As part of a lazy Sunday while I’m doing chores and focusing my time and writing effort on the book, I thought this would be a fun way to give you something to think about and to participate in if you so desired.  This is called the Fahrenheit 451 meme (or whatever).

Here’s how it works.  In Ray Bradbury’s classic, we are subjected to a future where society has gone terribly astray.  Books are banned as seditious catalysts.  Firemen no longer put out fires; instead, they’re responsible for burning books when they’re discovered.  People are arrested for owning books—except one, “The Firefighters Manual.”  Fahrenheit 451 portrays a society where happiness is the ultimate goal, but for the people living under such tyranny, that equates to nothing more than the appearance of happiness.  Nevertheless, it remains the highest goal.  Because trivial information is considered diversionary and good while ideas and true knowledge are considered bad, all books are burned (save the one previously identified).  Hence the name of the book; paper burns at 451° Fahrenheit.

In the book, one fireman, Montag, has a crisis of faith and begins hiding books in his home despite continuing to struggle with his job of burning books.  His wife finds out and turns him in, at which point he escapes to avoid arrest.  He then joins a band of scholars who are outlaws because they memorize books hoping to pass on literary wisdom to a future that will someday need it.

So here’s the meme idea: Assuming you are one of the criminal scholars memorizing books, what is the one book you would want to memorize so that it can be passed to future generations?

Here’s my answer: While at first it might seem logical to immediately think of memorizing Hamlet, Origin of Species, Animal Farm, 1984, Ulysses, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great Gatsby, Ubik, The Homeric Hymns, or any of a vast number of great novels and works without which our collective literary intellect would be harmed, I never wavered in my own answer as to what I would commit to memory.

I would memorize Fahrenheit 451.

Most critical of all considerations is that future generations would need to know why the books were memorized in the first place.  They must be made to understand the cataclysmic loss suffered by humanity at the hands of a wayward society indignant at the learned and suffering upon literature the flames of that anger.  I would want to convey how lost humanity had become and what injury we had suffered because of it.  It would be critical for them to understand the importance of knowledge and ideas, not just of trivia and nonsensical tidbits, and they must be made to comprehend the fullness of gift offered by free thought.  Most importantly, I think it would be absolutely essential to help a future grasping at empty libraries to see clearly why no government should ever control information or the critical thinker within each human being.  Therein lies the road to ruin, a path to mental stagnation and silent suffering.

Yes, I would memorize Fahrenheit 451.