A Pleasure to Burn

by Ray Bradbury

  “But how will you start?”

  “A few books here and there. And build the organization.”

  “Who can you trust?”

  “Former professors like yourself, former actors, directors, writers, historians, linguists. There must be thousands boiling under the skin.”

  “Ancient, most of them. There’ve been no new crops lately.”

  “All the better. They’ll have fallen from public notice.”

  “I know a few.”

  “We could start with those, spread slowly in a network. Think of the actors who never have a chance to play Shakespeare, or Pirandello or Shaw anymore. We would use their anger, my God, to good purpose! Think of the historians who haven’t written a line of history for forty years, and the writers who’ve written pap half a century now, who go home nights and vomit to forget. There must be a million such people!”

  “At least.”

  “And perhaps we could get small classes in reading started, build an interest in the people.”

  “Impossible.”

  “But we must try.”

  “The whole structure must come down. This isn’t a façade job, we can’t change the front. We’ve got to kick down the skeleton. The whole works is so shot through with mediocrity. I don’t think you realize, Montag, that the burning was almost unnecessary, forty years back.”

  “Oh?”

  “By that time the great mass had been so pulverized by comic books, quick digests of digests, that public libraries were like the great Sahara, empty and silent. Except, of course, for the science dept.”

  “But we can bring libraries back.”

  “Can you shout louder than the radio, dance faster than the freak dancers, are your books enough to interest this population breast-fed from infancy through senility? Look at your magazine stands. Half naked women on every cover. Your billboards, your films, sex. Can you get the American man from under his crankcase, the woman out of her beauty salon, both of them away from their friend, the TV?”

  “We can try.”

  “You’re a fool. They don’t want to think. They’re having fun.”

  “They only think they are. My wife has everything. She, like a million others, tried to commit suicide last week.”

  “All right, they’re lying to themselves, but if you try to show them to themselves, they’ll crush you like a bug.”

  A flight of warplanes shook the house, going west.

  “There’s our hope,” said Faber, pointing up. “Let’s hope for a good long bad war, Montag. Let the war take away the TVs and radio and comics and true confessions. This civilization is flinging itself to pieces. Wait for the centrifuge to break the wheel.”

  “I can’t wait. There has to be another structure, anyway, ready and waiting when this one falls. That’s us.”

  “A few men quoting Shakespeare or saying I remember Sophocles? It would be funny if it weren’t so tragic.”

  “We must be there to remind them that there is a little more to man besides machines, that the right kind of work is happiness, rather than the wrong kind of leisure. Man must have something to do. He feels useless. We must tell him about things like honesty and beauty and poetry and art, which they lost along the wayside.”

  “All right, Montag.” The professor sighed. “You’re wrong, but you’re right. We’ll do a little, anyway. How much money could you get me today?”

  “Five thousand dollars.”

  “Bring it here then. I know a man who once printed our college paper years ago. I remember that year very well. I came to my class one morning and there was only one student there to sign up for my Ancient Greek Drama. You see, that’s how it went. Like a block of ice melted on an August afternoon. Nobody passed a law. It happened. And when the people had censored themselves into a living idiocy, the Government, realizing it was to their advantage that the public read only pap and swill, stepped in and froze the situation. Newspapers were dying as far back as the nineteen fifties. They were dead by the year 2000. So nobody cared if the government said no more newspapers. No one wanted them back anyway. The world is full of half-people. They don’t know how to be happy because they know neither how to work, nor how to relax. But enough of that. I’ll contact the printer. We’ll get the books started. That part’ll be fun. I’m going to really enjoy it.”

  “And we’ll plan the reading classes.”

  “Yes, and wait for the war,” said Faber. “That’s one fine thing about war. It destroys machines so beautifully.” Montag stood up. “I’ll get the money to you some time today or tomorrow. You’ll have to give me back that Shakespeare, though. It’s to be burned tonight.”

  “No!” Faber held it out before him, turning the pages.

