One of the most commonly assigned books in American high school literature, Fahrenheit 451, hasn’t always been treated fairly.

Critic Damon Knight once wrote of author Ray Bradbury that “his imagination is mediocre; he borrows nearly all his backgrounds and props, and distorts them badly.”

But the book, while easy to read, is rich with metaphor and meaning. I first read Fahrenheit 451 in high school, and I still have my annotated copy nestled amid other books in my collection.

I would not have understood it well on my own, but thanks to my English teacher at the time, it became one of my favorite novels. Approaching age 17, I remember one line especially resonating with me.

When Clarisse McClellan, perhaps the only character who remembers real-life joy disconnected from technology, introduces herself, she says, “I’m seventeen and I’m crazy. My uncle says the two always go together. When people ask your age, he said, always say seventeen and insane.”

Clarisse’s quirkiness wasn’t the only thing that resonated with me, though, and I found myself thinking of many other themes from the book as Bradbury’s birthday passed this week. (The author, who died in 2012, would’ve been 99.)

Fahrenheit 451, like 1984, Brave New World, and other novels in the genre of dystopian science fiction, was strangely prescient. To better understand why, I called my high school literature teacher, who had introduced me to the book in the first place.

Sharon Sellers, a retired professor of English from Clayton State University, agrees that the book is easy to enjoy. But simplistic doesn’t mean simple.

“Simply because a person can move into a piece of literature does not mean there are not layers in a piece of literature,” she said.

Known for his voracious reading, Bradbury gave nods to everyone from William Blake to Jonathan Swift into his most famous work, which is one of the best books about books.

Fahrenheit 451’s name references the temperature at which books burn, and it tells the story of a dystopian society where all books are banned and people pass their time staring at screens while barely talking to one another.

Sound a little like 2019? The story becomes even more urgent when you realize that perhaps, books didn’t even need to be banned in the first place. As the novel says, “You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”

Sellers, who says she has read Fahrenheit 451 dozens of times, says the book may be even more relevant now than when it was published in 1953.

“It holds up very well,” she said. “I think it’s very easy to bring in the potential dangers of online obsession and preoccupation, and the preoccupation with cellphones to the exclusion of conversations with other people and seeing other people.

“Clarisse says to Montag at one point that he’s the first person who’s looked at her. Well, you don’t have to go into a restaurant and observe very long before you see tables of people who don’t look at each other.”

Bradbury even predicted our culture of identity politics and political correctness, writing, “We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against.”

Some of the novel’s nuance, however, may be lost at first on modern readers. The character Faber, named after one of the world’s oldest pencil manufacturers, counsels the protagonist, Montag, who takes his name from a defunct paper company.

Other references may seem more meaningful today: It didn’t occur to me until recently that the earbuds Montag’s wife uses to block out the world sound a lot like AirPods .

As historian Russell Kirk put it, Bradbury wrote “mythopoeic literature, normative truth acquired through wonder.” Fahrenheit 451 doesn’t simply ring true in a way that has stood the test of time, though. It also has pores. While he’s explaining the nature of literature to Montag, Faber asks, “Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores.”

Fahrenheit 451 joins the canon of great literature, ironically, for the way it fulfills Bradbury’s own definition of a good book. It “stiches the patches of the universe together into one garment for us.” Bradbury’s most celebrated novel reminds us why we read books in the first place. As a book about books, it’s a great novel, not just for high schoolers, but for everyone who wants to introduce themselves to a love of reading.

Great books, Sellers says, “bring people out of themselves and put them, if they’re really moving into the book, into the lives of other people so that their ability to see becomes bigger.”

More than 60 years later, Fahrenheit 451 still does just that.