The Fireman Read Online Free Page A

the Civil War, I'd say. Photography discovered. Fast printing presses coming up. Films at the early part of the 20th Century. Radio. Television. Things began to have mass, Montag, mass."
     
    "I see."
     
    "And because they had mass, they became simpler. Books, now. Once they appealed to various small groups of people, here and there. They could afford to be different. The world was roomy. But then the world got full of mass and elbows. Films and radios and magazines and books had to level down to a sort of paste-pudding norm. Do you follow me?"
     
    "I think so."
     
    Leahy looked through a veil of smoke, not at Montag, but at the thing he was describing. "Picture it. The 19th Century man with his horses, dogs, and slow living. You might call him a slow motion man. Then in the 20th Century you speed up the camera."
     
    "A good analogy."
     
    "Splendid. Books get shorter. Condensations appear. Digests. Tabloids. Radio programs simplify. Everything sublimates itself to the gag, the snap ending."
     
    "Snap ending." Mildred nodded approvingly. "You should have heard last night — "
     
    "Great classics are cut to fit fifteen minute shows, then two minute book columns, then two line digest resumes. Magazines become picture books. Out of the nursery to the college, back to the nursery, in a few short centuries!"
     
    MILDRED arose. She was losing the thread of the talk, Montag knew, and when this happened she began to fiddle with things. She went about the room, picking up.
     
    "Faster and faster the film, Mr. Montag! Quick, Click, Pic, Look. Eye, Now! Flick, Flash, Here, There, Swift, Up, Down, Why, How, Who, Eh? Mr. Montag, digest-digests, political affairs in one column, a sentence, a headline, and then, in mid-air, vanish! The mind of man, whirling so fast under the pumping hands of publishers, publicists, ad men, broadcasters that the centrifuge throws off all ideas! He is unable to concentrate!"
     
    Mildred was smoothing the bed now. Montag felt panic as she approached his pillow to straighten it. In a moment, with sublime innocence, she would be pulling the hidden book out from behind the pillow and displaying it as if it were a reptile!
     
    Leahy blew a cumulus of cigar smoke at the ceiling. "School is shortened, discipline relaxed, philosophies, histories, languages dropped, English and spelling neglected, finally ignored. Life is immediate. The job counts. Why learn anything save pressing buttons, pulling switches, fitting bolts?"
     
    "Let me fix your pillow," said Mildred, being the video housewife.
     
    "No," whispered Montag.
     
    "The zipper replaces the button. Does a man have time to think while dressing in the morning, a philosophical time?"
     
    "No," said Montag, automatically.
     
    Mildred tugged at the pillow.
     
    "Get away," said Montag.
     
    "Life becomes one big Prat Fall, Mr. Montag. No more subtleties. Everything is bang and boff and wow!"
     
    "Wow," reflected Mildred, yanking the pillow edge.
     
    "For God's sake, let me be!" cried Montag, passionately.
     
    Leahy stared.
     
    Mildred's hand was frozen behind the pillow. Her hand was on the book, her face stunned, her mouth opening to ask a question...
     
    "Theaters stand empty, Mr. Montag, replaced by television and baseball and sports where nobody has to think at all, not at all, at all." Now Leahy was almost invisible, a voice somewhere back of a choking screen of cigar smoke.
     
    "What's this?" asked Mildred, with delight, almost. Montag crushed and heaved back against her hands. "What've you hid there?"
     
    "Sit down!" Montag screamed. She jumped back, her hands empty. "We're talking!"
     
    LEAHY continued, mildly. "Cartoons everywhere. Books become cartoons. The mind drinks less and less. Impatience. Time to kill. No work, all leisure. Highways full of crowds going somewhere, anywhere, nowhere. The gasoline refugee, towns becoming motels, people in nomadic surges from city to city, impatient, following the moon tides, living tonight in