CAROLA WEIL: Good
evening, everyone.
My name is Carola Weil.
I'm the Dean of the School of
Professional Extended Studies.
And I am delighted to co-host
this series that we are calling
the Community Conversations
with my co-conspirator
and co-creator Nancy Davenport.
And I will come back
to Nancy in a moment.
But as you know, we have
conceived of this series
as a way to open-- throw open--
the doors of the university,
not just to ourselves.
Many of us work in
little silos, and it's
hard to get up and
out of our cocoons.
And so this is a
great opportunity
to connect people
within the university,
but also to connect the
university with the community.
Because, at the
end of the day, we
are not about the ivory tower.
We are about sharing
knowledge, we
are about sharing information.
And we hope that this
series is one way
in which we can
make a contribution
to critical issues of our day.
And we thank you for being
part of it that conversation.
And I very much look forward to
having all of your input, not
just tonight, but in the
future of events that we do.
We do this series once a month.
And it is based on the
Library of Congress series--
80 Books That Shaped America.
[INAUDIBLE]
But we see this
also an opportunity
to go beyond those 80 books.
They were not necessarily
the best books.
But they were
significant works that
shaped American culture
and American thought.
And tonight, I am
delighted that we're
able to present to you with a
discussion on Ray Bradbury's
Farenheit 451.
Now, who better to talk
about the role of books--
especially when
they are banned--
than a librarian?
And no less than the director,
the dean of our own library,
here at American
University, Nancy Davenport.
I can think of a few people
know more about books,
but who also know about
the relevance of books
to society than Nancy Davenport.
Before coming to AU in
2012, she was the Director
of Library Services
at the public library
in the District of Columbia.
Prior to that, she was president
of the Council on Library
and Information Resources.
And before then,
spent many, many years
with the Library of Congress
in senior positions,
including having directed
a training program
for members of Parliament
and their staffs
in many democratic states of
Central and Eastern Europe.
And I think that experience,
in particular, you will see,
if you haven't read
the book, there
are some really
interesting connections
to the story we're going to
spend time thinking about.
She also has an active
consulting practice,
although I suspect--
NANCY DAVENPORT: Less
active these days.
CAROLA WEIL: [INAUDIBLE]
slightly less active.
And she has held many
award memberships,
including a presidential
appointment to the National
Historical Records and
Publications Commission
of the National Archives.
So without further
ado, I'd like to turn
over the floor and the
room to Nancy Davenport.
Nancy Davenport:
Thank you Carola.
So I feel like I have crammed
more for this presentation
tonight, and studied more
for this presentation,
than for any class I've ever
taken in my entire life.
And I feel completely
and totally unprepared,
all at the same time,
which is actually
one of the metaphors
that runs completely
through this book, which is
that series of dichotomies
and opposites that we'll
talk about for a little bit
this evening.
My plan, unless you all want
to have a different one,
is that we are going to see
a short video that comes off
the trailer to the movie,
of Ray Bradbury talking
about the book--
this book in particular.
And before you move
from that, [INAUDIBLE],
this is my favorite
image, my imagined image--
although, somebody else
did this particular image--
of what this book
is really all about.
It's really all about
the quest for innocence,
for inquiry, for discovery,
and for being one's own person,
and for being able, while
this is a buttercup, to rub
that dandelion under
your chin, to see
who you're really in love with.
That's what this
book's really about.
So the one that
[INAUDIBLE] is going
to pull up for us is a
trailer from the movie
version of this book, where
he talks about the book,
and why he wrote it, and what
some of the images are in it.
And I thought, before
we argue about it,
we'd let the author speak for
himself about a few pieces.
Then, I think,
we're going to have
a book talk, a book
discussion, rather than me
talking about it.
But as we go into
that second phase,
I'd like for you to think about
the answers to two questions,
and that's how we'll sum up that
section of the program, which
is, is there any book
that you would consider
banning, from any time ever,
for any reason, any purpose?
And if you had to become
one of the book people
at the end of this book,
where you represent the book.
You, in fact, as
Bradbury describes it,
you are the dust
jacket for the book.
Which one would you want to be?
Which book would
you commit to memory
to preserve it for
all time and eternity?
And then, at the end, there's
another clip of an evening
where Bradbury was lecturing a
group of students-- although,
when you look at the audience,
it's an audience like ours,
composed of students and wannabe
students who are a little older
than the regular students--
where he describes, if
you want to be a writer,
you have to be a reader.
And it's a pretty
interesting discussion
to end this program on.
So if that's OK with
all of you, we'll
see the first piece of
Ray Bradbury talking
about his book.
We need more sound.
[INAUDIBLE]
And maybe less light.
Ah.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
- [INAUDIBLE] I
went to New York,
and I had to find enough money
to finance it, [INAUDIBLE].
But in the meantime, I
was writing short stories.
I wrote a story
called The Pedestrian,
because I had an encounter
with a policeman one night who
asked me what I was doing.
I was walking with a friend.
And I said to the policeman,
I'm putting one foot
after the other, which
was the wrong answer.
[INAUDIBLE] very
suspicious [INAUDIBLE]
walking, because I looked at the
sidewalks, this way and that,
and there's nobody
except me and my friend.
So the policeman reprimanded
me, and I promised never
to walk again.
And I went home in
a rage, and I wrote
this short story
called The Pedestrian,
and it was published finally.
And then, I took
to the pedestrian
out for a walk one
night, in another story,
and he turned the corner, and he
bumps into a little girl named
Clarice McLeod.
And she sniffs the air,
and she says to him,
I know who you are.
You're the fireman.
You're the man that burns books.
And nine days later,
Fahrenheit 451 was done.
The original
version of Farenheit
was published in Galaxy
Magazine, the science fiction
magazine.
And then, the young editor
came along a few years later.
We had no money, and he
needed the material, and said,
can you sell me
something for $400?
And I said, yes, I have
a novel, Farenheit 451,
and he bought it for $400.
And that was Hugh
Heffner [INAUDIBLE]
in the second, third, and
fourth issues of Playboy.
So all the young men, and
all the old men, of America
owe me a debt of gratitude for
helping start that magazine.
I grew up in Waukegan, Illinois.
And I walked out on the
beach with my father.
On the way, we stopped
at the day fire station.
And my dad knew all the firemen.
And some of them were
relatives of mine,
and I'd go in and pet
the dalmatian pup.
And so, I had an intimate
knowledge of firemen.
And one of my
uncles was a fireman
who was killed falling off a
fire truck when I was a kid.
And it just struck
me, in thinking
about firemen, what are we going
to do with them in the future?
The time will come when all
the houses are fire proof.
So you got a lot of
firemen with no jobs.
What are you going to do?
I said, well, let's reverse it.
Have them start fires
instead of put them out.
And then, I had no
title for the book.
The original title
was The Fireman.
And I got curious as to
what the temperature was
that book paper would burn at.
And I called UCLA, the
chemistry department.
They couldn't help me.
I called SC, some of
the physics departments,
and they couldn't help me.
I said, dummy, call
the fire department.
So I called downtown, got
the fire chief on the phone,
and I said, this sounds
stupid, but tell me,
what temperature does
book paper catch fire at?
He said, just a moment.
And he came back, and
he said, it catches fire
at 451 degrees Farenheit.
And I reversed it--
Farenheit 451.
Yes.
So I don't know if that's true.
I've never researched it since.
But it has a wonderful
sound to it, doesn't it?
That's how I came [INAUDIBLE].
And I wrote a short novel in the
basement of the UCLA library,
because I had no office.
There was a typewriter there
you could rent for $0.10 a half
hour.
So I took a bag of
dimes down there,
and I rented the typewriter
for nine days, and spent $9.80,
and wrote a dime novel, and it
was published in the science
fiction magazine.
