My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I can't believe I waited until I was 31 to read this. Then again, maybe I wouldn't have appreciated it as much as I did. Below were some quotes I saved and annotated:
"Now let’s take up the minorities in our civilization, shall we? Bigger the population, the more minorities. Don’t step on the toes of the dog-lovers, the cat-lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico. The people in this book, this play, this TV serial are not meant to represent any actual painters, cartographers, mechanics anywhere. The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that!" –Beatty, toward the end of “The Hearth and the Salamander”
Judging from the other “minorities” Bradbury put in this list, I doubt the inclusion of Mormons was much more than arbitrary. Still, I find it kind of funny, because, as a white male Mormon, I doubt that throwing my name out there as a minority would win much sympathy. If anything, it’s Mormons that some minorities feel threatened by, and whose perspective no book, play, or TV serial is worried about representing correctly.
