technology was in its very infancy!

Still, I must very respectfully disagree with Ray when he says he was not writing about McCarthy or censorship when he wrote Fahrenheit 451. The letters in Ray's own archives, many of which I reference in my own book, The Bradbury Chronicles: The Life of Ray Bradbury, show that these topics were very much at the forefront of his mind in 1953. In Ray's own writing about the genesis of Fahrenheit, he indicates that the McCarthy hearings, as well as the House Un-American Activities Committee, along with the rash of Nazi book burnings before World War II, fanned the so-called flames that lead to the writing of his book. In my hundreds of hours of interviews, not once did Ray Bradbury say that his book was “not about censorship.” In fact, we discussed the theme of censorship countless times.

In the end, Ray's response in recent articles indicates something fascinating about the inner-machinations of a great and imaginative literary mind. To Ray Bradbury, his stories are living, breathing creatures and, as such, they grow and evolve. Fahrenheit 451 doesn't mean the same thing to Ray Bradbury in 2007 as it did to Ray Bradbury circa 1953. Ray has had a long history of revising and rewriting his previously published work, sometimes decades after the initial publication. The short story “The Night,” for example, first collected in 1947’s Dark Carnival is dramatically different from the version included in 1957’s Dandelion Wine. Ray rewrote it. The classic short story “The Homecoming,” first published in Mademoiselle magazine in 1945 is noticeably altered from the version included in 2001’s From the Dust Returned. When Ray Bradbury adapted Fahrenheit 451 to the theatrical stage, he added a dramatic new scene that revealed Captain Beatty’s own secret cache of contraband books.

All of these revisions (and there are a good many more that I did not reference) reflect Ray Bradbury’s current creative mindset, as well as his social and political philosophies. It is my belief that Ray Bradbury has written another draft of Fahrenheit 451 in recent interviews. And more power to him. After all, it's his masterpiece and the man certainly should not censor himself.

Sam Weller
Chicago, Illinois
August, 2007