And later, I extended
it to 50,000 words,
and it became the novel
that you know now.
The
Book was a long time
coming to birth.
You could say, it went back
to my great-great-great
grandmother, Mary Bradbury,
who was tried as a witch
in Salem in 1580, it was.
She escaped, but she's in
all the books about witches
and witch burnings.
And then, over the years, I
read about the various libraries
of Alexandria burning,
3,000 or 4,000 years ago--
I think twice by
accident, once on purpose.
And then, in China, I
heard rumors of burnings
of libraries and books.
And Hitler, of course, in
Germany, in the early '30s.
And since I'm a library person--
I have never made it
to college, you see--
I"m self-educated
in the library.
So anything that touches
the library touches me.
[END PLAYBACK]
NANCY DAVENPORT: That
seemed like a good place
to stop that clip.
So how many of you
are here tonight
based upon your memory
of having read the book?
Because that's the way a lot
of us come to this event.
OK.
And how many based upon
either your memory,
or a little more recently,
having viewed the film?
Because they're different.
They're different in
some interesting ways.
They're different.
OK.
So shall I shall I run through
sort of the basic synopsis
of this deal?
This is a society, now,
where books are forbidden.
To be an intellectual
is, to use that word,
is to swear at someone, if
they are an intellectual.
And so, our protagonist,
Guy Montag in the movie--
Montag in the recorded book
that I have listened to
for the last five weeks,
driving back and forth
to work every day, and
it's only five CDs--
he is on the crew
that burns the books.
And he is the member
of the crew that
lights the flame after they
are soaked with kerosene.
And so, they spend their
days, as Bradbury says,
starting fires rather
than putting them out.
Because the houses
are all plastic now,
so, of course, they don't burn.
And they do this because
different ideas just
distract us.
They make us uncomfortable.
And all that fiction,
well, those people
are just imaginary.
It doesn't make any
difference about that.
And if it's nonfiction,
well, it's just two academics
yelling at each other about
who's idea is the better one.
So being now, this
is the first time
I've read this book in
this academic setting.
So this was added
another whole dimension
to the book for me, of thinking
of some of our colleagues
who might be arguing
the same thing
from their various perspectives.
So he comes home from a fire
one night and, in the book,
discovers his wife Mildred--
in the movie her name is Linda--
that Mildred is completely
passed out, and, in fact,
has taken an entire
bottle of sleeping pills.
And she is probably one of
the most vapid creatures
ever invented for the
purpose of a book.
And the only thing
she wants more in life
is to have her fourth wall
installed with the wall screen,
which is the television.
Because we already
have three of them,
but we should have
the fourth wall done,
and it will only cost $2,000.
But as he says, that's one
third of my yearly income.
But she already has three.
She wants the fourth.
So he calls 911--
the equivalent of that.
People come, but it's not
medics, it's not a doctor.
It's essentially
a set of workmen
who come with a gigantic pipe, a
snake, to pump out her stomach,
and all of the bad
stuff that's in there.
But that's not good enough.
So they have
another device where
they pull out all of her
blood and they replace it
with more blood, because you
just have to purify things.
But they can't have
medical personnel do it,
because they have to do
10 to 20 of these a night,
of people trying to kill
themselves deliberately,
or even inadvertently.
Guy's theory about
why his wife did this
was that she took two pills, and
forgot that she'd taken them,
so she took two more.
And she just sort of kept
that up during the evening
as she was with the "family,"
as television is known.
The family will be on tonight,
but she can never tell you
what the plot of the story was.
So then, they go off on
another fire one day,
where the library
that you saw that was
the multi-roomed,
multi-level library
is Mrs. Hudson's library.
And they go in, and they
are dousing everything
with kerosene.
But their usual
way of doing this
is to take whoever the owner
is, and tape their mouth,
bind them, and drag them
out of the building.
She won't allow that to be done.
And so they're very
anxious to light the fire,
but she won't leave.
And so, finally, she sort
of gets tired of them,
and she strikes the match.
And if you saw that
scene in the movie
where the woman is
surrounded by fire,
if you see the
entirety of that scene,
and you're at all familiar
with Catholic theology,
you assume that this
is the assumption.
Because it looks
like she literally
is going to rise
out of the flames.
You never see her on fire.
She actually does fall over.
But she's never touched by the
flame, that the viewer can see.
That really touches him.
It touches him that somebody
is willing to die for a book,
rather than give them
up, rather than live
their life without them.
And he manages to steal
a few, and tuck them
in the back of his trousers.
But he's seen doing it.
And so, his chief,
Captain Beatty,
comes to visit with this
little monologue about,
in the life of every
fireman, you get tempted.
He never accuses him
of being tempted,
but just does this
little dialogue
that everybody has to delve
into this forbidden pastime
to see what it's like.
But eventually, they'll come,
and they'll turn the books in.
So he actually does go and
turn in a couple of books.
But he goes home,
and he confesses
to Mildred that he's
been secreting books,
and he starts to open
air conditioning ducts,
and behind the plumbing, and
places like inside the toaster,
places where you would never
think of stashing books,
he has stashed them.
And she is horrified, because
this is against the law.
You're not supposed
to hide books.
He's a fireman.
He's not supposed to do this.
And so, she actually
turns him in.
So the next, he's
in the fire station,
and the next call, as
they're going out on it,
he discovers, when they pull
up in front of his house, which
is the little brick bungalow--
plastic brick bungalow--
he's there to just start
a fire in his own home.
And Mildred has her
suitcase, and she's
walking away from this.
Everybody else
pulls out the books.
They find them.
Mildred has already
pulled out a bunch
and put them on the floor.
And they start covering them
with gasoline, or the kerosene.
It's always kerosene.
And he has the flame thrower.
So he's about to
light the books,
and he does light the books.
But Beatty-- Captain
Beatty-- is in his face,
mocking him, goading him.
Beatty actually knows
an enormous amount about
literature-- enormous--
to the extent that he
keeps quoting from one,
and quoting the opposite
from another book,
always setting up this sort of
counterpoint, one to the other,
and moving them along.
And he goads him, and he
goads him, and he goads him.
And so Beatty just turns around,
and shoots the flamethrower
at him, and incinerates him.
And in the movie, you
actually do see him on fire--
not the way you
would see it today.
This movie was made in the
'50s, where they protected
our sensibilities a little bit.
But you see that.
And then, suddenly,
Guy has to run away.
He's no longer welcome
in his own land,
and he has to figure
out where to go.
And he's found, previously,
somebody who knows books--
Mr. Faber.
In another clip of Bradbury
that I've been watching,
all of these all of
these clips on YouTube,
and on the internet, have
many, many more hits,
for which I am
completely and totally
responsible for having
watched all of them
over the last month or so.
And Bradbury will tell
you that he doesn't know
why he named this guy Faber.
And he doesn't know why he
named Guy Montag, Montag,
until later, he remembers,
and he sees two things.
Montag was a paper
making company--
a very famous paper
making company.
And Faber had, actually,
two connections
to the printed world.
One was the print
the publisher Faber
and Faber out of Great Britain,
and the other, Faber pencils,
if you remember looking
at your pencils.
And he says that
he just wrote all
of this stuff, and through his
subconscious, and only later
discovered all the ties
that he had put together
into the book world.
So he's had conversation
previously with Faber.
And Faber has given him
a little device that he
can insert into his ear--
the green bullet--
through which Faber
can talk to him,
regardless of where he is.
So he actually has Faber in his
ear while he's setting fire--
while Guy is setting
fire in his own home.
And when he turns, Faber
can clearly see him, too--
although that's not made clear.
