Allan Appel photo
Panelists Justin Farmer and Jennifer Heikkila Díaz at Tuesday's Big Read.
Four hundred and fifty one degrees Fahrenheit is the temperature at which paper burns.
Just transpose the number and word, and it’s also the title of an influential sci-fi novel born in the era of McCarthyism.
On Tuesday, that book was the subject of a spirited, two-alarm discussion on A.I., censorship and addiction to the internet and social media, that unfolded in the community room at the Wilson Branch Library in the Hill.
The book, Ray Bradbury’s 1953 dystopian fiction Fahrenheit 451, is this year’s focal point of the Big Read. That’s the collaboration promoting literacy and critical thinking citywide sponsored, now in its tenth year, by the New Haven Free Public Library and the International Festival of Arts & Ideas.
The kick-off event drew 40 people to the Wilson branch, where copies of the 60th anniversary edition were given away free to all comers. Click here and here to check out the slew of other Big Read-related events that run throughout April and May
In addition, approximately 1,000 copies of Bradbury’s novel have been purchased and distributed to libraries in New Haven, West Haven, and Hamden, and to all the schools in New Haven, said Sha McAllister, Arts & Ideas’s associate director of community impact and education.
This is a serious enough moment in political and cultural life, McAllister said. Arts & Ideas this year failed to receive the $20,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts that usually supports the Big Read. The decision was taken to find the money elsewhere to carry on the Big Read as the current big moment calls for it.
Why this novel?
“Censorship, conformity, folks’ freedom of speech and freedom to think are being attacked,” said McAllister, who moderated Tuesday’s book discussion.
Her main interlocutors were former Hamden Councilman Justin Farmer and Jennifer Heikkila Díaz, a Connecticut-based educator and teacher trainer.
Farmer, a community organizer who is studying history and politics at Southern Connecticut State University, said his big take-away from his recent reread of Fahrenheit 451 was “the constant bombardment of advertising today, people being plugged in all the time.”
NHFPL's Rory Martorana and A & I's Sha McAllister.
Montag, the lead character, is a “fireman” whose job it is to burns all found books. He “invites people over to watch the ‘wall projections,’” Farmer noted.
Sound familiar?
“Yes, we are on that road,” chimed in Heikkila Díaz, “getting away from curiosity and divergent thinking.”
“One of the scariest parallels is that book banners today are parents and caregivers. They are supposed to be the ones to open up worlds to their kids.”
She added that parents and caregivers who are challenging and banning books in schools and libraries are infringing on her rights as a parent by demanding that books are not available to all children, not just to their own.
Heikkila Díaz reported that in her rounds of the schools and conferences she encounters teachers “who are self-censoring because they have parents coming at them” to challenge books in the library or the classroom.
“We are fearless defenders of books on our shelves,” said City Librarian Maria Bernhey, who attended the kick-off.
“And we take the charge seriously that everyone has a right to read what they want. There are many bills tied to funding that are threatening this. It’s sad to see where we are, and that makes this book very timely.”
Click here to read Lucy Gellman’s Arts Paper article about Bernhey’s recent testimony in Hartford on behalf of SB 1271, a bill making its way through the Connecticut state legislature that would establish a statewide policy on the matter.
In the wide-ranging discussion that followed on Tuesday, social media and A.I. and the excessive time people, especially the young, spend on these pursuits, were the targets of the usual criticism.
Panelists, especially Heikkila Díaz, were at pains to point out a flip side: “To scroll, to become numb, to see a clip and not question what’s on either side of it, to see only what you want to see, how influencers curate your thinking … yes, those are immensely serious concerns] … But on the more positive side people can work together in organizing, to build coalitions. It’s not all negative.”
Yet to the several audience members who spoke up in the Q & A that followed, the moment appeared to be largely negative.
One young father said he is deeply fearful of what a future of “plugging in and plugging out” holds for his two young children.
He said he was recently on a subway car in New York City and clocked 23 out of 24 riders all on their phones.
“Bradbury saw a lot in the future,” he said. “What do you see ahead?”
“Scariest to me,” Farmer replied, is the rise of A.I. “So many of my college friends see it as a tool, not as a danger. I see it as losing your voice. I’m terrified of it.”
And an antidote?
Keep reading, Farmer said.
“Reading allows us to be empathetic to be in each others’ places. And we should not shy away from the tensions [of this conversation], how we’re grappling. And I’m a great believer in organizing, which is to be in community and to celebrate our wins. If you think school buildings should be blue, great. Organize around it!”
“This is the first of many conversations,” said McAllister bringing the kick-off to a close.
Among the most compelling future NHFPL and A&I Big Read events, per Sha McAllister, are:
• Wednesday, April 23, an intergenerational conversation about book bans.
• Wednesday, May 14, former probate court Judge Clifton Graves goes back to the basics, a kind of introduction to government, titled Civics 101.
• And Wednesday, May 21, public relations consultant Mercy Quaye leads a discussion called “Sensation v. Thinking.”
All three of these unfold at the Stetson Branch Library.
On June 4, at the Ives Main Branch Library, there’s a screening of the film adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, a 1966 British production directed by a young Francois Truffaut.