  “I’ve tried to memorize it, but I forget. It’s driven me crazy trying to remember.”

  “Jesus God, if only we had time.”

  “I keep thinking that. Sorry.” He took the book and went to the door. “Good night.”

  The door shut. He was in the street again, looking at the real world.

  You could feel the war getting ready in the sky that night. The way the clouds moved aside and came back, and the way the stars looked, a million of them between the clouds, like the enemy planes, and the feeling that the sky might fall upon the city and turn the houses to dust, and the moon turn to fire, that was how the night felt. Montag walked from the bus stop, with the money in his pocket. He was listening abstractedly to the Sea-Shell radio which you could stopper in your left ear “Buy a Sea-Shell and hear the ocean of Time”—and a voice was talking to him and only him as he put his feet down toward his home: “Things took a sudden turn for the worse today. War threatens at any hour.”

  A flight of jet-bombers, like the whistle of a scythe, went over the sky in one second. It was less than a radio impulse. Montag felt of the money in one pocket, the Shakespeare in the other. He had given up trying to memorize it now, he was simply reading it for the enjoyment it gave, the simple pleasure of good words on the tongue and in the mind. He unscrewed the Seashell Ear Radio and read another page of Lear by moonlight.

  AT EIGHT O’CLOCK the front door scanner recognized three women and opened, letting them in with laughter and loud, empty talk. Mrs. Masterson, Mrs. Phelps, and Mrs. Bowles, drinking the martinis Mildred handed them, laughing like a crystal chandelier that someone has pushed, tinkling upon themselves in a million crystal chimes, flashing the same white smiles, their echoes repeated into empty corridors. Mr. Montag found himself in the middle of a conversation the main subject of which was how nice everybody looked.

  “Doesn’t everyone look nice?”

  “Nice.”

  “You look fine, Alma.”

  “You look fine, too, Mildred.”

  “Everybody looks nice and fine,” said Montag. He had given up the book. None of it would stay in his mind. The harder he tried to remember Hamlet, the quicker it vanished. He was in a mood to walk, but he never did that any more. Somehow he was always afraid he might meet Clarisse, or not meet her, on his strolls, so that kept him in, standing here upon the blond tenpins, blasting back at them with leers and blatherings, and somehow the television set was put on before they had finished saying how nice everyone looked, and there was a man selling orange soda pop and a woman drinking it with a Cheshire cat smile, how in hell did a person drink and smile simultaneously? A real advertising stunt! Following this, a demonstration of how to bake a certain new cake, followed by a rather inane domestic comedy, a news analysis that did not analyze the news. “There may be war in 24 hours. Nobody knows.” And an intolerable a quiz show naming the capitols of states.

  Abruptly, Montag walked to the televisor and switched it off.

  “Hey!” said everyone as if this were a joke.

  “Leonard,” said Mildred, nervously.

  “I thought we might enjoy a little silence.”

  They thought about it and blinked.

  “I thought we might try a little conversation for a change.”
>
  Conversation!

  A flight of bombers going East shook the house and trembled up through their bodies to shake the drinks in their hands. Mr. Montag followed the sound with his eyes.

  “There they go,” he said.

  Everyone glanced at him.

  “When do you suppose the war will be?”

  Silence.

  At last: “What war?”

  “There isn’t going to be any war.”

  “What about your husbands? I notice they’re not here tonight.”

  Mrs. Masterson looked sidewise at the empty TV screen. “Oh. My husband’ll be back in a week or so. The Army called him. But they have these things every month or so.” She laughed.

  “Don’t you worry? About the war?”

  “Well, even if there was one, heavens, it’s got to be fought and got over with, we can’t just sit, can we?”

  “No, but we can think about it.”

  She sipped her drink charmingly. “Who wants to think about war. I’ll let Bob think of all that.”

  “And die.”

  “It’s always someone else’s husband dies, isn’t that the joke?” The women all tittered. “Bob can take care of himself.”