When he turns the flame
onto Captain Beatty,
Faber is screaming
no, no, don't do that.
But he does it anyways.
And so, he now has to leave.
So he goes to Faber,
and says, what do I do?
What do I do?
And Faber tells him
about the book people,
and how to find the book people.
He doesn't quite
understand who they are.
But Clarice, the
young woman he met
at the very beginning
of all of this,
seemed to know about them.
In the movie, she knows a
whole lot more about them
than she does in the book.
She's, not a very
different character,
but she's a bit different in
the movie than in the book.
And Clarice is the first one
who opens his eyes, because she
doesn't ask how things are done,
she asks why things are done.
And "why" is a
question that's not
permitted in a world that
doesn't permit intellectuals.
So she really sort of
changes his perspective,
that there are
people who question
things, people who say why.
And it's this very, very young,
innocent person who does it.
So he finds his way
to the book people.
And maybe, from there,
we should find out
what you think about this book.
So who wants to start?
And I have a
collection of things,
up here, that I am happy--
these are all my
books, even though they
say New York Public on them.
They were withdrawn
from those collections
and I bought them all on Amazon.
And I'm happy to lend
them to anybody who
wants to delve into this more.
Because this man is
actually pretty amazing.
When Carola and I were
talking about this list,
and talking about
the books, she first
said, oh, I think I'll
do Fahrenheit 451.
I went, no, I have to do that.
And the reason I said that was
not because I'm the librarian.
It was because,
this past summer,
when we were at the American
Library Association Conference,
I stumbled on to a program
about Ray Bradbury,
with both of his biographers
in the room on the panel.
And I have books
here by both of them.
So hearing the two of
them talk about the man,
as well as the writer,
really sort of inspired
me to spend a lot more time
with this particular book.
So?
Diane?
AUDIENCE: I think he
was very passionate
about the issues
of media and how
media's become so
segmented now--
people just look
at what they want
to read, what they already
know, without expanding
their thought.
So, in that sense, I think he
understood modern technology.
But I also understand that he
didn't-- he wasn't in favor
of e-books, though.
NANCY DAVENPORT: It
took a long time.
AUDIENCE: And do
you think he would
have let his books be read
on Nooks or Kindles, I guess,
is my question?
NANCY DAVENPORT: Yes, actually.
I do.
I don't know if he, finally,
at the end of his life did,
or if his estate did--
his literary estate that
has licensed some of his
works for electronic books.
But as you go through
that, everybody
walks around with these little
ear buds these days, which
have several names in the book.
In one place, they're
called shells.
In another place they're
called thimbles, ear thimbles.
And then, the green
bullet was the other one.
Did I miss any of them
as I was going through?
That was one of my reads, was
to go through and write down
the technology names
for these things.
Yes, sir?
AUDIENCE: At the
end of the novel,
the city is destroyed
by a nuclear bomb.
NANCY DAVENPORT: Right.
AUDIENCE: And that's
part of the atmosphere
that Ray Bradbury
was working in.
His novel is
published around '53,
and the Russians had gotten
the A-bomb four years earlier.
So in addition to the
McCarthy hysteria,
there was the fear
of the nuclear bomb.
NANCY DAVENPORT: That any
day we could be disappeared.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
nuclear bomb.
So that comes into the picture.
It's rather a striking ending.
NANCY DAVENPORT: Oh, it is.
And Mildred dies then
the city is bombed.
Mildred dies.
And he turns to Granger,
who's his companion now,
the leader of the book people.
And he said, I don't
think I miss her.
Why would you?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
Yeah.
Who else?
Carola.
CAROLA WEIL: I wonder if you can
take us to where we are today.
You've raised the question
of, would you ban a book,
and which book would you ban?
But also, if we think
about why has his book
endured in the public interest?
Is it because of the illicitness
of going against authority?
Is it that there are probably
some folks who think,
wouldn't it be nice if
we could ban more books?
And shouldn't we--
NANCY DAVENPORT: Oh,
people are trying
to ban books every single day.
CAROLA WEIL: [INAUDIBLE].
NANCY DAVENPORT: Yeah.
CAROLA WEIL: So I just wondered
if you could talk a little bit
more about today's context--
NANCY DAVENPORT: Well,
actually, as librarians, we
have this week we
celebrate in September
called banned books week.
And it's not necessarily
that everybody
was successful in
having them banned,
but people have tried
to have them banned.
There's probably not
a week that goes by,
and I will say principally
in the south, where
somebody doesn't try to ban
Harry Potter, because it's
magic.
And it doesn't fit
people's God-fearing images
of how people ought
to live their lives.
As a parent, I served
on a book-banning panel,
a challenge, in
Fairfax County schools.
And so I tried not to let them
know I was a librarian when
my kids were in school.
Really, because
then you get pegged.
And I wanted to be a parent
more than a librarian,
so that you could be invited to
be on a whole bunch of things.
So I was the parent
representative
on a book challenge.
And once somebody
makes a challenge,
it sets off an entire
sequence of events,
because every public library,
and every school system,
has put together a protocol for
how you will handle these book
bannings.
Most parents are surprised.
They think that you'll just take
the book right off the shelf.
And that doesn't happen.
So this particular book was
called The Devil on the Court.
And when the mother
came to the evening
that we were going to be
discussing this with her,
she admitted she'd
never read the book.
She'd never opened it.
She wanted it banned
strictly based
upon the fact that the word
"devil" was in the title,
and that it was inappropriate
to be in a high school.
And so we talked.
And so I decided,
I'm the parent,
so I'll talk parent to parent.
And I asked her if she knew the
story of Faust, of the choices
between good and evil.
She said, oh, absolutely.
And I said, if you
had read the book,
this is the story of
Faust, of the choices
between good and evil as they
play out on a high school
basketball team.
Because the devil has
approached one of the guards,
I can make you star.
And this young man has to
choose between good and evil.
And he makes the right choice.
So it's actually a really good
life lesson to put in a context
that young people in the
school would have understood.
But she didn't care about that.
It had the word "devil" in it.
So books are challenged
all the time for content,
for titles, for impact.
We have one, two, three,
four librarians in the room?
Right?
If you guys want to help me
with some other titles of--
AUDIENCE: To Kill a Mockingbird.
NANCY DAVENPORT: To Kill
a Mockingbird, the very
first book we started
this series with,
has been banned frequently.
Yes?
AUDIENCE: I understand
Fahrenheit 451 was
discouraged in several ways.
Would you say some
more about that?
NANCY DAVENPORT: In
many cases, editors
went through and changed
language that was in it.
And, I think, in
the second clip,
he will talk a little
bit about that.
And they just didn't like his
language, so they went through.
And he never permitted
it, but the editors
had to send the
books back to him.
But you could walk into
high school libraries,
and you will see that things
are always marked out in books.
Because high school is actually
worse than the middle school
libraries, because they just
don't want the kids to read
these bad words, or bad ideas.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
Say again?
AUDIENCE: Huckleberry Finn.
CAROLA WEIL: Huckleberry Finn.
AUDIENCE: Bad words.
NANCY DAVENPORT: Yes.
Bad words.
AUDIENCE: I can't say
you should have edited
this book because of bad words.
But I found it
interesting when he
talked about expanding this
in order to make money,
and turning it into a novel.
Because I disliked--
NANCY DAVENPORT:
I hate this book.
AUDIENCE: --much of it.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
--based on, I thought,
this [INAUDIBLE].
And now I see he's padded it.
It should have been
what it started out as.
NANCY DAVENPORT: A short story.
AUDIENCE: And I think
I'd have been much more
comfortable with it.
I just kept going, oh my god.
He's just throwing
all this stuff
in here, which made me crazy.
