The point is obvious. There
is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of
people running about
with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist / Unitarian, Irish /
Italian / Octogenarian / Zen Buddhist, Zionist/Seventh-day Adventist,
Women's Lib/Republican, Mattachine/FourSquareGospel feel it has the will,
the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse. Every dimwit
editor who sees himself as the source of all dreary blanc-mange plain
porridge unleavened literature, licks his guillotine and eyes the neck
of any author who dares to speak above a whisper or write above a nursery
rhyme.
Fire-Captain Beatty, in my
novel Fahrenheit
451, described how the books were burned first by the minorities,
each ripping a page or a paragraph from the book, then that, until
the day came when the books were empty and the minds shut and the library
closed forever.
clipped from: minx.cc