DelRey: It's that social element that seems the most prescient to me now. Not just because of the popularity of reality TV, the ubiquity of the Internet, but also--and actually, this does seem political--because the similarity between the situation of the United States in Fahrenheit 451 and the country today. In the book, the U.S. is involved in an ongoing, nebulously defined war. Combat jets are forever streaking overhead. The rest of the world hates us, and we can't understand why.[That's not in the book. -Sol] To some people, this describes the current situation exactly, with an open-ended war against terrorism and armed conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq, the latter in the face of widespread protests. Do you think the country is moving closer to the fictional America you wrote about fifty years ago?

Ray Bradbury: Not for a moment. The main problem is education, not politics. The teachers of our country have to be taught to start teaching reading and writing in kindergarten and first grade. By the time children go to the second grade, they should know how to read and write completely, as was the case in other generations. I was in the first grade in 1926, and my teachers were all poor: they made eight hundred dollars a year, but they taught reading and writing completely by the end of the first grade. The government has nothing to do with that. The educational system needs to be corrected.

DR: Teachers still don't make much money--

RB: It has nothing to do with pay. Either you love what you're doing or...Look, I wrote for years, and I wasn't paid. My love carried me through all those years. I sold newspapers on the street corner. When I was twenty-two, I was making ten dollars a week. When I started making twenty dollars a week from selling stories, I stopped selling newspapers. You're either in love with what you do, or you're not in love.

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DR: What forms of censorship do you regard as the most dangerous today?

RB: There are none in our country. We have too many groups for censorship to be possible. We have Catholics and Jews and Protestants, and Republicans and Democrats, and women's libbers, and lesbians and homosexuals and bisexuals, and young and old...We're all watching each other, so there's no chance for censorship. The main problem is the idiot TV. If you watch local news, your head will turn to mush.

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DR: Why did you choose the literature to be remembered by the book people in Fahrenheit 451? I was particularly struck that you included the gospel of Luke to be remembered, whereas the movie chose not to do so.[I have not seen the movie. -Sol]

RB: Why Luke? I don't know. I was raised in the Baptist church, and so I knew all those Biblical texts. And, of course, the other ones in the book, too. But I didn't really choose them. My subconscious picked for me.

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