But as far as
predicting the future,
one aspect of that
that did resonate
for me was that these
people just sort of accepted
what they gained
through these screens--
that their TV was
always, and it was
people just talking at them.
And they accepted whatever was
told to them from authority.
They walk about
the war will be--
NANCY DAVENPORT: Yes.
The war will start in two hours.
AUDIENCE: But even
more so was that, oh,
we vote for the candidate
who looks and sounds
authoritative and whatnot.
And, of course, that we've
seen both in debates,
but in advertising.
And statistically we
can go back, and say,
it is often the taller
candidate, or the deeper voice,
or whatever, who
has the presence.
So we're all
susceptible to that--
NANCY DAVENPORT: To packaging.
AUDIENCE: --especially if
you are in a non-thinking,
and not reading anything
further about it.
That part did resonate for me.
But I did feel
the book should've
been back to a short story.
NANCY DAVENPORT: Pat.
AUDIENCE: What strikes me also
are the two counterpositions
of do not ask why,
and do not inquire,
versus opening up the whole
spectrum of questioning
and learning, and
creating new knowledge.
And in a way, that reminds me
of what we're seeing in the US
is the anti-intellectualism
that is emerging,
or has emerged, in our society.
Or perhaps it's
become more vocal
because there's more money
behind it-- who knows why.
But it's still a counter-force
in our society today.
It just plays out
in different ways.
NANCY DAVENPORT: Did
it just take longer
to come to fruition?
I mean, he thought
he was afraid of it.
But maybe it's finally here.
Yes, ma'am?
AUDIENCE: When you
were describing
the beginning of the book
about the argument why
the books are useless.
And I think there
is, at present,
you see a lot of people are
more into your technology,
not e-book [INAUDIBLE]
is useless.
I mean, most people, that is
useless to even read books.
It's all someone's opinion.
NANCY DAVENPORT: And
it takes so long.
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
It takes so long.
And you can go to some
website and look it up,
or something like that.
And I think that somehow is
happening without even anyone
forcing [INAUDIBLE] on people.
NANCY DAVENPORT: And I
think that, fundamentally,
is his principal point, is
you don't have to burn them,
we just have to ignore them.
And the same thing
is accomplished,
without consuming the fuel.
I mean, quite
literally, if none of us
pay attention, if none
of us read, if none of us
question, where
does that leave us?
AUDIENCE: Sound bites.
NANCY DAVENPORT: Sound bites.
Yeah.
Anybody have a favorite
character in this?
And why?
AUDIENCE: Faber [INAUDIBLE]
most interesting [INAUDIBLE].
[INAUDIBLE] Captain Beatty
was very intelligent.
And he's read all these books.
And yet, he's in charge of
people not reading books.
And so, what's going
on in his mind,
and how is he not
corrupted by what
he has read in [INAUDIBLE]?
I mean, he says,
I think, a fireman
can take home a book so
long as he returned it
within the next--
NANCY DAVENPORT: Yes.
They had very tight
lending periods.
AUDIENCE: It's all right.
[INAUDIBLE] corrupted.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
He's not absolute about this.
So I'm just wondering
what you thought about it.
NANCY DAVENPORT: Well, I
thought that he probably
would have been like one
of the perfect book people
at the end of the book.
Somebody who would
have, because he
can recite so much from
memory anyway, that had he not
been in charge of this
brigade, he actually
might have been the
renegade who could
have become one of the book
people at the other end.
AUDIENCE: Montag
was certain that he
wanted a book of his own.
NANCY DAVENPORT: Yes.
He was certain.
AUDIENCE: Exactly.
So I think he tries to make
the case that maybe the man was
so conflicted that he was, like
so many of the other characters
they describe as being suicidal,
because of this repression,
and that that
justified his killing.
This man wanted to die.
That's why he goaded him into--
NANCY DAVENPORT: Yeah.
This book, it's quite
layered in many ways,
the more you read it, the
more you listen to it.
For me, listening to it added
another dimension to it.
There are a couple
of different cadences
that are used for the different
characters in the book.
And the book people,
at the end, and Faber,
the reader has picked a much
more felicitous cadence,
and tone, and pacing, than
other parts of the book,
where Mildred sounds--
the way he expresses
Mildred's voice
is as daffy as Mildred is.
And so, people who read
these books have to,
not act their way through
them, but figure out
how to interpret them in
a way that the rest of us
will find faithful to the book.
And I thought this
one was actually
done pretty well in its
cadence, and its pacing,
and the way they put
the characters to you.
And I read more aurally
than I read in print, only
because I drive two
hours every day.
And so, it gives me
ample opportunity
to be able to listen
to a lot of books.
Peter.
AUDIENCE: Coming from
Germany, this matter
of book burning, of course,
has special and traumatic
significance.
NANCY DAVENPORT: Does that
make you look at the book
differently?
AUDIENCE: I haven't
read the book.
NANCY DAVENPORT: OK.
AUDIENCE: I have a vague
memory of the film.
But I wanted to get at
something else-- this issue
of the question of
do people still read,
and what's the future for books
in this country and elsewhere?
I have the impression
that everybody I talk to
is in a book club.
We do to Politics and Prose
and it's always crammed.
Ann Patchett opened
this bookstore.
It is very, very
successful, apparently.
So books have been
pronounced dead very often,
but they seem to
be alive and well.
So I'd be interested
in your views here.
AUDIENCE: I think
it also relates
to what your environment is.
If you're surrounded
by books, if you're
in a library or a bookstore,
you're more tempted to read.
But if you're in an area where
there is a lot of electronics--
I sort of visualize
that room with the three
TVs in each wall.
If you're in a place surrounded
by very distracting technology,
you're going to absorb--
NANCY DAVENPORT:
It sucks you in.
AUDIENCE: --your attention
span, so that you're
more likely to pay attention
to the distracting, more
entertaining thing than
something like a book.
NANCY DAVENPORT:
Anybody want to comment?
AUDIENCE: I was just saying
I've been going for many years
to the National Book
Festival in the mall,
and I think people who
are interested in books
should go there.
It's just--
NANCY DAVENPORT:
Hundreds of thousands.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
of people who will come.
So there is some interest.
But obviously, we live in a very
educated part of the country.
I don't know if that would be
true throughout the nation.
But I do think, I
agree with you--
I think there's still
a great interest
in a certain type of reading.
At the same time, I
volunteer here occasionally
at the reference desk.
And I think when people are
looking for information,
a lot of the
students have learned
to look for packets
of information
rather than full books.
Or that's our natural tendency,
I should say [INAUDIBLE].
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
AUDIENCE: Beyond that, because
they can get that very quickly.
NANCY DAVENPORT: Somebody
remind me to come back
to how students
study in the library,
because we've really been
studying how students
study in a library.
But I saw a hand.
AUDIENCE: I was just
going to [INAUDIBLE] what
you said about the it
depends on where you live.
If you're surrounded
by people who
like to read, and think books
are important, and [INAUDIBLE].
NANCY DAVENPORT: Anne.
AUDIENCE: I'm thinking that
books on tape, and the movie
bonfire, or the book bonfire--
NANCY DAVENPORT: Vanities.
AUDIENCE: --which I love
in the movie is awful.
And what I've learned was that
I guess the director listened
to it on tape.
And his sense of it was that
it was kind of humorous.
And there was a lot of
sarcasm [INAUDIBLE].
But so, what you
got was more of--
NANCY DAVENPORT: Was
a different book,
because it was
interpreted by a reader--
by somebody reading it to you.
Well, the Library
of Congress has
a division that produces
recorded books for the blind.
And I don't I just
thought this was weird,
because there were so many
contemporary books now,
because recorded books
are very popular for more
people than just me,
but a lot of people.
