I just finished reading this book again. I'm 56 and I last read it when I was a teenager. Two things disturbed me in the logic of the book this time. First, I couldn't understand how Montag got Ecclesiastes & parts of Revelation memorized so quickly. The book portrays him as not have been acquainted with any books and as having lived happly as a "fireman" burning books for a living for ten years before he was"awakened." Having attempted to memorize the Sermon on the Mount recently from Matthew 5.6 & 7 I know it would take a long time to get Ecclesiastes memorized. Yet as soon as he escapes from the unnamed city where he lived, he claims to have accomplished all this memorization. Don't you agree this is somewhat unlikely? Secondly, it appears that the unnamed city that he escaped from appears to have been destroyed by a nuclear bomb. Yet he and his companions decide to go back towards the city to help others. Didn't the people who went back into Hiroshima to help suffer radiation sickness by being exposed to rain, etc. that was contaminated by the nuclear explosion? This seems a foolhardy thing for them to have done, since the stated aim of the group he had joined was to become living books by memorizing them or parts of them, and to do whatever was necesssary to keep themselves safe and healthy in order to preserve the memorized literature.

hm... interesting opinion.
But, I think that return of the Monteg to the destroyed sity is metaphor. Which describe crush of the old world and burn the new with help of Monteg and his new friends

"Fahrenheit 451" was written with the assumption that such word-for-word memorization was possible. Bradbury has a near-photographic memory, and would have known actors who memorized long difficult passages, such as from the works of Shakespeare. The proposed sequel came from the idea of an art critic who suggested to Bradbury that maybe the memorizers wouldn't get it perfect.

Discussion here long ago about memorizing (q.v.)
https://raybradburyboard.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/67910839...411081011#4411081011

Good, BII! I didn't even remember that.

On every child's wish list for Christmas:
http://f3.yahoofs.com/ymg/null__8/null-208508319-119637...jpg?ymknMh.CxAC5akyp

Ah, reminds me of my first girlfriend...

Tick...tick! Canine techo-humor!

"Have you seen the two-hundred-foot long billboards in the country beyond town? Did you know the billboards were once only twenty feet long? But cars started rushing by so quickly they had to stretch the advertizing out so it would last."

"I didn't know that!" Montag laughed abruptly.

Again, RB right on ~
http://sports.yahoo.com/sow/photo;_ylt=AvAmeJHnHWDlC8ve...-2008-aus&prov=getty

I read / heard somewhere that the invention of the printing press led to a lessening of human memory capacity. Lengthy tales like Homer's ODYSSEY and BEOWULF used to be memorised and recited long before they were written down. Also, Jewish scholars in the time of Christ (and earlier) would commit whole books of the Old Testament to memory.

quote:

Originally posted by oz-crumley:
Also, Jewish scholars in the time of Christ (and earlier) would commit whole books of the Old Testament to memory.

And then there's that great theologian Jed Clampett. To wit:

Jethro Bodine: "My Uncle Jed can quote the good book from cover to cover!"

Remember the discussion on memorization we had here some time ago?
Me neither.

quote:

Originally posted by Braling II:
Remember the discussion on memorization we had here some time ago?

Vaguely.

Hi Brian Gregory, Welcome.

F451 is the most recent Bradbury story that I have read just last month. It had been several years since I read it and this time I liked it much better. I do know a friend of mine that did memorize accurately the book of James from the Bible. In Bradbury's story it seemed like there were other people who had memorized other portions of books and together they could be used as a type of "human library" until the books could be recreated or the government changed.

I'm not sure what to make about the city being destroyed. I too was surprized that Montag and the others went back to the city. I was thinking it was a nuclear explosion, but maybe it wasn't. Maybe just plain old destructive bombs. I guess they went back to the city to look for others like themselves. Hopefully, the government/political climate was going to change after the war that would perhaps allow books again? I'm thinking that a sequel to F451 would have been neat to continue Montag's story and what happens to him.

Best Wishes.

BH

Burning Bright:
"For another of those impossible instants the city stood, rebuilt and unrecognizable, taller than it had hoped or strived to be, taller than man had built it...like a reversed avalanche, a million colors, a million oddities, a door where a window should be, a top for a bottom, side for a back, and then the city rolled over and fell down dead."

"The sound of its death came later."

(No "plain old destructive bombs" here! The final pages indicate total devastation has arrived. "The city looks like a heap of baking powder. It's gone.")

Though Montag and the Book People carry humanity's glimmer of hope, it is truly a frightening conclusion to RB's evermore relevant work.