Bradbury
A great writer, a great American. I devoured his books, was never disappointed. I think I started with Dark Carnival, and then…well, I can’t remember what came next. I do have two memories of him, one direct, the other maybe something he wouldn’t have welcomed but would no doubt have given him a good laugh.
The direct memory was of a speech he gave to a big crowd of American businessmen in L.A., and he talked a lot about the power of imagination, and he urged them all to embrace their dreams, even the wildest ones, and to pursue them, because we’re in America and anything is possible. After all, he’d spent years writing about Mars (both Mars as a metaphor and the “real” Mars), and then early one morning the first earth vessel was landing on Mars and he’d been invited to the Jet Propulsion laboratory in Pasadena to watch the first pictures arrive. He told us how excited he was, and how emotional everybody became when the first photos came in: “They were wonderful pictures, and grown men were crying…”
And then a television journalist shoved a mic into his face and said, “Well, Bradbury, how does it feel? All these years you’ve been dreaming about Mars and writing about Mars, and here are the first pictures from Mars, and there’s no sign of life anywhere. So how does it feel?”
Bradbury yelled at us. “I shouted at him. I shouted “Fools! Fools! There IS life on Mars. And it is US.”
It sent chills up my spine. What a brilliant response it was. If he’d had a month to write it, even he couldn’t have improved it.
The second story isn’t about Bradbury himself, but about Fahrenheit 451, the movie. As you know, the story is about burning books and about those who salvage the documents of civilization from the burners, the “firemen” who build the book pyres and set them aflame. Back in the seventies, a period when I worked in the Italian State Central Archives most every day, Italian TV’s Channel 1 put the movie on one night. If you did research in the Archives, you were at the mercy of the schleppers, the men who went down into the basements to get your documents for you, and if they liked you, you got your documents. If they didn’t like you–and they were not in a rush to decide if they did or didn’t–you got something, but not the full package.
What less would one expect from ‘the twentieth century Jules Verne with a wicked sense of humour’?
Tehran’s blood drinkers regime, must be defeated by any means and anyhow and any price mullah’s will pay. This regime is the most dangerous evil for entire world and especially Saudi Arabia. Revolutionary Guards, targets the oil refinery infrastructures Saudi’s for destruction. Massacre in Syria, do not forget it, women and babies. Blood, Blood, common people are bleeding. Where are the Arabian heroes? Where are the Arabian fighters? Do not let the mullah’s agents kill the Syria’s nation.
Assad is not a lion; he is a blood thirsty virus who the Arabian lions must burn him, as the same he burned the innocent newly born babies.
Where you are Arabs? Arab children and Arab mothers are dying by mullahs and Bashar killers. Attack to this blood drinkers.
I knew it! The Iranians and their filthy Syrian puppet-dogs killed Ray Bradbury! They must be stopped!
Um! I think your post belongs in another PJ column!
– a very nice man.
p.s. Michael, did you work for the Italian State Archives?
no, i was doing research for my doctoral dissertation at the time, and I did more research there over the years.
Michael, how does your tribute to Ray Bradbury compare to the tributes offered to C.S. Lewis? For C.S. Lewis died the same day as JFK, and frankly if there is justice, there is more to a person than the posthumous honours they receive.
Also, I am thinking that the passing of C.S. Lewis was overshadowed overly much by the events in Dallas that day.
Thanks for the remembrance. Reagan once said we are only limited by our imaginations. It sounds like Bradbury had the same insight or perhaps Reagan got it from him. Either way, I think that idea and their belief in it is something that we should always remember. It is what we need now.
I have a doubt with Mr.Lincoln comment on the C.S.Lewis died at the same day of JFK.I remember was Aldous Huxley,but maybe the two.
Anyway I love Bradbury tales and I have all the books translated in spanish.