The Fire Next Time: Fahrenheit 451

When bestselling author Susan Orlean decided to burn a book, she settled on a copy of a Ray Bradbury classic, Fahrenheit 451. Orlean, not normally a pyromaniac (or a book-burner), performed this stunt as part of her research for The Library Book, chronicling the Great Los Angeles Public Library fire of 1986, in which 400,000 books were destroyed. Arson may, nor may not, have sparked the cataclysm. When she set Bradbury’s work aflame, Orlean discovered in herself “elation at the fluid beauty of fire, and a terrible fright at the seductiveness of it and the realization of how fast a thing full of human stories can be made to disappear.”  Her choice of Fahrenheit 451 for this experiment was apt: Bradbury’s novella, of course, predicts a future society in which books are illegal and must be burned to a crisp. (I’ll be leading a discussion comparing Orlean’s and Bradbury’s works tomorrow evening, as part of Santa Monica Public Library’s annual Santa Monica Reads program. Over Zoom, needless to say. Y’all come!) 

Bradbury wrote his novella early in his much-storied career, in 1953. It helped make him famous worldwide. In 1966, during an era of widespread youthful rebellion against the status quo, the story was filmed by François Truffaut, making his only foray into English-language cinema. Truffaut remained largely faithful to the Bradbury text, leading up to the shivery conclusion in which bands of rebels who have committed to memory the great texts of the past wander out into the snowy landscape that is a far cry from the decadent, book-free city. His one big change (intensely disliked by Bradbury) involved the casting of It-girl Julie Christie as both of the book’s two key female characters. At the center of Bradbury’s novel is a fireman, Montag, who discovers in himself the urge to read books instead of burning them. (The movie, much more European than American in feel, casts Oskar Werner in that role.) Early on, Montag finds inspiration in Clarisse, an ethereal neighbor with a great forbidden love for nature and the written word. She’s his dream-girl, but his wife Mildred is a down-to-earth harridan with a closed mind. Mildred feels enthusiasm only for the kitschy mass media doled out by the repressive society in which they make their home. (Apart from the otherworldly Clarisse, women don’t come off well in Bradbury’s novella, serving mostly as mindless shrews and pawns, not as authors or as the quiet rebels memorizing otherwise lost literary works. This is one of many ways in which Bradbury’s sometimes prescient Fahrenheit 451 is also pure 1950s in its mindset.)

Feeling that Truffaut had not had the last word about Bradbury’s novella, writer-director Rahmin Bahrani made it a passion project, which he brought to HBO in 2018. In part, his revisiting of the Fahrenheit 451 material is a triumph: his visuals of a nighttime city dominated by neon and huge public video screens smartly brings the Bradbury world into the 21^st century. He has cut some the sillier aspects of Bradbury’s novella (the hideous wife, the lethal mechanical hound who pursues our hero), and his images of fire lapping at the pages of famous books (including recent titles by female authors like Toni Morrison) are hard to shake. Unfortunately, his grasp of his characters is less commendable. The crucial relationship between Montag (Michael P. Jordan) and his captain (Michael Shannon) remains ill-defined. And Bahrani feels compelled to introduce as a McGuffin a mysterious device called an “omnis” that provides a hopeful but unlikely ending. Too bad he got fired up but then lost his way. 

Checking Out “The Library Book”

Books and reading tables make for a great backdrop in so many movies. George Peppard declares his love for Audrey Hepburn in a New York library in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. High school kids (Molly Ringwald and Emilio Estevez among them) serve their Saturday morning detention in the school library in The Breakfast Club. Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman search for evidence of high crimes in the Nixon White House by scouring the collection of the Library of Congress in All The President’s Men. Cop Morgan Freeman tracks down the m.o. of a serial killer through an eerie late-night visit to a police library in Se7en.

Those of us who are book lovers feel we know what libraries look like, feel like, sound like (Ssssh!). And we have in our heads a clear image of librarians: usually females of a certain age, wearing glasses on the tips of their noses, shushing the patrons, clearly more comfortable with books than people. (At home they cuddle with their cats, while reading Jane Austen and sipping hot milk.) It’s true there’ve been a series of made-for-television fantasy movies called The Librarian (and later The Librarians), in which the lead characters have nearly magical powers. But mostly when we think of movie librarians we summon up people like Katharine Hepburn as a prickly, no-nonsense research ace in Desk Set, as well as the adorable but oh-so-prim Shirley Jones, keeping order at the Madison Public Library in The Music Man.

The Library Book is determined to change our opinion of libraries, and of librarians, once and for all. It’s written by New Yorker staffer Susan Orlean, whose earlier The Orchid Thief was the basis for the 2002 Spike Jonze film, Adaptation. In the highly original script written by Charlie Kaufman, Orlean (as portrayed by Meryl Streep) becomes something of a fictional character herself, a journalist seduced by her protagonist -- a mangy orchid thief -- into a life of sex, psychedelics, and crime. The real Orlean has had a slightly less colorful life, but there’s no question she’s attracted by off-kilter subject matter.

One off-kilter subject in The Library Book is the late Harry Peak, a would-be actor who on the morning of April 29, 1986 may or may not have set the fire that nearly destroyed the Los Angeles Central Library. Peak, a ne’er-do-well with a winning smile and a compulsion for lying, was investigated but never charged. As a result of the fire, 400,000 volumes were destroyed. Happily the people of Los Angeles rallied to save the wonderfully fanciful library building and to rebuild its collections. The restored and much enlarged library (which dated from 1926) re-opened in 1993 and continues to flourish in the heart of downtown L.A.

Though Harry Peak is a lively presence in The Library Book, the real hero of the story is the library itself. Orlean has peered into every department, interviewed many staff members, and absorbed the pleasures of the renovated building. Along the way, she explores the innovations that libraries (both in Los Angeles and worldwide) are bringing to their communities: new technologies, ideas for social services, programming to appeal to those of all ages and cultural levels. Today’s libraries are, among many other things, repositories of films and film-related programs. 

Many years ago, when I was quite small, TV launched Cavalcade of Books. On its inaugural episode, the show honored the children’s department of the Los Angeles Central Library. There was an actual children’s librarian present, and I was the curly-headed moppet asking for books about dance. How wonderful that the library is thriving again.