She read his afterword to me and I was amazed at his clarity of things. I felt that the world today needs to read this. Every word is pertinent to today's great divide among Americans. I couldn't find it published anywhere on the web so I felt compelled to scan the text and post it here.
I was especially struck by his description of the intersectional censorship he dealt with and how it is alive and well in today's PC culture.
Fire-Captain Beatty, in my novel Fahrenheit 451, described how the books were burned first by minorities, each ripping a page or a paragraph from this book, then that, until the day came when the books were empty and the minds shut and the libraries closed forever.-------
The point is obvious. There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist/Unitarian, Irish/Italian/Octogenarian/Zen Buddhist, Zionist/Seventh-day Adventist, Women's Lib/Republican, Mattachine/Four Square Gospel feels it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse.
Either the world hasn't changed much or he was very prescient. Which one do you think?
