Coda

[andrewducker]

Ray Bradbury, writer of Farenheit 451, one of the best anti-censorship novels ever written, talks about being asked to censor his own works

Comments

[heron61.livejournal.com]

I heard him speak one, and he's an odd individual (I was deeply disturbed by his lavish praise of shopping malls), but he's definitely someone with honor and conviction. Thanks for posting this link.

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

Except that he wasn't asked to censor his own works: the only act of censorship mentioned in the whole article is the snipping of swearie-words from Fahrenheit 451. (The "condensed short stories" I'm iffy about - I detest them, the whole Readers Digest predigested pap - but I wouldn't call it censorship.)

[wolflady26.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't you call being pressured to remove parts of books so that they are more politically acceptable "censorship"?

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

Criticism is not censorship. This is a problem many egotistical writers have: usually with far less excuse to be egotistical than Ray Bradbury has.

It is a valid criticism that the Martian Chronicles has patronising, nice-white-man attitudes to black men and white women, and that it renders black women completely invisible: it's a valid criticism that could be made of many, many books written at the time the Martian Chronicles were written. I love the Martian Chronicles, but do so despite, not because of, the awesome faults that are all too visible now.

To call it "censorship" when a "a solemn young Vassar lady" or a number of readers (Bradbury doesn't specify, most probably black) write to him to say "We love your writing: but we wish you could write to include us" is to trivialise the whole issue of censorship. A reader's request, or a reader's criticism, however inappropriately expressed, is not censorship. This cannot be too loudly said. To suggest that these readers have no right to express their opinions to any audience they choose - including the writer - that is censorship, and censorship of a peculiarly poisonous kind.