It is impossible to express how grateful I am for the beautiful and eloquent ongoing labor of love undertaken by the estimable Sam Weller in his newspaper and magazine articles, blogs, podcasts, public lectures, zoom presentations his role as a teacher of Bradbury at Columbia University in Chicago, his books (especially the bio THE BRADBURY CHRONICLES);, you name it, he is the one proponent of Bradbury who can speak to the man's beautiful work and his beautiful soul and I am just as grateful to the Des Moines Public Library for hosting him and for Courtney Williamson, for her obvious love of Bradbury's work and her careful consideration for the questions asked. I am also so HAPPY that she teaches the Bradbury story: All Summer In a Day as it truly is the one I personally love the most. I am the person who asked the question about what Bradbury would think about great literature no longer being called that and most of all, no longer being interpreted or read as that or read at ALL, for that matter. although I'm not sure if I stressed the interpretation. I am deeply grateful to her for asking my question. However, the answer broke my heart. It was the one and only dialed back thing I have ever heard or read Sam Weller say. I don't want to be excoriarting. I just want to say how I feel about the general discussion for some time now about the Western Canon those books for the Ages (THANK YOU FOREVER, HAROLD BLOOM) that many of us of a certain age grew up unashamedly learning about even if through slight hints from our youngest years in school or even earlier and Ray Bradbury himself certainly did as well as from the libraries he studied in which certainly at the time were organized toward steering one toward the Classics, by that I mean all literary masterpieces so considered at the time our colllective shimmering inheritance, not merely ancient Greece and Rome.. Now we are in a war of words that was begun I think while I was in college where the word 'relevance' began to be applied to literature and as an English major ar the time in love with all the Great Books, the Classics I could get my hands on, I remember that I did see the writing on the wall with that word. Now it is to a point where there is actually hate speech about acknowledging Great Literature of the past as Great Literature. That's what it sounds like to me. If Fahrenheit 451 is now considered to be primarily about the evils of technology and not about PRESERVING GREAT LITERATURE DOWN TO YOUR LAST BREATH then I think I am having a twilight zone kind of dream where nothing means anything anymore. And nothing means what it EVER meant. To any of us. Great literature will always be great literature. Not calling it that anymore, making it a faux pas even a literary even a social crime to call it that is perhaps in our time the equivalent of lighting the match to it. Whether or not Ray Bradbury was for that or not you have to decide for yourself. i don't think his epitaph bears out the belief that he wrote Fahrenheit mainly as an indictment of technology. I don't think he said to himself after he designed his epitaph, oh good. Now peope will know about technology. Are you kidding? He wanted to be remembered for Fahrenheit because he wanted his booksand all great books to never die. As for me, I KNOW in my soul the great literature I grew up was NOBLE; that the people who called it that and taught me that including my own grandparents and my mother were noble people and I WILL STAND WITH THEM UNTIL THE DAY I DIE AND BEYOND on this point.. As Shakespeare said: LOVE BEARS IT OUT EVEN TO THE EDGE OF DOOM. And so did the Book People in Ray's book.I can't talk anymore about this without starting to cry so I'll just leave it at that. What is truly great cannot cease being so. It is impossible I will NOT ever use that perjorative, asinine phrase 'the white canon.".Those books were on a list because they spoke to the soul of man, regardless of color. And there are those who know this and those who do not. If we keep quiet, it we acquiesce, there will come a day when there will be whole generations without that beautiful map at hand and they will have to reinvent the wheel without any guidance at all. I pray to holy God the children of the future will know this that some books ARE greater than others, have stood the test of time and no mistake, that some books speak to your heart and soul, to your transcendent will to surmount all the horrors and remember only the beautiful. And yes, as Petrarch put it, 'some works are meant for Heaven.:Of course now we realize there are and will be MANY MORE Great books than what we previously thought but that does NOT DIMINISH THE GREAT BOOKS OF THE PAST WHICH LIBRARIES HAVE TO THIS POINT IN TIME CAREFULLY GUARDED AND PRESEVED FROM AGE TO AGE. It was this type of library that Ray Bradbury was/is the patron saint of.But if libraries lose what they once were, and abandon their role as the custodians of all this and begin, as many have, to discard items they somehow no longer consider "relevant", he certainly shall not preside over them.. And if the teachers of literature no longer tell the children of the Great Books, that this is so then I pray angels themselves will come down from Heaven and illuminate the children's understanding. We are a crossroads. Each of us has to understand we must choose sides. There are many ways to burn books. One way is to no longer call them great, the ones that truly are.. We are witnessing this in our Time. Fahrenheit 451 is not social science fiction. It is what is happening in classrooms across the country and yes, even in some libraries where shelves are being reorganized so that the classics are hidden in the popular fiction. This happened in my town. I was the only person who spoke out against it. Please please tell the truth. Please don't waffle on this point or concede one inch of ground.. I beg you. Ray Bradbury is being reduced by those with ulterior motives. Not Sam. But Sam is beginning to listen to them, here and there. I don't know why. Ray BRADBURY UNEQUIVOCALLY WAS FOR THE GREAT BOOKS. NOT JUST BECAUSE THEY HAPPENED TO BE THE BOOKS THAT WERE CALLED GREAT IN HIS TIME. There is no reason why the list of Great Books cannot GROW. But those who advise throwing out the list entirely are on the path of the firemen in Fahrenheit 451, the ones bent on torching the whole thing. And if Fahrenheit 451 is NOT about that anymore Ray in Mars Heaven will certainly be the most surprised and sorrowful of us all.
A most excellent many coloued, many splendored presentation. Thank you Sam Weller, and Courney W. and Des Moines Public Library. Please have Sam back FOR MORE STORIES ABOUT BRADBURY ESPECIALLY. WONDERFUL.