And I thought, why
don't they just license
that from the regular
publisher, and make
that available to the blind?
And they don't, because
they don't want anybody
interpreting the book.
The book is read very
much word-for-word,
and not interpreted,
so that the individual
to whom it's being read will put
their own interpretation on it.
Which I thought it was
completely interesting
that the Library of Congress
has the studios to do this.
Some of it they farm out.
But the majority
of it was actually
recorded up on Capitol
Hill, or on Taylor
street, Northwest,
where the Library has
another big set of studies
to provide services
to the blind and [INAUDIBLE].
Yes?
AUDIENCE: There's another
group, Recording for the Blind.
I think it's somewhere right
around [INAUDIBLE] Avenue.
You can volunteer
and [INAUDIBLE].
NANCY DAVENPORT:
And that group will
do a lot of sections
of textbooks,
things need really
fast turnaround
and might be for a
smaller audience.
They do a whole lot
of those recordings.
I kept wondering as I was
going through this book,
how different would it be
to live in this environment
that we find repressive,
and at the same time,
get all of your information
through your ears,
or your fingers, but
not through your eyes?
How different is your
interpretation of the world?
And I guess I do that
a lot, because I listen
so much to materials that the
different sets of sense that
are at work when you are
physically reading a book,
I think, we all think, still,
is very different than when
you're reading it on
a Kindle, or you're
reading it on an iPad.
You've lost that
tactile of being
in touch the word, the paper
itself conveys something,
and type font.
I'm very fussy about type font.
There are certain very
popular British fonts
that just make me nuts.
Because to me, the
font itself says,
I'm an Edwardian,
Victorian piece,
and I'm just going to be loaded
with way too many adjectives.
But you develop your own
sort of reading habits
for these things.
Anne.
AUDIENCE: Why did Mein
Kampf [INAUDIBLE]?
Is the book, which
was taken [INAUDIBLE].
NANCY DAVENPORT: Right.
And now, book burning is being
done for political reasons.
Think of the burning the Koran,
and then the political reaction
that is, in some cases,
probably deliberately
invoked by burning it.
The burning of the Bible is
treated a bit differently,
because even the ashes are
then treated with reverence
in a lot of places.
So book burning has
lots of symbolism,
in lots of different
ways, in all of this.
AUDIENCE: And the Bible
was one of the books
that Montag stole, right?
In this--
NANCY DAVENPORT: Yeah.
He did.
And that's why, in
the end, he ends up
with the Book of Ecclesiastes.
And in everything
that I've read,
and every website I have
been on-- so I have used
a lot of technology to study
this thing-- in no place
has Bradbury answered why
Ecclesiastes and Revelations,
why did you choose those to
be the books of the Bible
that Montag ends up forming
that relationship with?
AUDIENCE: So was he
influenced by Orwell, and was,
later, Margaret Atwood,
with The Handmaid's Tale,
influenced by this book?
Because I kept thinking of--
NANCY DAVENPORT: Do
you have this edition?
Somebody else [INAUDIBLE].
Yeah.
This edition has a couple
of pieces in the back of--
some of these just
tickle me to no end.
Harold Bloom takes this book
apart in his own typical way,
describing it as a period piece.
This short, thin,
rather tendentious novel
has an ironic ability to inhabit
somewhat diverse periods.
And then, in another place, he
said, reading Fahrenheit 451
after many years, I forgive
the novel its stereotypes,
and it's
simplifications, because
of its prophetic hope that
memory, and memorization, is
the answer.
Isn't that interesting?
We all think teaching to the
test, having kids memorize,
is something they
shouldn't be doing.
They should be doing
scholarly inquiry.
And yet, the book
people are saving books
by memorizing them.
And then, he goes
on to say, Bradbury,
though his work
is of the surface,
will survive as a moral fabric.
Damning with faint praise.
AUDIENCE: I was just
going to mention,
it's not a movie that, I think,
[INAUDIBLE] was pretty recent,
and it's The Book of Eli.
[INAUDIBLE]
NANCY DAVENPORT: I
have not seen that.
AUDIENCE: And essentially
it's Denzel Washington--
I'll watch him-- As they say,
I'd watch him read a menu.
Again, he is the
Bible [INAUDIBLE].
And they're going to take it.
And he starts off
[INAUDIBLE] chapter verse 1,
in the beginning,
because they think
he's actually carrying
this Bible with him,
but he's memorized it.
So it's funny, like this
gentleman was saying,
this book has, I think,
had a huge influence
on a lot of these
sci-fi writers.
And as far as the
repressive culture,
people here may have
lived in countries
where, in fact, newspapers
disappeared, or that magazine.
I mean, this is, for
me, years and years ago,
I lived in Spain when
Franco was still around.
And there were times when
you'd just go to news stand,
and things just
wouldn't be there.
You couldn't get
the Herald Tribune.
The other thing, the
television was horrible.
It was almost kind of
like that silly crap
that Mildred listens to.
Because I think
part of what we have
is the freedom with out books.
But I actually think
our technology, sure,
we've got all the sitcoms, but
there's a lot of great stuff
that you can get.
NANCY DAVENPORT: And
Mildred never turns it off.
This is her family.
AUDIENCE: But, I mean, I think
about, it's not just the books.
We have that.
But we also have Good films
and movies, and others,
with the technology.
But it's interesting,
I think, that when
you get the
repression of books, I
think your popular entertainment
is usually pretty awful.
But one of the things
that did kind of
occur to me, the book
seems to not just be
solely repression of
books, but of questioning--
of being [INAUDIBLE].
NANCY DAVENPORT: That's why
my image is the dandelion.
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
Of Independent thought, and
independent decision about
to determine how you
will live your life.
And we don't have
the book suppression,
except in communities
that would will attempt
to pick individual books.
But more and more
in our society,
we're seeing communities,
governments, make decisions
for us, change laws.
You can't buy a
soda a certain size,
because that's bad for you.
You can't buy products
that, now, somebody else
has determined how you will
now live your life according
to law, to be healthy
for whatever reason.
You can say, oh, it's
in our best interests,
but isn't that how,
often, these things--
NANCY DAVENPORT: It's
in your best interest
not to have conflict.
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
So what's to eventually, if
we get complacent about which
freedoms we do keep, and
which we willingly relinquish,
when do you get to a point
where it's out of control?
NANCY DAVENPORT: You don't
get that choice anymore.
Somebody mentioned
Margaret Atwood,
and she actually had
some piece in here, too.
But there's also a piece,
the movie director Francois
Truffaut, kept a diary
while he was on the set.
[INAUDIBLE] I gathered he kept
a diary on all the movies.
And so, on Wednesday,
March the 9th,
he writes that the
subjects of films
influence the crews
that make them.
During Jules and Jim, everybody
started to play dominoes.
During La Peau douce,
everybody was deceiving
his wife or her husband.
And right from the
start of Fahrenheit 451,
everybody on the unit
has begun to read.
There are often hundreds
of books on the set.
Each member of the
unit chooses one,
and sometimes you
can hear nothing
but the sound of turning pages.
Isn't that amazing?
Yeah.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
NANCY DAVENPORT: Right.
I thought so, too.
Pat?
AUDIENCE: We were talking, and
he was talking in the film,
about libraries that
had been burned.
And the ones that
come to my mind
as recent disasters were
the library in Sarajevo that
was bombed from a distance,
and order us very forthrightly
to destroy the identity
and cultural artifacts
of a whole population.
And then, very
recently, in Timbuktu,
where fundamentalists
got into the libraries
there, and destroyed more
than what we even know yet
was destroyed.
So in Timbuktu, literally,
the things that were there
were centuries old.
NANCY DAVENPORT:
And in Iraq, if you
remember when that war started,
the librarians of the National
Library put a human chain
around that library,
and would not let anybody in.
