"It was not oppressive government policies, but decisions of the people, under the influence of technologies that sped up human experience too much, that undermined humanistic values and intellectual curiosity in the first place. Not state censorship, but a more general failure to value the mind, the imagination, nature, and a civilization’s hard-won insights, is the main target of criticism in that novel."
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Lauren Weiner, reflecting on once-banned Fahrenheit 451, on the real issues at the heart of Ray Bradbury’s twist on the dystopian novel. Bradbury, indeed, was a tireless champion of the imagination as a prerequisite for democracy.
More Banned Books Week meditations on censorship.
(Source: , via explore-blog)