Ruminations in the Harbour Café

The problem now with this cafe is that the radio is too loud. Maybe that’s why the women talked so loudly, to hear themselves over it. I’m never satisfied. I came here to be part of life but in a situation where I don’t have to actively interact, then I complain about it. A couple of my friends have the radio or television on all the time and one has a radio in every room which, as he has a very small flat, means quadrophonic sound. If all electronic communication failed would we wilt and die? Or would we congregate in pubs and cafe’s again? Have more ceilidhs? Write letters? Drink more, fight more, commit suicide more. In short would it be better or worse?

I’ve been rereading Farenheit 451. We are surely getting closer to the society described in that novel. How many of us rely on the television to bring colour into our lives? To give us a sense of belonging? It even give us families we can feel a part of without any of the onerous responsibility a flesh-and-blood family brings. Perhaps we should be grateful for the social networking sites that bring real people in touch however superficially, instead of scoffing at them.

The range of books available to us is vast but not many titles are visible. Our menu is decided by the statistics. What sells? What does it pay to promote? Private Eye has been spotting book cover designs that mimic ones wrapping a previous success. Amazon idiotically tells us that a new author, or one we haven’t tried, is just like one we have recently bought, or who has been selling well. The Scandinavian crime novel was discovered, justifiably, but now every good, bad or indifferent Scandinavian writer is suddenly worthy of translation and promotion. How many of us still read books that we have actively chosen rather than picking up one of the shoals of new publications pushed into our faces in the supermarkets, or in train station kiosks, or the front windows of struggling bookstore chains that no longer have a backlist, or chosen for us by Amazon software on the basis of our past purchases? The ‘literary’ prizes are also, in my opinion, given to works that mine the seams of precious readership guided by what’s currently popular on TV, what’s trending. Just now the historical novel is trending, spurred by the perceived success of costume drama. Tough for me as I don’t like them.

It’s cynical and lazy of the publishers. I’d go so far as to call it unethical. But they are driven by the need for profit, or at least survival.

Down off that soap box and on to another. 

I know a couple of people who think the internet is the work of the devil (along with the New Agers!) ‘Too much information’ is their reason. It makes everyone unhappy, crazy. That’s the belief that enabled the governments of Bradbury’s world to persuade the populace to allow them to begin burning books, to appoint brigades of firemen to start fires rather than put them out, ridding society of worrying ideas. F.451 was written 50 years ago, before the World Wide Web when books were more influential, but they weren’t as influential as TV is today. It has been suggested (before the rise in tuition fees and disappearance of grants) that some pupils chose to ‘drop out’ rather than go on to higher education because the characters in the soaps so often do that in order to be kept in the storyline. There are people who can’t tell the difference between reality and screen fiction (certainly ‘reality’ TV has blurred the lines) and lead their lives as though they are a part of the soaps, emulating the behaviour, beliefs and language, of the characters they see daily. 

Books don’t do that.  Books, even novels, present ideas, the world seen through the eyes of others, but we can put them down, shout at them, argue, pick up another and find an opposing opinion. Books open our eyes to the world, they don’t close them by hypnosis. They remind us to have ideas for ourselves, to be creative, to smell the flowers, but they take more effort. We have to put more of ourselves into the reading of a book than into watching TV. With the easier alternative there to be switched on we are getting lazier. We have two hands free to eat our supper, or knit. 

Faber, the old philosopher, says to fireman Montag ‘Remember, the firemen are rarely necessary. The public itself stopped reading of its own accord.’ 

The drive to find happiness is universal amongst humans and animals alike, only differing in the form the condition necessary for happiness takes - satisfied primary needs, a full belly, warmth and safety, or more complex emotional needs like love. In the crowded over-fed societies that so many of the nations on the planet have evolved into we've arrived at a state where happiness should be a foregone conclusion, only to find that physical satisfaction isn’t enough. Though none of the women In Fahrenheit 451 realise it they are deeply depressed. They know they want something but think it’s another wall of television, another level to make the pretense more real. Nightly a non-medical team, trained only in the use of a sophisticated stomach pump, are called out to thwart suicide attempts. The fireman’s wife takes an overdose of her sleeping tablets even though her day has been ‘happily’ spent with her friends in worlds created for them and transmitted to them through the walls of their living quarters. What does this suggest? That we need misery?  That we need to make our own decisions? The interactive nature of the programs the women are offered give them the possibility of making directional changes in the stories in which they ‘live.’ Don’t we all do that to some extent? Make a story out of our lives which we add to daily. Mythologise ourselves. What's the difference between the real world and the one Montag’s wife leads in her one room, between her four walls, except that nothing really bad can happen there. War can't happen. Death can't happen. Out in their real world war is about to happen. The death of millions is about to happen, but it won’t touch these women until, entirely unconscious of its approach, they are killed by it.

What is so different between those women’s lives and mine as I sit in the car now, in a bubble of glass and metal, shielded from the wind and rain, watching the ocean unfold itself, somewhat violently, onto the beach. I can get out and feel the wind, taste the rain, but I don’t because I prefer to remain warm and dry. 

 In the dystopian world envisioned by Bradbury, advertising hoardings have to be kilometres long because the traffic goes so fast that it speeds past the short ones too quickly to see them. The countryside they drive through is never seen, because of the speed and because of the hoardings.  Montag is challenged by a young woman he meets, Clarisse McClellan. She doesn’t challenge him by upbraiding him for what he is doing. She doesn’t proselytise, she walks with him, talks to him about liking the taste of rain, shows him how a dandelion can reveal whether he loves anyone or not. She tells him firemen where once for putting out fires and protecting people, not for starting them. His certainties begin to disintegrate.

Old Faber, a philosopher, tells the increasingly distressed and confused fireman, Montag, the story of Hercules and Antǣus the giant who is invincible as long as his feet stand upon the earth. When Hercules lifts him above the earth he loses all his power and is easily defeated. Faber also says to Montag ‘Remember, the firemen are rarely necessary. The public itself stopped reading of its own accord.’

When I visit London and am bombarded by advertising both visually and audibly I think of the millions who live their lives separate from the places of peace and quiet, forced to work incessantly at numbing jobs, selling their souls to their companies. My daughter tells me that even publishers read magazines rather than books in their lunch hour. The agitated flick flick of the magazine mentality, the endless search for what is the newest toy in IT heaven, the newest title on the shelves. The restlessness of the unquiet mind.