2020 08 30 20 RayBradbury100 I

keep your prisons celebrating the lights and legacy of ray bradbury i'm came at kentucky this year marks the one hundred anniversary of the birth of the science fiction and fantasy writer his writing career spanned seventy years and included hundreds of short stories almost fifty books numerous poems essays screenplays and even an opera one of its best known and influential works was fahrenheit four five one his nineteen fifty three masterpiece about diamond tag a fireman in a dystopian society where firefighters burn books in two thousand seven the topeka sunny county public library hosted a big reed project and fahrenheit four five one with discussion groups are sowing of the nineteen sixty six film adaptation and a remote interview with ray bradbury although bradbury was unable to travel to topeka to do the interview in person his love of writing and his enthusiasm for life rang across the miles and filled the room that interview is easily one of the

highlights of my fifteen years of hosting and producing kbr presents today we remember ray bradbury with an encore broadcast of a two thousand seven k pr prisons based on the big read of fahrenheit four five one and it was a pleasure to burn it was a special pleasure to see things heat to see things that could change so begin's fahrenheit four five one by ray bradbury chosen as the big wave selection by the national endowment for the arts and the tpp as johnny county public library in a time when reading is on the decline what better choice for a program to encourage people to read in this nineteen fifty three story about a society where books are burned and reading is forbidden i first ran into earl ray bradbury's work as you know stories that we were given it now and then in school novelist orson scott card and i remember the first time that i read it for a

night for fifty one of course you're drawn in the story where bribery is a masterful storyteller but it was his choice a protagonist that was interesting to have it be a fireman to have it be someone who is involved in the act of destruction suppression of books that was a very wise choice who else would be anywhere near as interesting as somebody who was on the one side and then converts to the other the power of books is so evident in his love of books is so evident throughout this incredibly quick bought sam weller is the author of the biography the bradbury chronicles if you read the movement of the story and i think that's one of the great things about this book is once you get hooked into it and you go oh i'm on to these characters it's a mad rush through this incredibly dark dystopian world it's a rollercoaster it's fast and it's furious and the narrative move and of the story is both cinematic in its it's gripping and it gets a

thrill ride ray bradbury's own literary thrill ride began in waukegan illinois where he was born in nineteen twenty he was a voracious reader devouring the fairy tales of the brothers grimm alison wonderland and edgar allan poe's tales of mystery and imagination he was especially encouraged in his love of books by his favorite relative his bandleader only ten years older than the young ray yet this dance for instance you who would talk to the children about what they were eating in the summertime librarian valerie reef of the topeka as shawnee county public library and then she'd she'd help them a cost to notes too you illustrate that the characters they were reading about some of his favorites at the time were the icebergs and john carter of mars and and the tarzan works when ray had gone through all the book that home he at least his love of reading on the walkie in library the library was the most exciting place in the world and every monday evening

starting when i was about seven years old my brother i would write in the library not walk run to the library and especially along you're coming by leaves so when gloria long history anew of the leave ray bradbury's love of books goes back to like for so many of us when he was a little boy growing up in far northern illinois in a town called waukegan he started going to the library the old carnegie library which was built in nineteen oh two right on the bluff overlooking lake michigan and ray bradbury would go there every monday night with his brother skippy and they would go and get folks in egypt in mummies and pirates and dinosaurs are the fodder that little boys tend to love and you get a library and there's a wonderful ambiance and all the stacks of all your love once around you because edgar allan poe's up there watching you in jules verne is up for a company you sell the library is one of the great basic read

reyes obsession with storytelling began with books of course but also with movies his mother asked her love the cinema even maiming rape douglas bradley after film star douglas faire banks it's his mother that introduced rey to the world of cinema for your mom the launch anyway i was in nineteen twenty three and i've got more than becoming a hunchback the launch any of the phantom of the opera and i've even more completely a movie is in part because of the wal marts of the department i think both i wrote about that at bars there you go when he was fourteen her family was hit pretty hard by

the depression and they liked like so many other families move to the west coast again valerie reef whenever the cardio sixty six ray would pile out and run to the local library to see the day where we were having a near the oz books are john carter of mars bradbury says it was his first real experience with censorship not censorship in the way the word is usually used in the stands the library's weren't carrying the books he was looking for he he never said that anybody was doing it on purpose might not that is that the budget's just couldn't afford the new books about but he said that was one of the first times he had thought about the fact that maybe you couldn't get all the books she wanted to read he kept that as he often does in the back of his mind and filed it away and so the first colonel of ferret for fifty one was really born back in nineteen thirty to driving an old buick with his family down route sixty

six through depression era america and that's where a lot of the genesis of this book began enrolled in los angeles high school bradbury eagerly pursued his interest in writing pounding out stories on a toy dial typewriter his parents bought him when he was twelve upon receiving the typewriter his first assignment he gave himself to write a sequel to the martian novels of edgar rice burroughs he would do things like i subscribe to magazines that had serialized stories and he just couldn't wait til the next month's issue came out so he finished the story itself and then compare what magazine has delivered in his teenage years he also started his own science fiction magazine featuring a fantasia writing about the imagined worlds of technology and space travel my agent technology space travel i thought a lot about it in the

