Welcome to Club 451

Introduction

Club 451 is a different sort of book club. You are invited to be part of a different way to think about books.

In Ray Bradbury's book Fahrenheit 451 he describes a future world where owning or reading a book is illegal. In this fictional society all books are banned and burned. Only those who are outside society cherish books for their wisdom. The rest of society fears them.

Each of these outsiders holds within them a book and the wisdom it contains for a later day. A later day when someone will listen and when the world wants to know again.

In the foothills at night these brave souls come together to share what they have read. Together they are a whole library of great thought.

Club 451 is created in the image of Ray Bradbury's fictional world.

The Idea

In most book clubs everyone reads the same book and shares their views and thoughts about that book.

This may be about whether we like it or not. It may be about whether we like the way it is written. It may be whether we associate with the characters. We like books that challenge us. We also like those that affirm our view. And those views may be different.

What seems important is not the views of the author, but our views of the author.

At Club 451 one person reads the book. They become the book.

Its wisdom, a true account, is held - just for one evening - by them. All others come to listen - and to discuss what they have heard about what the book actually says - with an open mind.

"Would you like, some day, Montag, to read Plato's Republic?"

'Of Course!'

'I am Plato's Republic.'

'Like to read Marcus Aurelius?'

'Mr Simmons is Marcus'

'How do you do?' said Mr Simmons

'Hello' said Montag.

- Fahrenheit 451

When we come together at Club 451 instead of being one book, we are together a library of all the books we have ever read.

The Format

Each month a small group making up our Club 451 gets together. One person has nominated at the previous month's meeting to be the book for that evening.

They host the evening, organize the venue, welcome everyone and make sure all are comfortable. We take it in turns to do this. Everyone gets to be a book.

The format respects the work. The host begins simply by reciting the book's author, title, the dedication in the front of the book (if any) and then reads aloud the first page (or so). This gives all those present a feel for the author's voice.

The host then informally describes the book in its entirety, being true to the author's text, quoting where necessary, without comment if possible.

When the host has described the book, the host opens the forum up for discussion. The rest gathered then question the reader about the book and its content, not for their views of what was said - but what the author said.

When the idea of the book is understood by all, the host may then share their views on what the book is saying to them and others share their views of what the essence of the book described says to them.

The conversation should eventually drift away from the book itself and conclude with what the book holds that is valuable to our society in the future.

The Club 451 gathering informally concludes when the conversation suggests another book that all would like to have read (but may not have had the time to). Someone offers to be that book for the next month ... and so on.

The Reason

There are millions of books to read in a lifetime. How will you get time to read them all? The knowledge we hold, we need to collectively share, for it is this knowledge that builds societies. It is the knowledge we are losing.

Ray Bradbury's world of the future in 1953 has many likenesses to our world of the present. TV walls entrance those who stay inside hiding from 'the pores of the face of life'. Prescription drugs dull the pain of the live coverage of local and distant events provided as reality info-tainment shows. Welcomed home by the virtual 'family', there is no reason to experience the 'real' world.

"You can't argue with the four-wall Televisor.

The Televisor is real. It is immediate, it has dimension. It tells you what to think and blasts it in.

It must be right. It seems so right.

It rushes so quickly to its conclusions your mind hasn't time to protest.

It is an environment as real as the world. It becomes and is the truth. "

- Fahrenheit 451

In this fictional world of instantly transmitted mass reality and ratings journalism wisdom, there is no room for books and thinking.

This fictional society has stopped being able to find the knowledge in books, finding instead only their own fiction. Somewhere along the line they lost the ability to truly read and hear the author - and as a result they lost the books they already had.

As Bradbury's character says of his world (prophetically for our world):

"The whole culture's shot through. The skeleton needs melting and re-shaping.

Good God, it isn't as simple as as just picking up a book you laid down half a century ago.

Remember, the Firemen are rarely necessary. The public itself stopped reading of its own accord."

- Fahrenheit 451

The Three Things

Ray Bradbury's character Faber answers the question 'Why books?' and goes on to tell us what is missing from his society:

"Three things are missing...

Number one, as I said, quality of information. Number two: leisure to digest it.

And Number three: the right to carry out actions based on what we learn from the interaction of the first two."

- Fahrenheit 451

Club 451 brings these missing parts together.

The Three Perspectives

Club 451 also introduces an integral-postmetaphysics praxis to bookclubs.

The name refers also to the process of bringing to the discussion three different perspectives in sequence, being:

4th person perspective ~ personally appreciating the view by the author expressed in his or her own work;

5th person perspective ~ collectively discerning a situated perspective on the various perspectives of the author of the work;

1st person perspective ~ each member integrating a personal perspective on the work perceived.

In this way, each book is viewed from at least three perspectives, expanding our appreciation and providing for the potential for integration of the wider span of views of those present (as well as those presenting).

The Invitation

You are invited to join Club 451 and form your own group.

Here are the books we have already become.

First Meeting: 15 June 2005

		Normal Breath by Artour Rakhimov

''Books were only one type of receptacle where we stored lots of things we were afraid we might forget. There is nothing magical in them at all. The magic is only in what the books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us."

- Fahrenheit 451