Burning Books Without Matches

“You must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next.” 

                                                                                                        - Ray Bradbury

           

There used to be a library not too far from the house I grew up in.  The library was in a space on the northwest corner of the mall and didn’t face the interior, like it was embarrassed to share mall space with the Tandy Leather shop, so you had to enter from the back.  I was pretty young when I’d visit this library and I only specifically remember checking out one book.  I don’t even remember the title.  It was a book about a rocket to Mars or something where there were twin sisters; one going on the trip and one staying home.  Before the launch the staying home sister breaks her leg.  At the end of the story it is reveled that the sister on the trip was really the staying home sister and had switched with her twin because the going on the trip sister was the one who broke her leg.  I don’t remember why it was a big deal.  But I remember science fiction and rockets were a powerful force on me when it came to choosing books to read.

Last Tuesday Ray Bradbury passed away.  I know I read The Martin Chronicles, Fahrenheit 451, and Something Wicked This Way Comes, most likely checked out from that library.  I remember while reading them as a child I liked the stories and loved the images but was sure there was something in the stories I was missing.  There was something bigger, more important, and cleverer than my cognitive skills at the time could hook.

            Right after his death I read obituaries of the man. How he moved to Los Angeles when he was a kid, how he never drove, never went to college stating that “libraries raised me.”  Then later in the week I began to read essays on how book paper doesn’t really burn and 451 degrees Fahrenheit and how he was an icon of the Tea Party movement.  These people are missing the point.  They deconstruct the title of his most famous book as if they believed it was a science book on combustion temperatures. Have they ever looked past the title?  They shoehorn every offhand comment he’s ever made until they find the one that fits their preordained idea of his politics. They're burning his books.

            Ray Bradbury was about one thing; books.  He saved Southern California libraries from the budget axe and he only allowed Fahrenheit 451 to be put into electronic form when it was agreed it would be free to download at libraries. Self-serving?  Maybe.  But what other famous author gives away his most famous book?
            That strip mall from the top of the page is still there, but the library, and Tandy Leather, are gone.  Tandy Leather probably went out of business but the library moved to the next intersection to the south, leapfrogging my high school.  There are many other things from that intersection that are gone or going; the bookstore next to the fish and chips place to the east is gone, along with the fish.  The bowling alley to the south is to be torn down. On the day that Mr. Bradbury died, the building housing the library caught fire, prompting an evacuation.  Had the fire started at night, it's likely books would have burned.  I believe I'm the only person in town who caught the irony.
            My favorite book is his Something Wicked This Way Comes.  It's not the prose, although it is beautiful.  I like it because it's about an old and tired father who saves his son and his son's friend through love, laughter, and happiness.  While reading it as a boy, I was the boy.  While reading it as a father, I hope to be the father.