And I will say quite proudly,
the very first people
they let in, and that
they were waiting
to get there was the
Library of Congress,
because they knew the
Library of Congress
would come to
protect [INAUDIBLE]
and would help them.
And the man who
was on my staff, he
was the head of one of
our acquisitions programs,
was actually an
Arabist by study,
and he learned Arabic, and
gone to university in Iraq.
So we made him the
head of the delegation.
And when he came
rolling in, and began
speaking in their
dialect, he said,
smiles went from
ear to ear, and it
was just amazing
what happened, to be
able to stabilize that
library, and, in many cases,
mobile a lot of materials out.
And the Library of Congress
took possession of them
to be able to send them back.
They didn't necessarily
leave the Middle East,
because the Library has
offices all around the world.
But it was at the
request of the librarians
there in protecting
their patrimony.
And one of the reasons
the Library of Congress
is so successful in many of
these countries of getting
materials out,
because when I was
the Director of Acquisitions, I
would go into them to celebrate
their achievements,
and you have to do,
you know, I'm from
the government,
and I'm here to help
you kind of visit.
But also, it was
important, frankly,
that somebody from Washington
go that you could be taken out
to the ministries
to thank people,
and to go to the universities
and talk about how important it
was to get their scholarship
and their research in.
Many of the scholars
in those countries
believe that having it
out of their country,
and having it in an institution
like the Library of Congress,
protects their patrimony.
Because there, it could be
lost in their own home country.
But if it's at LC,
and it's been made
available to other
scholars, it's
likely to have been
photocopied, to be mimeo--
mimeographed.
What's that word?
AUDIENCE: Digitized?
NANCY DAVENPORT: Yeah.
Well, that's what we do now.
Microfilm is what we used to do.
Microfilm was the word
I was looking for.
Some days I do nouns,
some days I do verbs.
I've gotten to that stage.
Get me on the right day.
But it's pretty
amazing when you look
at the protection of materials.
And so, I'm always
reading books like this,
sort of looking at it
through the other filter of,
what do we do to make sure
that books are available,
that books are made available?
And at some point,
if you all want
to talk a little
bit about e-books,
and what that's doing to
making them available,
and not making them available,
simultaneously, it's
a pretty a interesting
proposition,
both for you as
individual readers,
and for us as an academic
library, or any public library.
Because you don't
own anything anymore.
That's the really hard part.
Carola?
CAROLA WEIL: Actually,
on that point of e-books
and the connective value, or the
connecting value, of the book.
I have relatives who used to
leave books on park benches
once they had finished them so
somebody else could pick them
up.
It's really hard to do
that with an e-book.
You can share files.
NANCY DAVENPORT: You'd have to
give your whole Kindle away.
CAROLA WEIL: Well, or
you can share the file.
but there is that
concern, just as you
were mentioning,
about students going
for packets of information.
Are we able to continue to keep
the book not just as something
that everybody does because
we live in an intellectual
community, but that
it is, in fact,
a [INAUDIBLE] of public good--
NANCY DAVENPORT: Public good.
That's right.
CAROLA WEIL: --that we share.
And how do we think about
books as public works?
NANCY DAVENPORT: And to
take that sort of one piece
further before we open up
for everybody to talk about,
as we create--
and every other
college and university
creates-- online-only
classes, it
means the resources
to support that class
have to be online only,
because many of our students
aren't in any place
close to this library
to get in to support it.
And all of our
library services have
to be available online as well.
So we can do reference, and we
can do those things in chat.
And we do it locally, as
well as internationally.
But when you now have to say,
hmm, every supporting material
for this class has to be
available electronically,
you can't assume that
all the pieces you want
can be-- one, either because
it hasn't been created
that way, or two, because the
publisher will not give you
the right to create a
digital edition of it
to make it available.
And so, classes become--
that level of
material that we can
bring to the
academic enterprise--
becomes narrower,
rather than larger,
while the student body
can become larger,
because they are scattered.
You know, it's
interesting dichotomy when
you start to put it that way.
AUDIENCE: Well, one
of the other changes
that's going hand
in glove with that
is, as libraries become a study
center of knowledge sharing,
but not necessarily, anymore,
a repository of the books,
libraries have fewer books.
Because things have been--
NANCY DAVENPORT: In our
off-site shelving facility.
AUDIENCE: That off-site.
But it means for
people, alums, others
who might come in, here,
or into a public library,
they're not always--
NANCY DAVENPORT:
They don't see it.
AUDIENCE: They don't
see books there.
NANCY DAVENPORT: And you
don't smell them anymore.
AUDIENCE: They don't browse.
They don't have the
opportunity to say, oh, I think
I'll take that and read that.
It's become a very
different function.
So just as we talked about
the value, from this book,
actually having the physical
document so people can--
NANCY DAVENPORT: I've
almost not put this down
during the evening,
if you've noticed.
AUDIENCE: We are all
moving in a direction that
is eliminating copies
from the places
we used to have as collections.
NANCY DAVENPORT: And yet,
you've described that Politics
of Prose is packed with people.
AUDIENCE: Yes.
NANCY DAVENPORT: Particularly,
I mean, how many events do they
have on any given day?
When you open the
Washington Post,
and you start going through
them, and it's like every hour,
on the hour, they have
another program going on.
And they're always filled--
always filled.
That happens in
lots of communities.
And we think that part of it is
that coming together, tonight,
as we are doing is
creating a community.
Since we've started this
series, every night, more of you
have come back, and somebody
who comes the first time
will come back the
second and third time.
We're creating our own
community of the book
by doing this series.
And people love it.
One of the reasons that we
thought our community members--
our non-campus members-- would
like it is because, other than
tonight, we're turning
to faculty members--
members or teaching faculty--
to do the discussion
[INAUDIBLE].
And when we watched the chairman
of the physics department shock
himself multiple
times, it was scary,
as he was recreating Benjamin
Franklin's experiments.
His graduate students got
quite a kick out that.
Nicole?
AUDIENCE: So when Bradbury
was talking about the book,
he was pretty flippant about it.
He's like, I wrote
it in nine days.
NANCY DAVENPORT:
I wrote it 9 days.
It wrote itself.
AUDIENCE: This was my
idea, it turned into this.
And the characters
aren't very likable,
particularly the women.
Why--
NANCY DAVENPORT: Expect
for the first [INAUDIBLE].
And actually--
AUDIENCE: But she's
killed off after two days.
NANCY DAVENPORT:
Not in the movie.
In the movie, she's back.
AUDIENCE: Yes.
NANCY DAVENPORT: She is back
at the end of the movie.
AUDIENCE: Also as
an adult, as opposed
to a 13- or 14-year-old
child in the book.
NANCY DAVENPORT: And Mildred and
Clarice are the same actress.
AUDIENCE: Oh,
that's interesting.
Well--
NANCY DAVENPORT: One with
short hair, one with long hair.
The same actress.
AUDIENCE: Why did it
reach the impact that it
did to make the list--
to make the books list?
I wonder [INAUDIBLE]
of the banned books.
NANCY DAVENPORT: That too.
But I think, in
this case, the list
of books that shaped America,
because it got people talking.
Now I'm getting confused as to
which clip I've seen things in.
But in one of them, he
talks about the fact
that, in the first printing
of this book, while it
got lots of critical reviews--
some good some not--
it sold 2,000 copies.
That's not a lot.
Authors make nothing out
of selling 2,000 copies.
But he said, over the years, it
has sold hundreds of thousands
of copies, because
people keep buying it.
There is a new generation
that has to buy it.
There are some
schools that teach
this book in the sixth grade.
And I think that's too young.
I don't think you have
enough life experience
to sort of put it into context.
