Hello meesh, and welcome!
I haven't read
Fahrenheit 451, what I know about it is through Francois Truffaut's movie.
In 1953, in Bradbury's utopia the suppression of knowledge could only be done by destroying books. This is still done selectively in many places of course, but they now have to fight on several fronts, such as controlling the internet in China, trying to control pictures citizens make with cell phones and then smuggle out from Burma.
Just out of interest, I sometimes check on particular books that are forbidden in the West. "Mein Kampf", by Adolf Hitler, is supposedly forbidden in Germany, but can be bought on amazon in France and the US. In Germany, you can buy books studying "Mein Kampf", with extracts and comments.
Still, in the West, as far as I know, when a book is forbidden it means the author and the publisher are not allowed to sell it anymore, but selling used copies on e- bay or buying a copy if you can find one is not illegal.
There was a controversy in France in 1982 when a book about suicide by Claude Guillon and Yves Le Bonniec (
Suicide, Mode d'emploi) was found to be "promoting death" and was forbidden. Yet, thousands of copies had been sold and the book had been translated into 5 languages by the time the Court Order took effect. This really made an impression at the time, and used copies of the book now sell for Euro 200 or 300.
Twenty years later, the auhor published a second book which is about the controversy concerning the first one. There is nothing in it to worry the powers that be anywhere, but they still made some references to concrete information, quotations from the first book, which are again censored. So I read a book that had just been published in France with frequent
occurences of: " [xxxxxxxxxx] (censored)".
I must say this made me feel uneasy, and the situation was a first in my reading experience.
From what I read in the second book and from other reports, the authors discussed suicide from many points of view and were giving info, not urging suicide. My analysis as to why the book sold so well is that anything relating to suicide is repressed in societies like France that
1- have had a very long Catholic tradition
2- have a tradition of anything relating to the combination of ethics+ medicine being firmly in the hands of authorized persons, ie physicians and people in authority.
I think the book sold because it had a catchy title (which was a mistake and gave a wrong impression, in my opinion).*
I suspect that the fact that the book sold so quickly ( which had so alarmed the authorities) was that many people expected the book to be banned, so hurried while they still had a chance to decide for themselves what they thought of this book.
The only point about which I agreed with the authorities (and this a very important point indeed), was the problem of teenagers. Many teens aged 15 to 18 try to commit suicide, and here I entirely agree that they should not be able to buy this book.
In 1982 there was no internet in France, so the problem was bookshops.
Ideally, if there was a way of restricting books to over 18s, that's what I would have chosen.
If the authorities had explained that this could not be done, so they would just have to ban the book for everybody, I would have understood.
But I didn't like their stance that they knew what was best for adult citizens and would decide for us.
* Since I hate being told what I'm allowed and not allowed to know, I later found a book on amazon which covered some of the ground, though from a different perspective and seemed to have been published much more dicreetely:
Final exit, by Derek Humphry.
Even so, the books contained many warnings that it was not about this, not about that, not meant for some categories of people, so there was obviously a fear that he might be sued.
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Meesh, we are going to discuss
A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini. Do you know about this book?