A LETTER TO RACHEL

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© December 1, 2009



REFERENCE:

Rachel is my granddaughter. We have had a close relationship since she was born. Only thirteen now, and an eighth grader, she has always been precocious what I like to think as an old spirit in a young soul.

We would often go to the Mall, the zoo, the art museum, or McDonald’s, or when she turned six, to ice skating practice.

She has always been taller than other children her age, and when she was attempting to ice skate at six, falling often on her face, picking herself up, and doing it all over again, people watching might have felt that she should be more adapt not knowing how young she was, thinking her at least the age of eight.

She is now an accomplished volleyball and soccer player on her eighth grade team, as well as an outstanding student, always at the top of her class, while physically, moving towards six feet in height. Her mother, my daughter, is six-two, and Rachel’s brother, 15, is six-five so height runs in the family.

During these excursions when she was little, she would ask me such questions that I felt compelled to write down the conversations that ensued, many of which were published in PERSONAL EXCELLENCE, a national magazine. On one occasion, she saw her name in the article but with my picture, and said, “Why is your picture here when it is all about me?” She had a point.

The short piece that follows is a mea culpa. She had started to read “Fahrenheit 451” (1953) by Ray Bradbury, a class assignment, and a book written during the “Cold War” when oppression and repression were on the rise, which she found “weird” making little sense.

I wrote her an email giving her some eleventh hour perspective on the book as the assignment was due the next day and it was already going on 9 pm. I am a high-strung guy and don’t do well when pressed, and this was such a case. As my readers know, typos and other errors are familiar company to me, but seldom errors of facts.

The final comment of this letter has to do with how I withdraw into myself when my work doesn’t go well, which makes the climate tense for others, and such was the case when Rachel shared her dilemma about this book.

* * *

A LETTER TO RACHEL

Rachel,

I'm embarrassed that you shared my quickly knocked off piece with your teacher knowing you had little time to read "Fahrenheit 451."

Now, in retrospect, I must admit to two gross errors. Burgess Meredith did not write "A Clockwork Orange," but Anthony Burgess did. Meredith is an actor and his name in my haste must have come quickly to mind.

The other error is even grosser. Ray Bradbury did not see "Fahrenheit 451" a book about censorship, but quite the contrary. He was attempting to illustrate how fragile freedom of speech and expression is, and that books are the citadel of that freedom, and should be protected at all cost, as those in power, whatever their ideology, like to manage ideas which includes what is written in books.

Bradburfy went to the far side of the idea by creating a vision of books not only banned, but also burned, and that people found reading books would be prosecuted. Taking people out of their comfort sound and widening their horizons is the function of art. Without art, we are all wound up toys in a robotic universe.

As I told you when you were a little girl, I will answer your questions as accurately as I can when you seek my assistance. I failed in this instance as I was in such a hurry to provide some perspective for you to this book.

I thought of writing this note before but thought that you would have rejected my little contribution, only because you had to read the book in a couple of hours, and then, what I love about you, registering your own reaction to the book.

It was and is an important book, but it is not wrong for you to not like it, or to find it confusing, or not worthy of the hype that it enjoys. In that sense, I'd like to share a memory of mine with you.

* * *

When I was your age, my Uncle Leonard, a professor at the University of Detroit, suggested I read, "Man, the Unknown" (1935) by Alexis Carrel.

The French physician was someone my uncle had met at an academic conference in the 1930s, a man who had won the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1912. My uncle felt the book might stretch me a little intellectually. I had no comprehension of a Nobel Laureate at the time much less the words that I read. I was thirteen.

I read it again when I was in college and was shocked at its message and amazed that it had been a runaway best seller.

Dr. Carrel advocated enforced eugenics, that is, the systematic development of an elite society of a biological aristocracy. Now, this may not make any sense to you now, as the book made little sense when I first read it at your age, but I wish my uncle had told me the book advocated the extinction of deviant human types such as the mentally ill, the retarded, the criminal, and so on. This is what Adolf Hitler and Nazism attempted to do in W.W.II.

I share this with you because I don't want you to be afraid to have your own mind about books or anything else, and I certainly don't want you to build on ideas because someone won the Nobel Prize or is considered a genius.

Reading the classics -- contemporary or traditional -- provides a foundation for all your other reading but it must include your own critical review based on its relevance to your own understanding.

My uncle may have meant well, but I could have gone off half cocked if I did understand and internalized some of Carrel's ideas at that earlier age, and made them part of my mantra. Thank God, I didn't. I wasn't bright enough to do so. I shall never leave you in the lurch like that, never, if I can help it.

I have not been myself of late because my writing does not go well, and I apologize for that. I will try to be more myself in the future because I love and respect you very much.

Be always well,

Papa