Fahrenheit 451, fifty years after 
publish, Germana Moec in the translation of the interview which follows the novel by Ray Bradbury for the fiftieth anniversary edition of the book. DR : This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Fahrenheit 451. He realized, writing the novel, to give life to something special? O the reaction of the players by surprise?
RB: The reaction came in a period of fifty years and I have made the flow very slowly. Ballantine published the novel in hardcover and in paperback the same day in October 1953, I think the first one sold about 5,000 copies. There were some reviews but not many, some reaction from American authors, very positive, but then I realized that I had done something that would last so long. The paperback edition sold about 50,000 copies a year, which is more than 5,000, but it is still a bestseller.
DR : When he began to realize that the book would have potential for keeping in time to become a classic in every respect?
RB: In the last two years, the interest in various cities where mayors and libraries were organized reading programs for the general population. That's when it hit me.
DR : must have had a remarkable confirmation of the enormous popularity of the book when it came out of Truffaut in 1966 ....
RB: The film was a bonus double-sided. Did not adhere fully to the novel as it should. It 's a good movie, has a wonderful final has a great soundtrack by Bernard Hermann, who wrote beautiful music. Oskar Werner is splendid in the title role. But Truffaut was wrong to award to Julie Christie in the same film two roles: This has confused the public. addition, he has eliminated some characters: Clarisse McClellan, Faber, the philosopher and the Mechanical Hound, but you can not do without them!
DR : I remember I was very disappointed not to see the Mechanical Hound.
RB: They're thinking a new version for next year: Mel Gibson to produce and Frank Darabont will direct it. Darabont has turned The Shawshank Redemption (The Shawshank Redemption). E 'an excellent director, very nice and I look forward to his trial.
DR : too. Do you know who it will be the star?
RB: It 's too early to tell.
DR: Fahrenheit 451 not was originally published in the magazine "Playboy"?
JR: No, it was published in Galaxy magazine as "The Fireman" (The fireman) in February 1950 in short form, about 25,000 words . Ballantine then asked me to add other 25,000 words, which I did. Finally, in late summer of 1953, Playboy turned to me. They had no money, were just beginning and asked me if I had something to sell for $ 400 to start the publications, so I sold Fahrenheit 451 for 400 dollars and released in the second, third and fourth issue of the magazine.
DR: would have had to pay at least $ 451!
RB: ( laughs) Yeah!
DR : Like many people, I read Fahrenheit 451 for the first time in school. Rereading it last week, I was struck what coincides his imaginary future with the reality, of course most of Orwell's novel 1984 that is often compared to Fahrenheit 451. I think that book no longer has a prophetic value, instead his novel conserved.
RB: Orwell wrote of communism, his disillusionment with communism in Russia and as did the communists in Spain. His novel was a reaction to those political situations, and I was interested in a reality that went beyond the political situation. I was interested in aspects of the social situation: the impact of TV and radio and lack of education. I could predict the arrival of more teachers who are not taught to read, taught less and less there would be no need of books.
DR: E 'social just that element that seems to me the more prophetic now, and not only because of the spread of of TV reality show , the omnipresence of the Internet , but also because of the similarity between the situation of the United States in Fahrenheit 451 and the country today, and indeed this is the political aspect. In the novel, the United States are involved in a war vaguely defined. Fighter planes continue to fly across the sky in formation. The rest of the world hates us and we can not understand why. In the opinion of some, this is exactly what describes the current situation as an endless war against terrorism and armed conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, this despite the protests around the world. Do not you think that maybe the country is approaching the America of her novel which she described fifty years ago?
RB: No way. The main problem is education, not politics. The teachers of our country must be prepared to teach reading and writing in kindergarten and first grade. When children are in second grade, should be able to read and write well, as has happened to other generations. I was in first grade in 1926 and my teachers were all poor, their salary was $ 800 a year, but their students could read and write perfectly at the end of first grade. This has nothing to do with the government. And 'the education system that must be corrected.
DR: Even now the teachers do not earn much ...
RB: The money does not matter at all, depends on how much you love or do not love what you're doing ... Look, I've written for years and I was not paid . It 'been my passion that has supported me all these years. I sold newspapers on street corners and when it was twenty-two earning $ 10 a week. When I started making $ 20 a week selling stories, I stopped selling newspapers .. Either you love what you do or you're not in love.
