Ray Bradbury Explains Why Literature is the Security Valve of Civilization (in Which Case We Want Extra Literature!)

Ray Brad­bury had all of it thought out. Behind his cap­ti­vat­ing works of sci­ence fic­tion, there have been sub­tle the­o­ries about what lit­er­a­ture was meant to do. The retro clip above takes you again to the Nineteen Seventies and it exhibits Brad­bury giv­ing a quite intrigu­ing tackle the position of lit­er­a­ture and artwork. For the writer of Fahren­heit 451 and The Mar­t­ian Chron­i­cles, lit­er­a­ture has greater than an aes­thet­ic pur­pose. It has an impor­tant sociological/psychoanalytic position to play. Sto­ries are a secure­ty valve. They preserve soci­ety col­lec­tive­ly, and us indi­vid­u­al­ly, from com­ing aside on the seams. Which is to say–for those who’ve been fol­low­ing the information recently–we’d like a hel­lu­va lot extra lit­er­a­ture lately. And some new Ray Brad­burys.

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