And there are a couple of
books that I reread every year,
because every year I
have a different, richer
context to put them in.
And I think I may keep
doing that with this one,
because I feel
differently about it
now than I did when I was 21.
AUDIENCE: I'm so sorry.
NANCY DAVENPORT:
So shall I read it?
Erica.
AUDIENCE: Well, on the
subject of context,
I wonder, Anne-Marie
made an interesting point
when we were first
sitting down that this
came about during the
era of McCarthyism.
And so I wonder if that
has something to do--
NANCY DAVENPORT: It does
have something to do with it.
AUDIENCE: --why it's had the
staying power that it has,
because it's something that's
so directly impacting--
NANCY DAVENPORT:
It had something
to do with him writing, and
writing against McCarthyism,
by showing what could happen
if the worst of McCarthyism
came true.
AUDIENCE: Right.
NANCY DAVENPORT:
But kids these days
know less about McCarthyism than
probably a lot of other things.
AUDIENCE: To explain
its initial hold.
NANCY DAVENPORT: Right.
And he uses it in
one of it-- and it
may be actually in this clip
that we're going to see.
He says he uses this metaphor.
And he's all about
the metaphor--
finding the metaphor
to set up the argument.
And he uses this metaphor
of book burning to actually
rail against media, and the
saturation of inane media
that distracts people from
everything else in life.
AUDIENCE: Your picture
is a buttercup.
NANCY DAVENPORT: I know.
Because we couldn't find a
teenager with a dandelion.
AUDIENCE: But a dandelion--
NANCY DAVENPORT: We found little
kids with nothing but not--
AUDIENCE: But his other
story, Dandelion Wine,
which I read when I
was a child, and I just
fell in love with it, the
other enemy of dandelions was
[INAUDIBLE].
NANCY DAVENPORT:
One of my neighbors
is putting that in,
plug by plug by plug.
AUDIENCE: Plug by plug.
And so, in his vision
in Dandelion Wine
was that you want to have
lawns that had many dandelions.
Why?
Because you could harvest them--
the leaves for salad,
and the flower for wine.
NANCY DAVENPORT: Right.
Now, there's one piece that I
actually want to read to you.
Because I think this one
of most beautiful elegies
I have ever read
in my entire life.
And it's Granger.
It's one of the
book mean talking
about his own grandfather.
And he's talking to Montag.
The war has just taken place.
The city's been bombed.
And Montag says, my
wife's back there.
Granger says, I'm
sorry to hear it.
The cities won't do well
in the next few days.
Montag, it's strange I
don't don't miss her.
It's strange I don't feel
anything, even if she dies.
I realized, a moment ago, I
don't think I'll feel sad.
It isn't right.
Something must be wrong with me.
And then, Granger takes
over and says, listen.
When I was a boy,
my grandfather died.
And he was a sculptor.
He was also a very
kind man who had
a lot of love to
give to the world,
and he helped to clean
up the slum in our town,
and he made toys for us.
And he did a million
things in his lifetime.
He was always busy
with his hands.
And when he died,
I suddenly realized
I wasn't crying for him at
all, but for the things he did.
I cried because he would
never do them again.
He would never carve
another piece of wood,
or help us raise doves and
pigeons in the backyard,
or play the violin
the way he did,
or tell us jokes the way he did.
It was part of us.
And when he died, all
the action stopped dead.
And there was nothing to do
them just the way he did.
He was an individual.
He was an important man.
I've never gotten
over his death.
Often, I think, what
wonderful carvings never
came to birth because he died.
How many jokes are
missing from the world,
and how many homing pigeons
untouched by his hands?
He shaped the world.
He did things to the world.
The world was bankrupted 10
million fine actions the night
he passed on.
Isn't that a lovely elegy?
Now I keep thinking, oh, am
I going to be worthy of that
some day?
So we're going to
turn to the last clip.
And [INAUDIBLE],
there's some papers?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].
Before we start, would
you mind giving us
a quick recap of what you've
discovered about the way
students study in the
library these says?
NANCY DAVENPORT: Oh yes.
Because we've been
studying students.
We have been studying
students, and we've
been interviewing students,
because we are rethinking
the whole program
of service and how
the library's going to be
organized and arranged,
and remodeled.
And so, there are
students who will come in
with their own laptops,
and keep them closed,
and sit down at the
library's computers,
and use the library's computers.
So if you go over and
you talk to a student,
and say, but you came
with your own laptop.
It's OK, you can use ours.
But can you tell me why?
Because you don't have any
distractions on your computers.
Facebook isn't on there.
All those things that
a student regularly
does on their own
computer is not on ours.
So they discipline
themselves by using
different devices for
different purposes
at different times of the day.
Now, we've taken out some
of our desktop computers,
and we've acquired more
tablets, and more small
devices that students
can borrow and take away.
But it's really interesting,
if you walk around,
and watch how they
array themselves
and their stuff around.
And frequently you will see them
sitting at one of the library's
computers searching, getting
information, and sitting
with their own computer
recording what pieces of it
that they want.
I mean, I just find it
interesting to watch
all the mixed metaphors of
the various technologies that
are going on, surrounded by
books, surrounded by papers.
You know, we put together desks
that should seat four students,
and we're lucky if they
get two, because of the way
they spread themselves
out to occupy space.
We know, because they've
told us that they
want light in that building.
Our library building is not
blessed with natural light.
And if you walk the building,
as I do, multiple times a day,
everything fills in from the
perimeter of the building
to the inside.
So whoever gets there first
in the morning gets the light,
and they keep it for as long as
they can manage to stay there.
I mean, it's only
the interior spaces
of the building that
get filled last.
And so, in the remodeling
plan that we have,
we would tear down many
of the interior walls,
and create a lot more space
so that light can permeate
the building, so the
students will stop
referring to it as Azkaban.
And if you've read Harry Potter,
you know that that's a prison.
So one of the last
quotes I want to give you
before we do this one is, again,
one of the last scenes of when
he has met the book
people, and he is becoming
one of the book people.
And I was actually going to
title the presentation this,
but it's like starting
at the back of the book,
and working your way
forward, that it's
we are bums on the outside,
and libraries on the inside.
Because they're a
community of vagrants.
They have to move from place to
place so they're not found out.
And they live in the woods,
and they live by the river.
So we're bums on the outside,
and libraries on the inside.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
NANCY DAVENPORT: So
this is his speech to--
Is the introduction-- him
being introduced-- coming up?
Because we can skip that part.
Yeah.
Just go to where he is.
- --written stories and
poems, has won every con--
NANCY DAVENPORT: Every
conceivable honor.
Now, he's very frail, but
wait till he opens his mouth.
- Thank you.
Oh, this is great.
I got out of acting
when I was 21.
And the reason I'm
here tonight is
because I quit acting,
because I couldn't
remember the goddamn lines.
But I discovered lecturing
was a wonderful substitute.
So I could just
get up here and say
anything I wanted to say
off the top of my head.
And tonight,
there's a lot I want
to say because I recognize
the need of many of you
to be writers,
and you don't want
you to do the wrong things.
So for these five
minutes, I want
to talk about the hygiene
of writing for you,
so you won't do anything
wrong in the next year.
The first thing
that comes to mind
is the danger of
writing novels to start.
I don't know how many of
you are writing novels now.
If they're going well, you
don't have to listen to me.
But the problem
with novels is, you
could spend a whole
year of writing one,
and it might not turn
out well, because you
haven't learned to write yet.
But the best hygiene
for beginning writers,
or intermediate writers,
is to write a hell
of a lot of short stories.
If you can write one
short story a week,
it doesn't matter what
the quality is, to start,
but at least you're practicing.
