Filed under: BoingBoing, Book Conservation, Cory Doctorow, General Musings, Predictions, Ray Bradbury, Science Fiction, Society, Writing stuff
Now, Bradbury has decided to make news about the writing of his iconographic work and what he really meant. Fahrenheit 451 is not, he says firmly, a story about government censorship. Nor was it a response to Senator Joseph McCarthy, whose investigations had already instilled fear and stifled the creativity of thousands.This, despite the fact that reviews, critiques and essays over the decades say that is precisely what it is all about. Even Bradbury’s authorized biographer, Sam Weller, in The Bradbury Chronicles, refers to Fahrenheit 451 as a book about censorship.Bradbury, a man living in the creative and industrial center of reality TV and one-hour dramas, says it is, in fact, a story about how television destroys interest in reading literature.
Ray Bradbury has a subtle point to make in trying to change how we view his novel Fahrenheit 451, saying that the death of reading is more important than the imposition of censorship. It is a valid point, and shows some of the depth the author has now, and indeed had even at the time of the writing of the book, since the text is clear in how he saw the possibility of his dystopia occuring.
But this does not make the generations of scholars, teachers and readers wrong when they focus on the overarching role of censorship by the government in the novel. Bradbury has a right to point to the additional messages and meanings of his work, as any author does. But in some very important ways, the way the work is understood beyond the author’s own intent is just as valid, perhaps moreso. Any text is a living document, seen with new eyes each generation – eyes that understand it in the context of their own lives, their own experience, their own society. This is how we read any great work of literature, from the Bible to Declaration of Independence. Jefferson may have penned his document as a justification of colonial rebellion against England, but it is now seen in a broader context, as one of the great treatise of human rights. George Orwell may well have been writing a cautionary tale about the future of the Soviet Union, the West, and Asia, but we understand 1984 now as a more general warning of the power of a fascist state to control, corrupt and destroy anyone it wishes.
Ray Bradbury is welcome to add to the discussion of his work, to provide information for his intent in writing it, to explain his understanding of the most important message it contains. We, as readers, should listen to his thoughts on the book. But his comments are not definitive, rather are part of a dialog between author and reader. Just as he brought his experience and understanding of the world to the writing of the book, we must bring our own experience and understanding of the world to the reading of it. Fahrenheit 451 may not be about censorship, but drawing the lesson from it that censorship is to be avoided is completely legitimate.
Jim Downey
(Via a comment from Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing. Cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: Book Conservation, Depression, Feedback, General Musings, Society
When I was still new to being in business as a bookbinder, I had someone call me one morning about doing some conservation work to a musical instrument. After I carefully explained that I was a book conservator, not an artifact conservator, they said that what they needed was the replacement of a small piece of leather which had been pared down to suitable thickness and then mounted, and that there wasn’t anyone in 100 miles who could do this for him. The guy practically begged me to help him out. Finally, I relented, and told him to bring the instrument in so that I could see what exactly he was talking about, but I made no promise that I would do the work.
He was in that afternoon. Opened up his case, took out his instrument. It was an accordian, about a century old. Needed a small piece of leather to function as part of the bellows assembly, if I remember correctly. Wasn’t very big, just a few inches across and about the same wide, and would need to be mounted under a strip of metal on each side. But the leather would have to be pared down very thin – a simple, but time-consuming task. I told him that it would take altogether about an hour and a half of my time, and with materials would run about $50.00 (my rates were only $25.00 an hour then).
He looked at me like I was nuts. “But it’s only a little piece of leather!”
“Well, yeah, but it’s going to take me 90 minutes to prep the piece, remove the old piece, mount the new one, and get everything secure.”
“But this thing is only worth about that much,” he protested. “I won’t make any money on it if I pay you that much to fix it. How about $10.00?”
I sent him on his way. And learned that it was pointless for me to try and help people who don’t really need it or want it. Unless someone values my services, and wants them applied in a suitable fashion, it doesn’t make any sense for me to try and convince them otherwise.
