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Beatty puffed his pipe. "Every fireman, sooner or later, hits this. They only need understanding,
to know how the wheels run. Need to know the history of our profession. They don't feed it to
rookies like they used to. Damn shame." Puff. "Only fire chiefs remember it now." Puff. "I'll let
you in on it."
Mildred fidgeted.
Beatty took a full minute to settle himself in and think back for what he wanted to say.
"When did it all start, you ask, this job of ours, how did it come about, where, when? Well, I'd
say it really got started around about a thing called the Civil War. Even though our rule-book
claims it was founded earlier. The fact is we didn't get along well until photography came into its
own. Then--motion pictures in the early twentieth century. Radio. Television. Things began to
have mass."
Montag sat in bed, not moving.
"And because they had mass, they became simpler," said Beatty. "Once, books appealed to a few
people, here, there, everywhere. They could afford to be different. The world was roomy. But
then the world got full of eyes and elbows and mouths. Double, triple, quadruple population.
Films and radios, magazines, books levelled down to a sort of paste pudding norm, do you
follow me?"
"I think so."
Beatty peered at the smoke pattern he had put out on the air. "Picture it. Nineteenth-century man
with his horses, dogs, carts, slow motion. Then, in the twentieth century, speed up your camera.
Books cut shorter. Condensations, Digests. Tabloids. Everything boils down to the gag, the snap
ending."
"Snap ending." Mildred nodded.
"Classics cut to fit fifteen-minute radio shows, then cut again to fill a two-minute book column,
winding up at last as a ten- or twelve-line dictionary resume. I exaggerate, of course. The
dictionaries were for reference. But many were those whose sole knowledge of Hamlet (you
know the title certainly, Montag; it is probably only a faint rumour of a title to you, Mrs.
Montag) whose sole knowledge, as I say, of Hamlet was a one-page digest in a book that
claimed: 'now at least you can read all the classics; keep up with your neighbours.' Do you see?
Out of the nursery into the college and back to the nursery; there's your intellectual pattern for
the past five centuries or more."
Mildred arose and began to move around the room, picking things up and putting them down.
Beatty ignored her and continued
"Speed up the film, Montag, quick. Click? Pic? Look, Eye, Now, Flick, Here, There, Swift, Pace,
Up, Down, In, Out, Why, How, Who, What, Where, Eh? Uh! Bang! Smack! Wallop, Bing,
Bong, Boom! Digest-digests, digest-digest-digests. Politics? One column, two sentences, a
headline! Then, in mid-air, all vanishes! Whirl man's mind around about so fast under the
pumping hands of publishers, exploiters, broadcasters, that the centrifuge flings off all
unnecessary, time-wasting thought!"
Mildred smoothed the bedclothes. Montag felt his heart jump and jump again as she patted his
pillow. Right now she was pulling at his shoulder to try to get him to move so she could take the
pillow out and fix it nicely and put it back. And perhaps cry out and stare or simply reach down
her hand and say, "What's this?" and hold up the hidden book with touching innocence.
"School is shortened, discipline relaxed, philosophies, histories, languages dropped, English and
spelling gradually neglected, finally almost completely ignored. Life is immediate, the job
counts, pleasure lies all about after work. Why learn anything save pressing buttons, pulling
switches, fitting nuts and bolts?"
"Let me fix your pillow," said Mildred.
"No! " whispered Montag,
"The zipper displaces the button and a man lacks just that much time to think while dressing at.
dawn, a philosophical hour, and thus a melancholy hour."
Mildred said, "Here."
"Get away," said Montag.
"Life becomes one big pratfall, Montag; everything bang; boff, and wow!"
"Wow," said Mildred, yanking at the pillow.
"For God's sake, let me be!" cried Montag passionately.
Beatty opened his eyes wide.
Mildred's hand had frozen behind the pillow. Her fingers were tracing the book's outline and as
the shape became familiar her face looked surprised and then stunned. Her mouth opened to ask
a question . . .
"Empty the theatres save for clowns and furnish the rooms with glass walls and pretty colours
running up and down the walls like confetti or blood or sherry or sauterne. You like baseball,
don't you, Montag?"
"Baseball's a fine game."
Now Beatty was almost invisible, a voice somewhere behind a screen of smoke
"What's this?" asked Mildred, almost with delight. Montag heaved back against her arms.
"What's this here?"
"Sit down!" Montag shouted. She jumped away, her hands empty. "We're talking ! "
Beatty went on as if nothing had happened. "You like bowling, don't you, Montag?"
"Bowling, yes."
"And golf?"
"Golf is a fine game."
"Basketball?"
"A fine game.".
"Billiards, pool? Football?"
"Fine games, all of them."
"More sports for everyone, group spirit, fun, and you don't have to think, eh? Organize and
organize and superorganize super-super sports. More cartoons in books. More pictures. The mind
drinks less and less. Impatience. Highways full of crowds going somewhere, somewhere,
somewhere, nowhere. The gasoline refugee. Towns turn into motels, people in nomadic surges
from place to place, following the moon tides, living tonight in the room where you slept this
noon and I the night before."
Mildred went out of the room and slammed the door. The parlour "aunts" began to laugh at the
parlour "uncles.",
"Now let's take up the minorities in our civilization, shall we? Bigger the population, the more
minorities. Don't step on the toes of the dog?lovers, the cat?lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants,
chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second?generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans,
Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico. The people in this book, this
play, this TV serial are not meant to represent any actual painters, cartographers, mechanics
anywhere. The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that! All
the minor minor minorities with their navels to be kept clean. Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock
up your typewriters. They did. Magazines became a nice blend of vanilla tapioca. Books, so the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]