My takeaway is that it is ultimately superficial. Bradbury, as a literary man, seems to think of literature as an end in itself, and a published novel which pleased someone to be inherently valuable. I see no strong basis for making this claim, EXCEPT in contradistinction to, in being less bad than, a television addiction.
We all know TV makes people stupider. At least that seems to be true, and a great many of us think we know that. The internet, perhaps, is even worse. I was playing yesterday with the idea of “Twitterthink” as something to be compared and contrasted with Doublethink. I may develop that later, but I’m not at the moment sure what I myself think and feel about all that.
Be all that as it may, is Justine by Sade really a book whose loss human civilization should bemoan? Lolita? Anything by Sartre?
Here is the problem: the problem arises within the proposed solution. We are told by public intellectual, by “literary sorts”, that we need to think, and to think we need to read. But if I spent the next five years reading, say, everything by Shakespeare, Dickens, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and the remaining books on common Top 50 lists of various sorts, would I REALLY be that much wiser?
I very much doubt it. I think that, in terms of learning how to live intelligently, the Captain is not entirely wrong in calling it all retrogressive. Postmodernism came out of all that. Political fascism and totalitarianism came out of all that.
The books, you see, created the book burners. The book burners are merely the descendants of the book writers, who were also lost.
There is no merit in being publicly and articulately lost.
Vastly better to, say, memorize the books of Tarthang Tulku, the Dhammapada, the Bhagavid Gita, even the Bible, which I will note was unrepresented (although a similar theme emerges in “The Book of Eli”). Certainly, certainly, certainly, the Tao Te Ching.
And my paradise is not a host of hypnotized islands of human beings wandering all day reciting books, but sitting in meditation, seeking to transform all their attachments into active energy and joy. It is singing, dancing, celebration, creation.
Why do we admire the people we admire? Rather, why do good minds choose to fill themselves with mediocrity? I read and listen to good books to further my education (I am at present slowly working my way through David Copperfield), but not out of any hope they will make me much wiser. I do think the thesis, I believe of Stephen Pinker, that books build empathy is likely true. This is to the good. But empathy only goes so far, and meditation will build it more reliably, more deeply, and in most cases faster.
There was a time after the Second World War when much of the West seemingly fetishized authors. We can ask why, and I think the answer is BECAUSE THAT WAS ALL THEY HAD. They had already killed “God”, they were examining an unimaginably horrific conflict, and all they had left was aesthetics and creation. Then they killed aesthetics, because they couldn’t come up with any more ideas, and to a great extent that is where things stand today.
These are my views, at any rate.