DR: What people sometimes forget to Fahrenheit 451 is that it is the government that began to burn the books - and 'the common people who stop to read and moves away from the habit of thought and reflection that encourages reading. When the government began to actively censor information, most people do not bat an eyelid. How important is reading to the health of a democracy like ours?
RB: Imagine that there is an earthquake tomorrow in any college town. If at the end of the earthquake could be just two buildings, which should be to rebuild what was lost? The first should be the hospital, because you need to help people survive, to heal wounds and diseases. The other building would be the library. In it is contained all the rest. People could go to the library and get all the books of literature or economics or politics or social engineering they need and take them out on the lawn, sit down and read. Reading is the center of our lives. The library is our brain. Library would not exist without civilization.
DR: What believed to be the most dangerous form of censorship today?
RB: There are too many groups that they can no censorship groups, Catholics, Protestants and Jews, Democrats and Republicans, the movements for women's liberation, the lesbians and gay men and bisexuals, young and old ... We look at each other and so there is no room for censorship. The main problem is the TV idiot. If you watch local news, the Your head turns to mush.
DR: It seems there has been a decline in journalistic standards of objectivity, just to put it mildly.
RB: not just a question of substance, is also a matter of style. The whole problem of TV and film today is summed up in the movie Moulin Rouge . E 'release a few years ago and won a lot of awards. It 'made of 4,560 half-second shots and the car shooting never stops, and so clear your mind, you can not bomb when you think that way. The TV commercial average of sixty seconds is made one hundred and twenty shots of half a second or third of a second. Bombard people with feelings as a substitute for thought.
DR: She has planned everything in the fifties. I mean that the people of Fahrenheit 451 is connected to a double thread wall-screen ...
RB: course.
DR: C os'altro invented to create the world's future Fahrenheit 451?
RB: It's hard to say. I wrote the book because I love to write. All my stories are written in impulses of passion, so it's hard to go back and retrieve all the aspects that have been involved, but I remember when I was a child, I had about twelve years, when the local newspaper were published scripts for radio dramas that were broadcast with pauses, so that could be play the role of a character while you listen. This I delivered in the future of 451.
DR: In the afterword to Fahrenheit 451 she writes that the characters Montag, Beatty, and Clarissa continued to talk long after the book was finished. His characters always come back to life in this way ... and they are always so insistent?
RB: Yes, oh yes. I give them just a stage and let me speak. I failed all my stories are told by the characters. Am I not that I write, they write me.
DR: writes the plots of his stories in advance?
RB: No, no, no. I live my stories.
DR: I remember once heard a writer talk about his characters. He said you're the boss and that they were his puppets. Said that they were exactly where she told them to go and did what you instructed them to do ...
RB: You can not do, is bad writing. They are the ones who write, who control that plot for me. I never check, so let them have their lives.
DR: But it is worrying that over-confidence?
RB: No, it's a great fun. I love my characters. I have confidence.
DR: Many people wondered what happens to Montag after the novel is finished. She suggests some ideas for his life after the nuclear conflagration that destroyed the city and probably much of the country. Have you ever thought about writing a sequel?
RB: No, I always leave my characters who are to decide themselves where their history. I wrote a play and a musical by Fahrenheit 451 that deepen a bit 'more than a few looks, but the ending is always in the civilization that comes back to life in the memory of the man-book.
DR: And if Montag said, "Mr. Bradbury, my story is not over. Should write a sequel?
RB: I think it could happen but not often. Now I'm writing a sequel to Dandelion Wine , forty years later, but the damn book I am writing for forty years. do not know if will ever come to an end.
DR: Why do some things take so long?
RB: Who knows? My secret is not me I say.
DR: He wrote stories that won awards in almost all genres: tales of mystery, science fiction, fantasy, horror, not to mention film and television. Prefer a particular genre or type of writing?
RB: I love everything. I love to write essays. I have written a new book of poetry ponderous, They Have Not Seen the stars, (They did not see the stars) come out six months ago. I love writing comedy at the end of the month I wrote three new plays that are given here in Los Angeles, and other later this year.
DR: Which of his books, stories and characters are closest to his heart?
RB: Everyone. They are all my children. When you love someone, you behave toward him with great affection.
DR: Even with a character like Beatty, who in many ways is the evil 451 ?
