The 40th Anniversary of Fahrenheit 4S1rnby Paul A. Troutrn.-^rn’.^1rn«->grn^rnJW^rn>rn’•’^lirn. – PVM^ j f lrnJiTAfiLdHBttiflrni^yflBSsHSi^HrnI^^^P’^rn^^S^KuiA^^aJUlrnE5^VB|^^^|rnfvH^^^^^^^Irn j C ^ ^rnBl^w”«rn^Sm^^WtrnLast year was the 40th anniversary of the publication ofrnFahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury’s gripping futuristic novelrnabout a dumbed-down American society-of-the-spectacle thatrnpays its “firemen” to burn books. Despite its bleak vision of thernfuture, Fahrenheit 451 was well reviewed when it appeared, andrnit soon became ranked with Brave New World and NineteenrnEighty-Four as one of the most powerful and alarming dystopiasrnin English—and certainly the best one written by an American.rnFahrenheit 451 has also been popular with the general reader.rnSince its publication in 1953, it has sold about seven millionrncopies and has never been out of print.rnSo, where was the anniversary party? Why did this importantrnand riveting novel go virtually unnoticed? National PublicrnRadio remembered the date by interviewing Bradbury onernSunday morning in September, some high school kids—thernnovel is often taught in secondary schools—created variousrn”451″ projects, and Simon & Schuster celebrated by issuing arnnew anniversary edition, but that was it. Perhaps party hats andrnhelium balloons were too much to expect for a book with suchrna depressing prognosis, but where were the somber professorsrnand their academic conferences, MLA panels, symposiums,rnfestschriften, and scholarly articles? Hereby hangs an academicrntale.rnOddly enough, even during these feverish decades ofrnpublish-or-perish, academics have been reluctant to writernabout Fahrenheit 451. The PMLA bibliography from 1966 torn1991 (25 years) lists only 12 articles (in English) on the novel—rnan article every other year! By contrast, there are 57 entries forrnBrave New World (475 percent more) and 290 for NineteenrnEighty-Four (2,416 percent more). Moreover, 30 of the entriesrnfor Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four are not for singlernarticles but for entire books, making the discrepancy evenrnPaul A. Trout is an associate professor of English at MontanarnState University.rnmore dramatic.rnOne would think that professional academics imaginativernenough to find clever things to say about Petrarchan eroticismrnin video arcade games and Clint Eastwood as a cultural iconrnwould be able to find tenure-friendly things to say about arndystopian novel that condemns censorship and endorses theirrnown humanistic values and commitments. So why have universityrnscholars given Fahrenheit 451 the cold shoulder? Because,rnI think, they do not like what Fahrenheit 451 says aboutrncensorship, especially about the etiology of censorship.rnIn Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four, books are alsornloathed, feared, and censored, but the censorship comes—rnone might say—from the top down. In Brave New World, censorshiprnis enforced by the Council of World Controllersrnthrough an operant-conditioning program that instills an “‘instinctive’rnhatred of books” in its subjects, making the testtube-rnhatched citizens “safe from books . . . all their lives.”rnThe only people to escape this dehumanizing conditioning arernthe “Savages” imprisoned behind electrified fences on a remoternreservation in New Mexico. It is from this saving remnant thatrnthe last Booklover emerges, John, who has read and memorizedrnthe Complete Works of Shakespeare.rnIn Nineteen Eighty-Four, the censorship that sacrifices “freedom”rnto “happiness” is also imposed by an oligarchy, in thisrncase the “priests of power” within the Party, who use ThoughtrnPolice, terror, and Newspeak to control every aspect of society.rn”By 2050—earlier, probably—all real knowledge of the past hasrnbeen destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron—they’llrnexist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed intornsomething different, but actually changed into somethingrncontradictory of what they used to be.” But even this societyrnhas its saving remnant of savages—the working-class proles,rnwho manage to sing, dance, recite doggerel, and read—even ifrnit is state-produced pornography. “If there was hope,” WinstonrnSmith realized in the midst of his despair, “it must lie in thern24/CHRONICLESrnrnrn