Books and the Fires that Love: A Hate Story

A local owner of a Kansas City, Missouri bookstore, Tom Wayne, decided to burn some of his inventory to protest the declining status of the printed word in the United States. Wayne, the owner of Prospero Books, determined that an unread book might as well be burned. A number of local readers were able to save a number of volumes before the burning commenced, getting some great deals on books-bringing old meaning to the term "fire sale," to be sure. One immediately might suggest that despite the declining readership in KC, it might be possible to have the books transferred to another library, or an under-funded school (I hear there are a few of those). Mr. Wayne claims that those outlets were explored and they were not particularly efficacious in moving his inventory. As a result a 45 minute burning commenced until law enforcement asked him to put it out, since he did not have a permit to burn outside. At first this seemed a bit of a strange and disconcerting inversion of the "book burning" trope that is prevalent in some literature. In the case of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, the government is the sponsor of this literary-terrorism, while the general populace is anesthetized by the hyper-decadent anti-utopia found in Bradbury's 24th century America. The symbolism of book burning is a powerful and often devastating one, signifying horrible portents of mind-crushing oppression and tyrannical political coercion, envisioned in the nightmares of intellectuals, SF writers, and the patrons of the humanities. As Franz Boaz notes, "[the] banning and burning of books is the symbol of tyranny's fear of the power of the free-mind."

There is a particular wantonness associated with book burning that makes it a notably gruesome act of destruction, and more than that; it is, I think, ultimately an act of annihilation. Heinrich Heine a German poet of the 19th century predicts the conflagration that would, a century later, consume his work, his country, and the world when he declared, "When they burn books, they, in the end, will burn human beings too." The burning of "degenerate" books on May 10th, 1933, in Opernplatz and throughout Germany were according to the authorities and the Hitler Youth, Feuerspruche, "fire speech" whose hot breath would eradicate the "un-German" spirit that Jewish and other degenerate literature supposedly encouraged. Stephen Vincent Benet's radio play, "They Burned the Books," originally written for the Council on Books in Wartime and the Writers' War Board, organizations created by FDR to provide "weapons in war of ideas," was performed on the 9th anniversary of the book burning in order to remind Americans of consequences of hate and intolerance. The banning and burning of books has had a long history, and that history, as it is told, has demarcated this act as taboo for civilized society, an act of barbarism-a sign of end times for a civilization or society. In the movie, The Day after Tomorrow, the survivors from a massive tsunami-blizzard-hurricane of death-frost in NYC are trapped in the New York Public Library. In order to stay warm, they are forced to burn books, though most are at least somewhat reticent to burn books, one character in particular refuses to have a copy of the Gutenberg Bible burned, suggesting that if humanity is to perish in this "climate readjustment" then something must be left of its contribution. This history makes Wayne's protest all the more interesting, an obvious bibliophile feels he is forced to commit the most egregious of intellectual taboos (even more egregious than plagiarism) in order to encourage the condition which his very act nullifies. What is the purpose of burning books for the book-burner who wants people to see the truth about books and reading?

For the book-burner, perhaps there is a purifying aspect, both a revealing and simplifying of truth. In the life of St. Dominic, founder of the Dominican order, a story is related of the Miracle at Fanjeaux. During a disputation between the Catholics and the Cathars (Albigensians), a trial was held in order to determine whose beliefs were correct. St. Dominic was the representative of the Church, and despite his clearly superior argumentation, as the story goes, the jury was unwilling to grant Dominic a clear victory. As a result, a second trial was held, a trial by fire. The arguments of the Cathars along with the papers of St. Dominic were thrown into a fire, the documents which remained intact would be the true ones. Despite being subjected three times to the revealing fire, the arguments of St. Dominic remained intact and therefore miraculously established as Truth. The painting to the left by Pedro Berruguete, The Burning of the Books or St. Dominic and the Albigensians, depicts the scene with the saint's documents remaining intact, eventually a Crusade was carried out against the Cathars and they were all but destroyed a few decades later.

The simplifying fire in Bradbury's novel is overseen by Captain Beatty, the paradoxical fire-captain, whose knowledge of literature is only outstripped by his hatred of reading (or perhaps readers), recognizes the chaos that books can bring. In a world where order is stringently enforced, and where absolutes are the only commodities, one (mis/well-)placed book can transform its reader into a revolutionary, a saint, or a suicide. Goethe tells us that it is dangerous to turn poetry into the truth of one's life. Good advice since it is his, Sorrows of Young Werther, which caused multiple copycat suicides in Germany after its publication. Beatty in his dream, notes the furious debate that occurs because of books, a debate that must be silenced through cold, technical reason. Though I think the character of Beatty is ultimately not the ironic, or sarcastic one that one might assume he is supposed to represent, ultimately I believe Beatty is a genuinely tragic character, a character who within his own mastery of the techniques of manipulation sees the seeds of destruction of his society. He explains to Montag:

“Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of non-combustible data, chock them so damned full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely 'brilliant' with information. Then they'll feel they're thinking, they'll get a sense of motion without moving. And they'll be happy, because facts of that sort don't change. Don't give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy."

"That way lies melancholy," for the fire-captain it is this untenable melancholy which must be eradicated if absolute order is to be maintained. The melancholy of thought is replaced with the satiety of data-aggregation, and as Hitler offers it is this satiety which is most fortuitous for those in power when he says, "How fortunate for governments that the people they administer do not think." When Montag escapes to the forest and meets the vagabond book-lovers, he is informed by Granger, thede facto leader of the forest-dwellers that they memorize the books and maintain their record in oral memory until such time that books will be accepted again. They then, in order to escape detection, burn the book themselves.

Can we then understand that local bookstore owner as one of these refugees, burning books in order to save them?

A common theme throughout Fahrenheit 451is the symbol of the phoenix, the mythical-bird that dies in a ball of flame and rises from its ashes again. Books do not die easily, or more to the point, ideas like those in books are, as V from V for Vendetta informs us "bulletproof," and hopefully also flame-retardant. Even if a book is burned the ideas therein that were destroyed will rise again to potentially burn its incinerator. Or so we hope. The act of reading is an act of quiet ambiguity, unlike TV, or radio, or newspapers, and to a lesser degree the Internet, what is read by flashlight under the covers or in some corner of the library cannot so easily be monitored or overheard by inquisitive ears, and therefore not so easily be controlled. It is this ambiguity that the fires that burn books seek to destroy, in this act of purification nothing is spared (St. Dominic and his documents aside), whether Tom Wayne or an SS solider is performing the act, something is lost-something special. Perhaps it will be regained anew, but perhaps not. We do a disservice, I would hold, to the creative spirit, when we seek to burn books. Not because, we cannot possibly get them back in the future, but because in doing so we give up the present. The phoenix will return, but its ashes are now gone, and with it the hope that the current society can improve. If we must be sacrificed by fire, at least let it not be by our own hands...

Narrator:
A book is a book. It's paper, ink and print.
If you stab it, it won't bleed.
If you beat it, it won't bruise.
if you burn it, it won't scream.

[Crackle of Flames]
Burn a few books-burn a hundred-burn a million
What difference does that make?

Voice of Schiller:
It does to me.
-"They Burned the Books," (1942) Stephen Vincent Benet