SOURCE: "Fahrenheit 451 and the 'Cubby-Hole Editors' of Ballantine Books," in Coordinates: Placing Science Fiction and Fantasy, edited by George E. Slusser, Eric S. Rabkin, and Robert Scholes, Southern Illinois University Press, 1983, pp. 99-106.

In the following essay, Guffey explores Bradbury's indictment of censorship in some of his early short stories and comments on the bowdlerization of Fahrenheit 451 for high school readers.

In April 1975 on the campus of the University of California at Santa Barbara, Ray Bradbury delighted an assembled audience with an uninhibited speech entitled "How Not to Burn a Book; or, 1984 Will Not Arrive." At one point in his wide-ranging presentation he reflected on the emotions which have typically impelled his fiction. "Sometimes I get angry and write a story about my anger. Sometimes I'm delighted and I write a story about that delight. Back in the Joseph McCarthy period a lot of things were going on...