Graphic novel version of 'Fahrenheit 451' has the right spark

"Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, The Authorized Adaptation," by Tim Hamilton. Introduction by Ray Bradbury. Hill And Wang/Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. $30 hardcover. $16.95 paperback.

We’re basically living in Ray Bradbury’s imagined world now. Even those particularly familiar with this author are acting out all the permutations of his visions.

It’s a world in which we can each other on cell phones -- or “tuning” each other out, as it were, with our ears stuffed with all manner of music playing devices.

We can connect instantaneously – or bump obliviously into each other while texting in the supermarket line, or cause accidents by texting or calling while driving a car or even a subway. (Although probably even Bradbury had a hard time anticipating the sense of entitlement that leads to such irresponsible behavior.)

Because all this is happening without authorities dumping books in bonfires, Bradbury’s novel, “Fahrenheit 451,” written in 1953, may be easy to dismiss as a bit cranky, with its dystopian landscape scorched by pyroinically-enforced censorship.

But it’s still a good time to read this novel, or – and yes, there is a bit of irony in this – a new graphic novel version.

Better still, it’s a graphic novel version illuminating a novel that has not ceased to speak quietly in its power and beauty of language, even as the devices Brabdury speculated come into every day use.

Artist and illustrator Tim Hamilton elegantly conveys the story of Montag, a firefighter whose job description consists mainly of confiscating books and other illicit reading materials and incinerating them. Occasionally, Montag encounters a resistor who prefers to die in the conflagration rather than give in.

He is reasonably content, until one day he meets an attractive, eccentric 17-year-old girl who likes to walk in the rain and muse about life. He enjoys meeting with her, albeit a bit guiltily – and then learns one day that she has died.

Another nasty shock – his wife, diligent, loyal, and demanding little more than an extra TV screen on the wall so she can pal with her TV “family”, seems a model of level-headedness—until she suffers yet another medication overdose.

Both tragedies force Montag to re-examine his career, his marriage and his society. Soon, he is hoarding some of the very tomes he’s supposed to be torching, and talking with other scofflaws who do the same.

The images in Hamilton’s drawings are rendered in stark colors that give poignant life to Montag’s world -- a world filled with stimuli but startlingly colorless. Its inhabitants are generally prosperous and well fed, but Hamilton imagines them as drawn and skeletal, as if the vitality has been evaporated from them by their lack of thought or emotional curiosity.

The pacing of Hamilton’s graphic novel version places an emphasis on the book’s action without losing Brabdury’s poetic sensitivities, infusing a contemporary zing to give it a fresh ring of truth for 21^st century readers.

And, there is nothing quaint or dated in this story from the 1950s musing about what role technology will play in the future.

Bradbury still speaks with authority, and now as ever, is the master of the fine art of story telling – and Hamilton’s graphic novel version will hopefully invite new readers to Bradbury’s original work.

Worth a second look

The impressionistic, 1966 film version of “Fahrenheit 451,” directed by Francois Truffault, is sad, lovely and at times dream-like, with poignant touches such as Montag witnessing the people around him distractedly caressing their own faces – signifying their deficit of affection and intimacy.

But the cautionary tale of a world deprived of literacy and free thought can also be conveyed in a humorous way.

For that, few films beat Woody Allen’s 1973 “Sleeper,” in which a health food store owner wakes from a 200-year cryonic sleep in an authoritarian state peopled with drug-dazed socialites, battery-operated dogs and tuxedo-clad, android butlers. Some of the 1970s references will make less sense to anyone born after this time period, but many – like the Volkswagen Beetle starting right up after sitting parked in a cave for two centuries – are universally funny.

Mike Judge’s 2006 “Idiocracy” – a cultural descendant of “Sleeper” -- imagines an era when the attack on the intellect has escalated to the point where no one can think, much less spell or read. An army librarian and a prostitute participate in a military hibernation project, and regain consciousness 500 years later when their slumber is disrupted by a massive garbage avalanche. They awake to find junk food brands, swear words and pimp monikers are popular baby names, and that attempting to puzzle out the meaning of a word provokes homophobic rage.

Check them out, and even though they will make you laugh heartily, you will still feel the inclination to hit the books.

Margaret Smith is Arts and Calendar editor at Gate House Media New England’s Northwest Unit.