Ray Bradbury...in Memorium...

[shadowkat]

Flist is honoring Ray Bradbury who died today...at 91. 91 feels younger now than it did yesterday. Very odd.

From the October 1973 issue of Literary Cavalcade:

You must write every single day of your life.

You must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head — vulgar one moment, brilliant the next.

You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to snuff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads.

- Ray Bradbury...

Well two out of three isn't bad. I'm admittedly allergic to libraries. Blame the HW Wilson Company, and mold. But I'm not allergic to books. And I did lurk in libraries up until the rip old age of 35. So there's that. Now, I've discovered the internet, and Kindle, where I can get my hands on books that don't reside in libraries...which was always my frustration with libraries - they never had the books I wanted.

I believe that no matter the quality of the book - it's never a waste reading one. Doesn't matter how well or badly it is written, you always learn something from it. Never a waste a time. Sometimes something as simple as...this doesn't quite work for me...can mean a lot. I don't regret anything I've read. And to date, I've read over 4,000 books and counting. Some brilliant, some horrific, and in every genre imaginable. Read. Read. Read.
Whatever you can find. Whatever you can see. For when you read, you see inside another brain and escape into another pov, learn another language, learn a new thing and change just a bit in the process. When you read you exercise your brain.

My favorite Ray Bradbury short story is The Veldt...which I read at the age of 12 or 13. I think I also read Dandalion Wine, but don't remember it. Definitely read The Martian Chronicles, which I do remember. Something Wicked This Way Comes. And my favorite..the homage to books, Farenheit 451. But I like The Veldt the best, it haunts me.

"Am I on time?" said David McClean.
"Breakfast?" asked George Hadley.
"Thanks, had some. What's the trouble?"
"David, you're a psychologist."
"I should hope so."
"Well, then, have a look at our nursery. You saw it a year ago when you
dropped by; did you notice anything peculiar about it then?"
"Can't say I did; the usual violences, a tendency toward a slight
paranoia here or there, usual in children because they feel persecuted by
parents constantly, but, oh, really nothing."
They walked down the ball. "I locked the nursery up," explained the
father, "and the children broke back into it during the night. I let them
stay so they could form the patterns for you to see."
There was a terrible screaming from the nursery.
"There it is," said George Hadley. "See what you make of it."
They walked in on the children without rapping.
The screams had faded. The lions were feeding.
"Run outside a moment, children," said George Hadley. "No, don't change
the mental combination. Leave the walls as they are. Get!"
With the children gone, the two men stood studying the lions clustered
at a distance, eating with great relish whatever it was they had caught.
"I wish I knew what it was," said George Hadley. "Sometimes I can
almost see. Do you think if I brought high-powered binoculars here and -"
David McClean laughed dryly. "Hardly." He turned to study all four
walls. "How long has this been going on?"
"A little over a month."
"It certainly doesn't feel good."
"I want facts, not feelings."
"My dear George, a psychologist never saw a fact in his life. He only
hears about feelings; vague things. This doesn't feel good, I tell you.
Trust my hunches and my instincts. I have a nose for something bad. This is
very bad. My advice to you is to have the whole damn room torn down and your
children brought to me every day during the next year for treatment."
"Is it that bad?"
"I'm afraid so. One of the original uses of these nurseries was so that
we could study the patterns left on the walls by the child's mind, study at
our leisure, and help the child. In this case, however, the room has become
a channel toward-destructive thoughts, instead of a release away from them."
"Didn't you sense this before?"
"I sensed only that you bad spoiled your children more than most. And
now you're letting them down in some way. What way?"
"I wouldn't let them go to New York."
"What else?"
"I've taken a few machines from the house and threatened them, a month
ago, with closing up the nursery unless they did their homework. I did close
it for a few days to show I meant business."
"Ah, ha!"
"Does that mean anything?"
"Everything. Where before they had a Santa Claus now they have a
Scrooge. Children prefer Santas. You've let this room and this house replace
you and your wife in your children's affections. This room is their mother
and father, far more important in their lives than their real parents. And
now you come along and want to shut it off. No wonder there's hatred here.
You can feel it coming out of the sky. Feel that sun. George, you'll have to
change your life. Like too many others, you've built it around creature
comforts. Why, you'd starve tomorrow if something went wrong in your
kitchen. You wouldn't know bow to tap an egg. Nevertheless, turn everything
off. Start new. It'll take time. But we'll make good children out of bad in
a year, wait and see."
"But won't the shock be too much for the children, shutting the room up
abruptly, for good?"
"I don't want them going any deeper into this, that's all."
The lions were finished with their red feast.
The lions were standing on the edge of the clearing watching the two
men.
"Now I'm feeling persecuted," said McClean. "Let's get out of here. I
never have cared for these damned rooms. Make me nervous."
"The lions look real, don't they?" said George Hadley. I don't suppose
there's any way -"
"What?"
"- that they could become real?"
"Not that I know."
"Some flaw in the machinery, a tampering or something?"
"No."
They went to the door.
"I don't imagine the room will like being turned off," said the father.
"Nothing ever likes to die - even a room."
"I wonder if it hates me for wanting to switch it off?"
"Paranoia is thick around here today," said David McClean. "You can
follow it like a spoor. Hello." He bent and picked up a bloody scarf. "This
yours?"
"No." George Hadley's face was rigid. "It belongs to Lydia."
They went to the fuse box together and threw the switch that killed the
nursery.

- From The Veldt by Ray Bradbury.

Go here for full story: http://www.veddma.com/veddma/Veldt.htm

Off to shower and to read. My favorite past time.

Comments

[flameraven.livejournal.com]

The Veldt was one of the first Bradbury stories I read, and it's still one of my favorites. I haven't read too much of his other work-- Fahrenheit 451, Illustrated Man, and Martian Chronicles in school, and I read Dandelion Wine and a collection or two of his short stories on my own. I should probably go back and reread at this point; it's been a few years. It's a little bit hard for me to really engage with, like a lot of the older sci-fi, but it's much, much more interesting than authors like Clarke or Asimov, who were all about the gadgets and concepts and had painfully cardboard characters. Bradbury was much better at making his characters real and believable, while still exploring the conceptual stuff.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

I'd have to agree - the older sci-fi is harder to engage with, partly because it is so dated, and partly the writing style. I'm not a fan of Clark or Asimov and could never get into the Foundation Novels. Preferred Bradbury who was more character focused, but Bradbury was also more horror...and horror, I have mixed feelings about.

[flameraven.livejournal.com]

I've only read a few of the classic sci-fi novels. I enjoyed 2001: A Space Odyssey, but I think it's largely because HAL was so memorable and scary, not because anything else in the story was interesting. I liked the Foundation trilogy the first time I read it, but going back to it a few years later I was like "Wait. None of this makes any damn sense. I don't believe your premise!" Then there are the novels like Childhood's End that I completely loathe.

Bradbury was much better for character-focused stuff, and entertainingly creepy without being too scary for me. It was a good mix. I'll have to go back and reread his works, and try to read more broadly.