RB: course. Must understand how Beatty has become an arsonist books. He has a story. He was a player, but after the various crises - his mother died of cancer, his father committed suicide, her love affairs went to pieces - but when he opened the books, they were empty, could not help him so he took the books and they burned.
DR: may seem a strange question, but I do seriously, after all, she is described as a magician! I believe there is magic in the world?
RB: depends on what you mean by the world.
DR: Well, what do you mean?
RB: Through my love of words and my love of ideas and metaphors, I can convince her of the most incredible things. This is a magician. Can make an elephant disappear from the stage. Can I get rid of or see a world in a story, or make you fall in love with dinosaurs that headlights. This is magic.
DR: One of the constant of his work over the years has been given to the relief of her things and ordinary people to form or change the world ... as men do in the book Fahrenheit 451 . In his novels there is always hope for the future, but his optimism is never superficial.
RB: I think if you do your job every day, at the end of the week, or month, or year you feel good for all things you've done. It 's the reality, there is a false notion of optimism. So, if you behave well and write every day and do well at the end of the year you will feel good about yourself.
DR: There is something essentially American in its attitude towards work? She believes an American writer?
RB: I do not like labels like that. I have been influenced by any Irish writer George Bernard Shaw, Sean O 'Casey, William Butler Yeats, Oscar Wilde ... or in English, Charles Dickens. I've also been influenced by American writers of the nineteenth century who wrote metaphors: Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe. I do not believe in me there is nothing that is purely American.
DR: I immersed for hours reading the book, Bradbury: An Illustrated Life, a wonderful book ...
RB: not a book amazing?
DR: It 'really nice. In the introduction, she emphasizes the importance of images in his work, and characterizes his life as "a movement - a dance - between all these pictures." The source and meaning of these is a mystery she has tried to unravel in his writings or his writing does not approach rather than the celebration of a mystery?
RB: It 's a celebration. At the end of life's turns back and looks at what has been done. My hero was Federico Fellini, Italian director. He was a friend of mine five years ago. When I first met him, hugged me and cried, "My sister! My sister! "He lived by the saying:" Do not tell me what I am doing I do not want to know. "He never looked at his films as made them, never read newspapers. Only when he had finished shooting a movie, sat and watched what he had done. I behave the same way. Do not think I have to watch myself.
DR: Have you ever worked with Fellini?
RB: Oh, I would have liked, but it never happened.
DR: When reconsiders his career, what surprises her more?
RB: Everything! I had a great life. I was very lucky.
DR: What would still like to accomplish as a writer?
RB: I want to write a musical.
DR: still writes every day?
RB: every day for seventy years.
DR: We have asked questions for readers and teachers of his work, and we have chosen two people to ask them. I will first demand of the teacher: what to do because the boys appreciate the power of the word in a culture that is progressively dominated by images?
RB: (laughs) Give them a book, that's all. Science fiction, fantasy - my books have changed many lives. They are full of images and metaphors, but refer to intellectual concepts. Take one of my books to a boy of twelve who does not like to read, and the boy she falls in love and begin to read.
DR: What favorite books as a boy?
RB: books Oz. Tarzan and John Carter, Warlord of Mars Burroughs. Jules Verne to a certain age. Edgar Allan Poe when I was nine. And HG Wells, who was very negative, but also very exciting because when you're sixteen, you're paranoid, and HG Wells is a writer very paranoid, and also very necessary.
DR: Finally, let me ask the question by choosing one of his readers: In Fahrenheit 451, I was particularly impressed that she would include the Gospel of Luke, while the film chose not to do so.
RB: Why Luke? I do not know. I grew up in the Baptist church, and so I knew all those biblical texts, but it was not me to choose the texts, it was my subconscious.
DR: His secret I was talking about earlier.
RB: Yes, you have to believe in that self writer or you would not be doing what you do.
English Translation of Germana Moec .
Germana A few days ago, commenting on his translation of the interview with Ray Bradbury which we spoke last reading group (found below ), said with the passion that we learned to know and love: "I had a great time! Whenever there are texts to be translated, call me." Unfortunately you can not: our Germana Germana Moec, enthusiastic and almost-octogenarian argutissima girl, teacher's books and life, has proved once more unpredictable and has left us this morning at dawn. She left without notice, and all of us that monteverdelegge we have loved and that we have admired for his intelligence and his maverick spirit, we know that is only now beginning to fail, and that will be missed more and more over time. 