  Yes, thought Montag, and if he doesn’t, what’ll it matter, we’ve learned the magic of the replaceable part from factories. A man after all is just a man. You can’t tell one from another these days. As for these women. His wife, the others, with their barbarously bright faces, the neon lipstick, the doll-lash eyes. Why worry about Bob or Mary or Tom, if there is a Joe or Helen or Roger to replace them, just as vacuous. In the land of television pallor, where the tanned face? In the land of the spread gluteus maximus, where the muscular thigh? In the land of blanc mange and vanilla pudding where the crisp bacon, the sharp roquefort? Where in this world of dull paring knives the mind like a machete to cut to the heart of the matter! Why these women couldn’t peel the rind from a bit of smalltalk without lopping their arms off at the elbow!

  The silence in the room was like a cotton batting.

  “Did you see the Clarence Dove film last night, wasn’t he funny.”

  “He’s funny!”

  “He sure is funny.”

  “But what if Bob should be killed, or your husband, Mrs. Phelps …”

  “He’s already dead,” said Mrs. Phelps. “He died a week ago, didn’t you know? Jumped off a building.”

  “I didn’t know.” He fell silent, embarrassed.

  “But back to Clarence Dove, he’s really funny,” said Mildred.

  “Why did you marry Mr. Phelps?” said Montag.

  “Why?”

  “Yes, what did you have in common.”

  The poor woman waved her hands helplessly. “Why, because he had such a nice sense of humor, and we liked the same TV programs, and things like that. He danced nice.”

  He had seen other widows at funerals, dry-eyed, even as this woman was dry-eyed because the dead man was a robot turned out on assembly belt, gay, casual, but replaceable by another gay casual chap who would pop up like the clap pipe so mistakable for the one you just blew to bits at the shooting gallery.

  “And you? Mrs. Masterson, have you any children?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Come to think of it, no one here has any children,” said Montag. “Except you, Mrs. Bowles.”

  “Four, by Caesarian section. It’s so easy.”

  “The Caesarians weren’t physically necessary?”

  “No. But I always said I’ll be damned if I’ll go through all that agony just for a baby. Four Caesarians.” She held up her fingers.

  Yes, everything easy. To mistake the easy way for the right way, how delicious the temptation, but it wasn’t living. A woman who wouldn’t have a baby, or a man who wouldn’t work didn’t belong. They were passing through, they were expendables. They belonged to nothing and did nothing.

  “Have you ever thought, ladies,” he said, growing more contemptuous of them by the minute, “that perhaps this isn’t the best of all possible worlds? That perhaps the Negroes and Jews and civil rights and every damned other thing is still where it was a hundred years ago, maybe worse?”

  “Why that can’t be true,” said Mrs. Phelps. “We’d have heard about it.”

  “On that pap-dispenser?” said Montag, jerking his thumb at the TV. “On that censoring machine?”

  “You’re lying,” said Mrs. Phelps.

  He drew a paper from his pocket, shaking with irritation.

  “What’s that?” Mrs. Masterson squinted.

  “A poem from a book, I want you to hear it.”

  “I don’t like poetry.”

  “Have you ever heard any?”

  “I detest it.”

  Mildred jumped up, but Montag said, “Sit down.” The women all lit cigarettes nervously, twisting their mouths, their nicotined hands gesturing in the smoky air. “Well, go on,” said Mrs. Masterson, impatiently “Let’s get this junk over with.”

  Mrs. Phelps was squealing. “This is illegal, isn’t it? I’m afraid. I’m going home.”

  “Sit down, we’ll talk about that later.” He cleared his throat. The room was quiet. He glanced up and the women were all looking with expectation at the television set, as if looking would turn it back on.

  “Listen,” he said. “This is a poem by Matthew Arnold, titled ‘Dover Beach.’” He waited. He wanted very much to speak it right, and he was afraid that he might stumble. He read:

  “The sea is calm tonight.