Which brings me back to this post, which generated some good feedback here and at UTI, and in private correspondence. I’ve thought a lot about this matter over the last several days, and thanks to the discussions I’ve had I’ve come to understand that this, like the above episode, is a matter of principle for me. And the principle is that I cannot force these people to do the right thing – I can only offer my services in a suitable manner, at a fair price, and then let them decide for themselves what the best course of action is for them. It’s not my job to save the world, or even to save the books in this collection from the people who now own them. It is simply my job to do good work when contracted by those who want my services. The rest is on their shoulders.
Jim Downey
This week I had cause to travel to a nearby city for business, responding to a query I’d received about my conservation services. A small private educational institution had recently acquired a large collection of books of historical interest, and they wanted me to take a look at the collection and give them some kind of estimate on what the costs might involve. This is a fairly typical request, and I’m used to discussing these matters with the appropriate staff and administrators.
However, when I got to the appointed meeting, it quickly became clear that in the mind of the administrators, “conservation care” meant exactly one thing: rebinding all the books to look new. To make the collection all nice and pretty, like one of those fake bookshelf sets in some office or as a movie prop.
Huh? Why on earth would someone want to take books ranging back to about 1500, and turn them into this kind of visual wallpaper? I mean, this sort of thing was done by rich collectors who just wanted to show off their impressive personal libraries in the 17th and 18th centuries, without care for what the books really contained. Why would a learning institution want to do such a thing?
Because, as the Vice President for Institutional Development told me, it’d be easier to get big-money donors to contribute to something that would have a strong visual impact like that. The protection and care – even the USE – of the books themselves was entirely a secondary consideration. In fact, the sort of rebinding they were wanting, if done poorly or with machine efficiency, would damage the bindings of the books and make them less usable. But that wasn’t what was important. The image of all those books in fancy cases was what was important. This, at an accredited school offering advanced graduate degrees.
They hadn’t considered – weren’t even aware that it was an option – the proper care of the books with an eye towards preserving their unique historical value as artifacts reflecting the time they were written and published, or the way those artifacts carried with them a record of their use and care over the centuries. They simply knew that the books were old, and could be just rebound to make them look “more impressive”, and to use that to leverage money out of donors. This is all about image in their minds…the image presented to get donors. Since most people don’t really give a shit about books (sad, but true), how they look on a bookshelf is more important than either functionality or even content.
So I talked with them for some length, opened up the whole new realm for them of actual conservation care. I have three bindings to work on to show them what I mean, and how it would save the historical character of the books. The chief librarian was all for my approach (no surprise there) and was relieved that it was the position I took. And I can get a couple of authorities on curatorial care of Special Collections to back me up, plus plenty of online sources. But I am somewhat skeptical that the necessary comprehension will sink in.
Still, I’ll make a good faith effort to convince them, and save their collection from the horrors of just being turned into a photo prop. We’ll see. I hate to see a real collection of books ruined.
And I hate to think what this says about the larger values of our society.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to Daily Kos.)
Filed under: Architecture, Art, BoingBoing, Book Conservation, Cory Doctorow, Hobbits, movies, Tolkien, Writing stuff
Gotta love this: a collector of J. R. R. Tolkien artifacts needed a small library/museum to house his collection. His architect decided to do the right thing, and go to the source material for inspiration. The result is a wonderful little Hobbit House, straight out of the books:
Asked to design a fitting repository for a client’s valuable collection of J.R.R. Tolkien manuscripts and artifacts, architect Peter Archer went to the source—the fantasy novels that describe the abodes of the diminutive Hobbits.
“I came back my client and said, ‘I’m not going to make this look like Hollywood,’” Archer recalled, choosing to focus instead on a finely-crafted structure embodying a sense of history and tradition.
The site was critical too—and Archer found the perfect one a short walk away from his client’s main house, where an 18th-century dry-laid wall ran through the property. “I thought, wouldn’t it be wonderful to build the structure into the wall?”
Now, my wife is an architect, so I know a little about this profession, and having a client willing to go along with such a design is a real boon. And as a rare book and document conservator, I appreciate an architect who went to the trouble to make sure that the environment was appropriately climate controlled for the archives. And as a craftsman, I really appreciate the attention to detail by the contractor and his crew – this isn’t just a facade, it’s well-crafted workmanship.
Wonderful, all the way around. I can’t help but think that J.R.R. would be pleased.
Jim Downey
Via Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing.
Communion Of Dreams 