writing and my dream of portland oregon moon when i was eleven twelve years ago and a great thing happens when i was forty nine years old and it really happened when he graduated from high school money was tight he sold newspapers on the street corner the only regular job he says he ever held bradbury also said about educating himself going to the central library downtown once a week and visiting the smaller local branch libraries twice a week there he immersed himself in books especially the novels of thomas wolfe and dorothea brand's book becoming a writer which time bradbury to write quickly passionately anti trust his instincts this relationship with books and libraries would have a direct influence on his later writings of fahrenheit four five one i mean he gave me a library that did make it to college and had no money to go to college by god that you can learn more about writing by going to a library

and reading becoming adults though library is so important i learned about the burning of books when i was very young i didn't learn about the brain the vote in the march route of alexandria five thousand years ago and i thought how terrible and then i thought will bring them both in the street the room environment but hitler and our of all the river in the book by fallen even to love the open new favorite ball these nachos that i was on my records the graduate and margaret ahead right to protect them to buy votes quite natural that burn it or by one by the time he was twenty one effect on his twenty first birthday he had his first story published it was called and the long and it appeared in the

magazine super science stories gradually more of bradbury's short stories were getting published although it would be three more years until he wrote one he was really proud of when i was young i want to write and it took me forty years the writing and four at the age of twenty four i find the role of the beaches one of like which appeared in word to paid fifty dollars for it the god that i thought i turned a corner and become a writer and longer where are you want to rest players but i was thirty seven after riding near the years and years and i began to write plays about ireland because i'm a law when aaron i want to write poetry or my life i belong to portray clark in it will surround one for young women who are great poet and i was allowed to vote and that a virus and then the those wonderful reviews theater that they're right

though i was foraging report by rote i poured all the radiation and was about football bowl wins everything you love well i love writing poetry and like writing about writing way i loved writing screenplays or local knowledge is they repeal for me they're all my favorites bradbury was writing more and more to critical acclaim in his twenties he looks back on this time and gives this advice to would be writers but you can encourage people throw themselves up with poetry for themselves up with marvel's furloughs of up with elmo's to live in art galleries and discover the metaphors tailor its most important thing you can do but find your love grow though i live babies waiting for either ray

bradbury's our lives marguerite or maggie mcclure was waiting for him in a bookstore fowler's bookstore in los angeles whenever a story it had just been published in an anthology the best short stories of nineteen forty six and he went into the bookstore to find it well as both star had recently had a number of that and mr fowler told his employees to keep an eye out for shoplifters on a warm july day rate came into feiler's book store wearing a long trench coat with deep pockets and carrying a briefcase maggie mclaury that she had found their shoplifter she was wrong of course they went out for coffee again the next day and the next and a year later they were married a memorable going to play think you're going and i thought that you very bright i feel terribly merry but they should learn you could get married teacher

if you marry a librarian new maria bello in that wonderful hotel that they stole my lies along the things that gene again my picture right now my lover and my rhyme and memorable roar and that they would be a proper woman with a great line i must accounts bradbury was not the prototypical wife of the nineteen forties in a timeline wise it didn't often work outside the home she was the breadwinner so the rate could concentrate on his writing in the words of biographers sam weller without her dedication ray would have been forced to find full time employment and the future of the man known for writing about the future might've been very different and right ray did it was about this time rabe wrote several short stories that would find their ways into fahrenheit four five one and rose you're a straight call the exiles of

all the churches from larson from a drone paul and from dickens christmas carol isolate on mars and they go on there because they're anxious for the book to be burned david brooks and you will be at the ticket booth of the burglar as evil people and the characters in another story a fireman the title character goes to the library to burn books when he arrives he finds that people have memorized the book's in order to preserve them tanya was at a peak a sunny county public library tells us about the real life incident that would also find its way into fahrenheit four five one one evening in the late forties he was out walking in la and we all know that nobody walks in la if you're out walking in the streets you have you are doing

something wrong so she's out walking in la and the police pulled him over and gave their use why what are you doing out walking around in this neighborhood and he was so outraged that his civil liberties could be violated in that manner itches set his imagination into high gear i guess so things really thought i shall simply get my revenge by putting this to literary is that character and the themes in these short stories would all come together in his nineteen fifty three novel fahrenheit four five one he wasn't quite delegate he knew he still had more to do with the characters i took my art for a walk one night it was really a character story called america's toughest that stories early in the nineteen fifties and it but the veteran out for a walk one night my typewriter and he turned the corner and there

was this lovely teenage girl coverage that column who lived in a gray world all her own luck with the book really know that to the teachers and fire coats she's very interior felt all my characters are me i'm on the fed and clever use of be at the party is over the philosopher all main characters are par right now with this thing and come forward and think and i listened to them and one clear you talk to make a better job the story of how ray bradbury came to write fahrenheit four five one is the stuff the literary legends are made of our house is getting four children and israel lobby very wonderful but i had to have an office and i had no money and i could run an office and i was wondering are ucla were typing in the

