Ray Bradbury Centennial post August 8, 2020

Daily Ray Bradbury Centennial Post. Another aspect of Ray Bradbury's irrepressible creativity was his delight in writing children's books. I count a dozen, several adapted from his short stories, some poems. His name could command the best of illustrators. What made sense about these forays into a field that not many mainstream writers succeed in is that Bradbury often wrote from a child's perspective when he used memory (or magical memory) in his storytelling. Think of Dandelion Wine or Something Wicked This Way Comes or From the Dust Returned. All are from the boy who was once and was always Bradbury. Authenticity as well as language goes far in a children's book. Alas, all but two titles are out of print; only The Halloween Tree and Switch on the Night remain available new.

Ray Bradbury Centennial post August 7, 2020

Daily Ray Bradbury Centennial Post. In addition to screenwriting, short stories, and novels, Ray Bradbury wrote poetry all his life. As with other successful prose writers, it was an avocation (Faulkner and Hemingway all the way to Louise Erdrich and Barbara Kingsolver). Bradbury's poetry is racy with Walt Whitman and Dylan Thomas, Edna St. Vincent Millay and the Beats. He loved the sound of words, the harmonies possible, and his prose can rush down a story like a mountain freshet when the snow melts. He controls it carefully, however, a discipline he is not often credited. I discovered his poetry in the 70s with the two books here, and I can still chant passages I learned then. I hope sometime soon to track them down in my library, but he would be amused how memorization has stuck with me all these decades (a key part of Fahrenheit 451, after all). He eventually published 9 books of poetry, one a "complete," typically in the middle of his output (something that would also make him laugh). He had a great laugh.

Ray Bradbury Centennial post August 6, 2020

Photograph by Usuf Karsh.

Daily Ray Bradbury Centennial Post. Kurt Vonnegut wrote to Ray Bradbury in 1959 to tell him that he wanted to move to southern California and be near Disneyland. Bradbury and Walt Disney were friends, and Bradbury offered to show Vonnegut around and introduce him to all the right people. "It's warm all the time out here," he told Vonnegut. Vonnegut could not imagine it, nor did he follow through on his plans -- his icy cynicism remained unmelted in the eastern US. His professional regard for Bradbury was steadfast (he was two years younger and died five years before him, both writers from the Midwest, remember). In his letter he addressed him as "Mr. Bradbury," which Ray quickly broke down. More than any other writers -- and blazing a trail for Ursula K. Le Guin and Margaret Atwood and Octavia Butler -- Bradbury and Vonnegut demolished the artificial commercial walls between science fiction and so-called literary fiction.