It is impossible to express how grateful I am for the beautiful and eloquent ongoing labor of love undertaken by the estimable Sam Weller in his newspaper and magazine articles, blogs, podcasts, public lectures, zoom presentations his role as a teacher of Bradbury at Columbia University in Chicago, his books (especially the bio THE BRADBURY CHRONICLES);, you name it, he is the one proponent of Bradbury who can speak to the man's beautiful work and his beautiful soul and I am just as grateful to the Des Moines Public Library for hosting him and for Courtney Williamson, for her obvious love of Bradbury's work and her careful consideration for the questions asked. I am also so HAPPY that she teaches the Bradbury story: All Summer In a Day as it truly is the one I personally love the most. I am the person who asked the question about what Bradbury would think about great literature no longer being called that and most of all, no longer being interpreted or read as that or read at ALL, for that matter. although I'm not sure if I stressed the interpretation. I am deeply grateful to her for asking my question. However, the answer broke my heart. It was the one and only dialed back thing I have ever heard or read Sam Weller say. I don't want to be excoriarting. I just want to say how I feel about the general discussion for some time now about the Western Canon those books for the Ages (THANK YOU FOREVER, HAROLD BLOOM) that many of us of a certain age grew up unashamedly learning about even if through slight hints from our youngest years in school or even earlier and Ray Bradbury himself certainly did as well as from the libraries he studied in which certainly at the time were organized toward steering one toward the Classics, by that I mean all literary masterpieces so considered at the time our colllective shimmering inheritance, not merely ancient Greece and Rome.. Now we are in a war of words that was begun I think while I was in college where the word 'relevance' began to be applied to literature and as an English major ar the time in love with all the Great Books, the Classics I could get my hands on, I remember that I did see the writing on the wall with that word. Now it is to a point where there is actually hate speech about acknowledging Great Literature of the past as Great Literature. That's what it sounds like to me. If Fahrenheit 451 is now considered to be primarily about the evils of technology and not about PRESERVING GREAT LITERATURE DOWN TO YOUR LAST BREATH then I think I am having a twilight zone kind of dream where nothing means anything anymore. And nothing means what it EVER meant. To any of us. Great literature will always be great literature. Not calling it that anymore, making it a faux pas even a literary even a social crime to call it that is perhaps in our time the equivalent of lighting the match to it. Whether or not Ray Bradbury was for that or not you have to decide for yourself. i don't think his epitaph bears out the belief that he wrote Fahrenheit mainly as an indictment of technology. I don't think he said to himself after he designed his epitaph, oh good. Now peope will know about technology. Are you kidding? He wanted to be remembered for Fahrenheit because he wanted his booksand all great books to never die. As for me, I KNOW in my soul the great literature I grew up was NOBLE; that the people who called it that and taught me that including my own grandparents and my mother were noble people and I WILL STAND WITH THEM UNTIL THE DAY I DIE AND BEYOND on this point.. As Shakespeare said: LOVE BEARS IT OUT EVEN TO THE EDGE OF DOOM. And so did the Book People in Ray's book.I can't talk anymore about this without starting to cry so I'll just leave it at that. What is truly great cannot cease being so. It is impossible I will NOT ever use that perjorative, asinine phrase 'the white canon.".Those books were on a list because they spoke to the soul of man, regardless of color. And there are those who know this and those who do not. If we keep quiet, it we acquiesce, there will come a day when there will be whole generations without that beautiful map at hand and they will have to reinvent the wheel without any guidance at all. I pray to holy God the children of the future will know this that some books ARE greater than others, have stood the test of time and no mistake, that some books speak to your heart and soul, to your transcendent will to surmount all the horrors and remember only the beautiful. And yes, as Petrarch put it, 'some works are meant for Heaven.:Of course now we realize there are and will be MANY MORE Great books than what we previously thought but that does NOT DIMINISH THE GREAT BOOKS OF THE PAST WHICH LIBRARIES HAVE TO THIS POINT IN TIME CAREFULLY GUARDED AND PRESEVED FROM AGE TO AGE. It was this type of library that Ray Bradbury was/is the patron saint of.But if libraries lose what they once were, and abandon their role as the custodians of all this and begin, as many have, to discard items they somehow no longer consider "relevant", he certainly shall not preside over them.. And if the teachers of literature no longer tell the children of the Great Books, that this is so then I pray angels themselves will come down from Heaven and illuminate the children's understanding. We are a crossroads. Each of us has to understand we must choose sides. There are many ways to burn books. One way is to no longer call them great, the ones that truly are.. We are witnessing this in our Time. Fahrenheit 451 is not social science fiction. It is what is happening in classrooms across the country and yes, even in some libraries where shelves are being reorganized so that the classics are hidden in the popular fiction. This happened in my town. I was the only person who spoke out against it. Please please tell the truth. Please don't waffle on this point or concede one inch of ground.. I beg you. Ray Bradbury is being reduced by those with ulterior motives. Not Sam. But Sam is beginning to listen to them, here and there. I don't know why. Ray BRADBURY UNEQUIVOCALLY WAS FOR THE GREAT BOOKS. NOT JUST BECAUSE THEY HAPPENED TO BE THE BOOKS THAT WERE CALLED GREAT IN HIS TIME. There is no reason why the list of Great Books cannot GROW. But those who advise throwing out the list entirely are on the path of the firemen in Fahrenheit 451, the ones bent on torching the whole thing. And if Fahrenheit 451 is NOT about that anymore Ray in Mars Heaven will certainly be the most surprised and sorrowful of us all.
A most excellent many coloued, many splendored presentation. Thank you Sam Weller, and Courney W. and Des Moines Public Library. Please have Sam back FOR MORE STORIES ABOUT BRADBURY ESPECIALLY. WONDERFUL.