  The tide is full, the moon lies fair

  Upon the straits—on the French coast the light

  Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,

  Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.

  Come to the window, sweet in the night air!

  Only, from the long line of spray

  Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land

  Listen! You hear the grating roar

  Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,

  At their return, up the high strand,

  Begin, and cease, and then again begin,

  With tremulous cadence slow, and bring

  The eternal note of sadness in.

  “Sophocles long ago

  Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought

  Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow

  Of human misery; we

  Find also in the sound a thought,

  Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

  “The Sea of Faith

  Was once, too, at full, and round earth’s shore

  Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.

  But now I only hear

  Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,

  Retreating, to the breath

  Of the night wind, down the vast edges drear

  And naked shingles of the world.

  “Ah, love, let us be true

  To one another! for the world, which seems

  To lie before us like a land of dreams,

  So various, so beautiful, so new,

  Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

  Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

  And we are here as on a darkling plain

  Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

  Where ignorant armies clash night.”

  He stopped reading.

  Mildred got up. “Can I turn on the TV now?”

  “No, god damn it, no!”

  Mildred sat down.

  Mrs. Masterson said, “I don’t get it.”

  “What was it about?” said Mrs. Phelps, her eyes frightened.

  “Don’t you see the beauty?” asked Montag, much too loudly.

  “Hardly worth getting excited about,” said Mrs. Masterson.

  “That’s just it. Because it is such a little thing, it’s big. We don’t have time for poetry or anything anymore. We don’t like rain. We seed clouds to make it rain away from our cities. On Christmas we dump the snow
in the sea. Trees are trouble, rip them out! Grass needs cutting, pour cement over it! We can’t be troubled to live anymore.”

  “Mr. Montag,” said Mrs. Masterson. “It’s only because you’re a fireman that we haven’t turned you in for reading this to us tonight. This is illegal. But it’s silly. The poem was silly.”

  “Of course, because you can’t plug it in anywhere, it isn’t practical.”

  “Ladies, let’s get out of here.”

  “We don’t want to get caught here with him and his poem,” said Mrs. Phelps, running.

  “Don’t,” said Mildred.

  Not speaking, the ladies ran. The door slammed.

  “Go home and plug in your blankets and fry!” yelled Montag. “Go home and think of your first husband, Mrs. Masterson, in the insane asylum, and you Mrs. Phelps of Mr. Phelps jumping off a building!”

  The house was quiet.

  He went to the bedroom where Mildred had locked herself in the bath. He heard the water running. He heard her shaking the sleeping tablets out into her hand.

  He walked out of the house, slamming the door.

  “THANK YOU, MONTAG.” Mr. Leahy took the copy of Shakespeare and without even looking at it, tore it slowly apart and threw it into a wall slot. “Now, let’s have a game of blackjack and forget all about it, Montag. Glad to see you’re back.” They walked upstairs in the fire house.

  They sat and played cards.

  In Leahy’s sight, he felt the guilt of his hands. His hands were like ferrets that had done some evil deed in Leahy’s sight, and now were never at rest, were always stirring and picking and hiding in pockets, or moving out from under his alcohol-flame gaze. If Leahy so much as breathed on them, Montag felt his hands might turn upon their backs and die and he might never shake them to life again, they would be frozen cold, to be buried forever in his coat-sleeves, forgotten. For these were the hands that acted on their own, that were no part of him, that snatched books, tore pages, hid paragraphs and sentences in little wads to be opened later, at home, by match-light, read, and burned. These were the hands that ran off with Shakespeare and Job and Ruth and packed them away next to his crashing heart, over the beating ribs and the hot, pouring blood of a man excited by his theft, appalled by his temerity, betrayed by ten fingers which at times he held up and looked upon as if they were covered with fresh blood. He washed the hands continually. He found it impossible to smoke, not only because of having to use his hands in front of Leahy, but because the drifting cigarette clouds made him think of the old man and the old woman and the fire that he and these others had set with their brass machines.