And at the end of the year,
you have 52 short stories,
and I defy you to
write 52 fat ones.
It can't be done.
It can't be done.
At the end of 30 weeks, or 40
weeks, or the end of the year,
all of a sudden, a story will
come that is just wonderful.
That's what happened to me.
A started writing when
I was 12, and I was 22
before I wrote my first
decent short story.
That's a hell of a lot of
writing-- millions of words--
because I was doing everything
wrong, to start, of course.
I was imitating.
I had so many heroes
that I wanted to be like.
I liked H.G. Wells.
I loved Jules Verne.
I loved Conan Doyle.
Sherlock Holmes, for God's sake.
Jeeves-- I loved Wodehouse.
Well, you can't be any
of those things, can you?
You may love them but
you can't be those.
I loved Edgar Rice Burroughs--
Tarzan.
John Carter, Warlord of Mars.
Good lord, wonderful stuff.
The Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum.
I always dreamt some day I'd
grow up and write an Oz book.
But it's not to be-- not to be.
So the main thing I want
to start with tonight
is to get you to writing
more short stories.
And then you'll be in training.
And you'll learn
to compact things.
You'll learn to look for ideas.
And the psychological
thing, here,
is that every week
you'll be happy.
At the end of the week, you
will have done something.
But in a novel, you don't know
where the hell you're going.
At the end of a week, you
don't feel all that good.
Huh?
At the end of the month.
I'd been through novels.
I waited until I was 30
before I wrote my first novel.
And that was Fahrenheit 451.
It was worth waiting for, huh?
But I was fearful of novels.
I recognized the danger of
spending a year on something
that might not be very good.
And your second novel
might not be very good,
and your third one.
But the meantime, you could
write 52 or 104 short stories.
And you're learning your craft.
That's the important thing.
Read people like Roald Dahl.
Get his books of short stories.
Get the short stories
of Guy de Maupassant.
Get John Cheever, who has
done some very good stories,
over and above his novels.
Richard Matheson,
in my own field.
An author named Nigel Kneale--
K-N-E-A-L-E-- Nigel Keale.
Read his short stories.
John Collier, one of the
greatest short story writers
of this century, and you've
never heard his name.
No?
Go ahead and look him up.
He's out of print right now.
I'm trying to get back
in print next year.
John Collier.
English writer.
He wrote brilliant
short stories.
Deeply affected me when
I was 22 years old.
The more quality
short stories you read
from the start of the century.
Edith Wharton's short stories.
You save her novels till later.
There many woman writers
who influenced me.
Katherine Anne
Porter-- her novellas.
All of the short
stories of Wharton.
A Curtain of Green
by Eudora Welty.
Wonderful short stories.
The more of these
you can take in.
And stay away from most modern
anthologies of short stories,
because they're
slices of life, huh?
They don't go anywhere.
They don't have any metaphor.
Have you looked at the
New Yorker recently?
Have you tried to read
one of those stories?
Didn't it put you to
sleep immediately, huh?
They don't know how
write short stories.
Go read Washington Irving.
Go read the short
stories of Melville.
Go read Edgar Allen Poe again.
Huh?
I was trying to think of
some of the other authors
from the start of the century.
Nathaniel Hawthorne,
a writer of fantasy.
In the science fiction
field, many collections
of short stories, because
they all deal with metaphor.
And the sooner you recognize
the ability of seeing a metaphor
and knowing how to
write the metaphor,
and to make collections of
them, the better off you'll be.
Then you'll be
ready for the novel.
Maybe some of you here
tonight are automatically
good novelists.
So I'm not talking to you.
You're fortunate that
you were born that way.
But I discovered along the way
I was a collector of metaphors.
Now, I don't know how I
can teach you to recognize
a metaphor when you see it.
But what you got to do
from this night forward
is stuff your head with
more different things
from various fields,
hygienically speaking.
I'll give you a program
to follow every night--
very simple program.
For the next 1,000
nights, before you
go to bed, every night,
read one short story.
That'll take you 10
minutes, 15 minutes.
OK?
Then read one poem a night from
the vast history of poetry.
Stay away from
most modern poems.
It's crap.
[INAUDIBLE]
It's not poetry.
Now, if you want to
kid yourself, and write
lines that look like
poems, go ahead and do it.
But you'll go nowhere.
And read the great poets.
Go back and read Shakespeare.
Read Alexander Pope.
Read Robert Frost, huh?
But one poem a night,
one short story a night,
one essay a night for
the next 1,000 nights,
and from various fields.
Archeology, zoology, biology.
All the great philosophers
OF time, comparing them.
Read the essays
of Aldous Huxley.
Read Loren Eiseley,
great anthropologists.
You can't do better than that.
Maybe you've never
heard of Loren Eiseley--
E-I-S-E-L-E-Y. He was head of
the Department of Anthropology
at the University
of Pennsylvania.
And he became my
friend four years ago.
I read an essay of his in
Harper's, The Fire Apes,
which was so brilliant I
wrote him a fan letter.
And I said, Dear Dr.
Eiseley, The Fire Apes
is the finest essay written
in the last 20 years
in any American magazine.
Why don't you write the book?
He wrote back and said,
hey, that's an idea.
I think I will write a book.
And he wrote 17 books.
But I was his papa, huh?
Even though I was
15 years younger.
So reread all the
books of Loren Eiseley.
They're crammed with
pomegranate ideas.
That's why I want you to
read essays in every field--
on politics,
analyzing literature.
Pick your own.
But that means that every night,
then, before you go to bed,
you're stuffing your head with
one short story, one poem,
and one essay.
At the end of 1,000
nights, Jesus God,
you'll be full of
stuff [INAUDIBLE].
You'll be full of
ideas and metaphors,
along with your
perceptions of life,
and your own
personal experiences
which you've put
away, and what you
see in your friends,
and your relatives.
So you want all these
things to go in.
And the more metaphors you
can cram yourself with,
they'll bounce around
inside your head,
and make new metaphors.
That's why you're doing this.
But you've got to be able to
recognize one when you see one.
So hygienically speaking,
you've got two things to do.
If you feel you have to do a
novel, in spite of what I said,
go bot it.
But in the meantime, write a
hell of a lot of short stories.
And then, every night,
do these three things
with the short story, and
the poem, and the essay.
And you're well on your way
to being more creative, huh?
The next thing is get rid
of those friends of yours
who make fun of you, and
don't believe in you.
And when you leave here tonight,
go home, make a phone call,
and fire them.
Anyone who doesn't believe
in you and your future,
to hell with them.
I've had my fill of that.
I had people I thought
were my friends
but secretly they thought
I was a nerd because I
wanted to be a writer.
I sold newspapers on a
street corner from the time
I was 19 till I was 21.
I made $10 a week.
This was back in
1939, 1940, '41.
People came by my corner and
said, what are you doing here?
I said, becoming a writer.
They said, you
don't look like one.
I said, yeah, but
I feel like one.
I was filling myself--
I lived at the library.
I never went to college.
Couldn't afford to do that.
But I went to the library
three of four days
a week for 10 years.
And I graduated from the
library when I was 28, huh?
You live in the library.
Live in the library,
for Christ's sake.
Don't live on your goddamn
computers, and the internet,
and all that crap.
You know?
Go to the library.
Don't let them flimflam you into
owning all of these devices.
They can be very
valuable, and very good
for certain kinds of things,
certain kinds of businesses.
Great.
But I lectured did the downtown
library in LA three years ago,
and I signed the guest book.
But the name above mine
had been signed the day
before by Bill Gates,
the great technologist.
And underneath Gates' name
I wrote, I don't do windows.
[END PLAYBACK]
NANCY DAVENPORT: And that's
where I've decided to end this.
Isn't he terrific?
