I was reading Ray Bradbury's obituary yesterday when I came across this fascinating fact:His classic novel on a dystopian future 'Farenheit 451' was written in a library. Specifically UCLS's Powell Library in 1953. Their own obituary in the UCLA Magazine includes a video on him writing the book.
In the days before public access computers, the library had coin-operated type-writers and he bashed out this sci-fi masterpiece in just nine days at a total cost of less than ten dollars.*
So there he was tippety tappety spelling out the destruction of the world's books whilst surrounded by them:
"Imagine what it was like to be writing a book about book burning and doing it in a library where the passions of all those authors, living and dead, surrounded me."
Ray Bradbury 2002
Worryingly, I just found this quote on the intriguing literary blog Page Pulp:
“To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.”
Victor Hugo
This raises several questions:
- What would Bradbury - a famous techno-phobe who wouldn't use a lift and thought electric toothbrushes were the work of the devil - make of his books being available as eBooks now?
- Are there any other books written from the point of view of a fireman?
- What are my library users up to and should I be watching them more carefully?
* One of the things I love about writing is that it's a really cheap hobby. So much less costly than wind surfing, collecting Steiff bears, or playing the harp.
