I'm glad it resonates. I'll write more about Berman's concept of the monastic option in near-future posts.
Regarding the movie, yes, Truffaut's take on F451 is something like mandatory viewing. It's flawed, somewhat stilted in places (it was Truffaut's only English-language film, a fact that's sometimes cited as the reason for its intermittent stiffness), and utterly brilliant, moving, and hypnotic. The final sequence among the book people is perfection, as are the scenes of book burning and the scenes showing the dystopian degradation of wall-to-wall television. It also has a now-classic musical score by Bernard Herrmann, which is a factor that makes any film worth watching.
I recently stumbled across my favorite thing anybody ever said about the movie, a witty quip from Bradbury himself in a 1983 interview: "It's a very touching, haunting, sad, strange movie about a man who falls in love with books instead of with Julie Christie."
What a wonderful quote. To fall in love with books rather than Julie Christie is a monastic path indeed. I will always see her as the luminous Lara in Doctor Zhivago.
The idea of preserving some important and meaningful aspect of humanity really resonates. The idea of being comfortable with being unimportant or invisible resonates as well, but is endlessly challenging for me. Perhaps my Buddhist studies have prepared me for the idea of releasing ego and identity. And yet, after years of practice, I still struggle with this. On one hand, to do so seems like it would be a great relief. Such a blessed freedom. But on the other hand, it feels like the letting go of some innate human drive.
If you could write more about the monastic option I would greatly appreciate it.
I'll indeed say more about the monastic option in a few near-future posts.
The inner attitudinal conflict you describe, in which the desire to release the ego comes up against a feeling (egoic in itself) that this constitutes a terribly sad or even disastrous loss, is one I'm intimately familiar with. You might find a point of resonant contact in an interview that I conducted some years ago with Quentin S. Crisp, the British writer of weird and fantastic fiction. The title is "I Have a Buddhist Voice in My Head." Quentin spoke at some length about what he called the tension between "fascination and liberation." I've always found this an incisively wonderful way to to phrase it:
This is fascinating. I look forward to learning more about this. And clearly, i must now watch the movie.
I'm glad it resonates. I'll write more about Berman's concept of the monastic option in near-future posts.
Regarding the movie, yes, Truffaut's take on F451 is something like mandatory viewing. It's flawed, somewhat stilted in places (it was Truffaut's only English-language film, a fact that's sometimes cited as the reason for its intermittent stiffness), and utterly brilliant, moving, and hypnotic. The final sequence among the book people is perfection, as are the scenes of book burning and the scenes showing the dystopian degradation of wall-to-wall television. It also has a now-classic musical score by Bernard Herrmann, which is a factor that makes any film worth watching.
I recently stumbled across my favorite thing anybody ever said about the movie, a witty quip from Bradbury himself in a 1983 interview: "It's a very touching, haunting, sad, strange movie about a man who falls in love with books instead of with Julie Christie."
What a wonderful quote. To fall in love with books rather than Julie Christie is a monastic path indeed. I will always see her as the luminous Lara in Doctor Zhivago.
The idea of preserving some important and meaningful aspect of humanity really resonates. The idea of being comfortable with being unimportant or invisible resonates as well, but is endlessly challenging for me. Perhaps my Buddhist studies have prepared me for the idea of releasing ego and identity. And yet, after years of practice, I still struggle with this. On one hand, to do so seems like it would be a great relief. Such a blessed freedom. But on the other hand, it feels like the letting go of some innate human drive.
If you could write more about the monastic option I would greatly appreciate it.
I'll indeed say more about the monastic option in a few near-future posts.
The inner attitudinal conflict you describe, in which the desire to release the ego comes up against a feeling (egoic in itself) that this constitutes a terribly sad or even disastrous loss, is one I'm intimately familiar with. You might find a point of resonant contact in an interview that I conducted some years ago with Quentin S. Crisp, the British writer of weird and fantastic fiction. The title is "I Have a Buddhist Voice in My Head." Quentin spoke at some length about what he called the tension between "fascination and liberation." I've always found this an incisively wonderful way to to phrase it:
https://www.teemingbrain.com/interviews/interview-with-quentin-s-crisp/