“…Well, I’d say it really got started around about a
thing called the Civil War. Even though our rule-book claims it was founded
earlier. The fact is we didn’t get along well until photography came into its own.
Then--motion pictures in the early twentieth century. Radio. Television. Things
began to have mass.”
Montag sat in bed, not moving.
“And because they had mass, they became simpler,” said
Beatty. “Once, books appealed to a few people, here, there, everywhere. They
could afford to be different. The world was roomy. But then the world got full
of eyes and elbows and mouths. Double, triple, quadruple population. Films and
radios, magazines, books levelled down to a sort of paste pudding norm, do you follow
me?”
“I think so.”
Beatty peered at the smoke pattern he had put out on
the air. “Picture it. Nineteenth-century man with his horses, dogs, carts, slow
motion. Then, in the twentieth century, speed up your camera. Books cut
shorter. Condensations, Digests. Tabloids. Everything boils down to the gag,
the snap ending.”
“Snap ending.” Mildred
nodded.
“Classics cut to fit fifteen-minute radio shows, then
cut again to fill a two-minute book column, winding up at last as a ten- or
twelve-line dictionary resume. I exaggerate, of course. The dictionaries were
for reference. But many were those whose sole knowledge of Hamlet (you
know the title certainly, Montag; it is probably only
a faint rumour of a title to you, Mrs. Montag) whose sole knowledge, as I say,
of Hamlet was a one-page digest in a book that claimed: 'now at least you can
read all the classics; keep up with your neighbours.' Do you see? Out of the
nursery into the college and back to the nursery; there’s your intellectual
pattern for the past five centuries or more.”
Mildred arose and began to move around the room,
picking things up and putting them down.
Beatty ignored her and continued “Speed up the film,
Montag, quick. Click? Pic? Look, Eye, Now, Flick, Here, There, Swift, Pace, Up,
Down, In, Out, Why, How, Who, What, Where, Eh? Uh! Bang! Smack! Wallop, Bing, Bong,
Boom! Digest-digests, digest-digest-digests. Politics? One column, two
sentences, a headline! Then, in mid-air, all vanishes! Whirl man's mind around
about so fast under the pumping hands of publishers, exploiters, broadcasters,
that the centrifuge flings off all unnecessary, time-wasting thought!”
Mildred smoothed the bedclothes. Montag felt his heart
jump and jump again as she patted his pillow. Right now she was pulling at his
shoulder to try to get him to move so she could take the pillow out and fix it
nicely and put it back. And perhaps cry out and stare or simply reach down her
hand and say, “What’s this?” and hold up the hidden book with touching innocence.
“School is shortened, discipline relaxed,
philosophies, histories, languages dropped, English and spelling gradually
neglected, finally almost completely ignored. Life is immediate, the job counts,
pleasure lies all about after work. Why learn anything save pressing buttons,
pulling switches, fitting nuts and bolts?”
“Let me fix your pillow,” said Mildred.
“No!” whispered Montag,
"The zipper displaces the button and a man lacks
just that much time to think while dressing at dawn, a philosophical hour, and
thus a melancholy hour.”
Mildred said, “Here.”
“Get away,” said Montag.
“Life becomes one big
pratfall, Montag; everything bang; boff, and wow!”.
(Abstract from: Fahrenheit
451 by Ray Bradbury).