basement a librarian went down to see what was there and discovered there was a tiny room we've run a typewriter for ten cents a half hour that's the helmsley great pleasure to write this law office selling got a bag of dimes and went down and that moliere and that they demanded year was finished as it's a magical story and the fact that he could write really entire book in nine days i think illustrates ray bradbury's creative process at work and when inspiration catches him good night simmons he will i i prefer sam weller i think what else is really neat is that he would take breaks and walk upstairs in the library and pull books off shelves is smell the dust read the pages absorb the concepts and then rushed back downstairs and write some more running up and bows church in favor of a grab books off the shelf unopened him to find a court a kind of quote from two thousand years ago five hundred years ago the

rock that are included in the novel about dreaming dreams no more consider the lilies of the field how they grow at hercules was stopped by the jail wrestler and takes takes two to speak truths one to speak and another to hear the book financed ray bradbury now said about coming up with the title of their curious about the temperature at which voted for churches for birds so i call ucla the chemistry department i said could you tell me and what temperature the book paper catches fire numbers they didn't know and i called a visit to borrowers see a nasa news and question if they didn't know so i said doubly call the fire department and served on the first story called out on

a national fire chief and he came on foreigners who can help erase the yes and know the cells show it as a ballad like find out and what temperature paper catches fire burns is it with their ray could hear the chair of the fire chief roll back that she pulled a bug artist of pages through it takes the phone back out and tells ray or fire one firm line until they revert to ferment for five when chavez so the temperature for anyone ballantine books published fahrenheit four five one in october nineteen fifty three it met with critical acclaim both in the science fiction crowd here in the more mainstream readership

again tanya was bradbury this time already had a built an audience he was popular among science fiction readers and even though science fiction was still can't look down upon as a pole <unk> on bradbury had a solid solid audience so they saw his name on this new novel fahrenheit four five one and it was a neatly met with really good reader response it had good sales it got out to serbia legitimate critics they got really really good reviews near times time he reviewed all the major sources formal press kit at the new york times raves about it in some pretty heavyweight hard to please critics embraced this book and recognized its power and its social commentary i mean this is an incredible work of social commentary and they were immediately recognizing the courage of a writer who was not only booking this a few years back to the past that the fascism of nazi germany but also looking at the present

time and the witch hunts that were occurring at the time with joseph mccarthy living in la and being a writer in la and publishing about like this was extremely brave because writers especially in los angeles thin city were being a black man in question were being censored and i think bradbury was brilliant and setting this in a somewhat distant future but not really because he could then safely criticize what he was soon going on in society at that time set in an unspecified future in an unspecified city in america fahrenheit four five one takes aim at a society that has lost its sense of history in the world of fahrenheit four five one books are illegal fire men start fires and neighbors betray neighbors for hiding contraband books the new film

and it made them do this more with accusation shake down a fine doesn't feel it was soft and then also says the fund was neither predict nor could contact felt an immense should be here on top of everything books from cardiff his shoulders his arms his upturned face a booklet almost obediently like a white pigeon in his hands wings fluttering in the dim waving like a page hung open and it was like a snowy further the words delicately painted there are and all the russian fur vermont i'd had only an instant read aloud but at least in his mind for the next minute as a staff there with fiery still time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine he dropped the book immediately another front was owns manteca done nothing was handed down that all his hand with a brain and some with a conscience and a curiosity and he's trembling finger had turned thief now replace the book back under his own press to titus winning on it washed out and deal with the magicians here recent book is chicken about

why did you feel that way out as if you are a farce and he held it close as if you're blind the book's lei lei great mounds of fishes left to drive the men dance and slipped and fell over them titles glittered their golden ice falling on kerosene they pump the cold fluids from the new world for five one tank strapped their shoulders they coded each book they pump rooms full effect the woman held among the book's touching the drums leather and cardboard reading the guild titles with her fingers eyes that's the turning point when it all over again when you give up or a lot of ramadan when they without them and literally things how could that woman died to care

about so much she cared about the book there must be something in them that i can see but right now i wouldn't lie for anyone i would buy for anything or maybe i can learn from her how he died for something slowly commentary begins to question this society and its ban on books he began stealing books and hiding them throughout his home he even reads poetry out loud to his wife mildred and her bewildered friends eventually mildred turns the man forced to burn down his own home great muslim doubt of fire leapt out loud the books and often against state stepped into the bedroom and fire twice in the twin beds one of the great salmon was more hidden passion in life and he was supposed to play the part of the bedroom walls and the cosmetics chest just want to change everything and the chairs tables and in the dining room the silverware investigations everything that showed if you live here in this empty house that this strange woman who would forgive him more withdrawn and

quite forgotten a moment and ask for it was going to burn felt himself blush of the folks who actually rendered them have fled into the way the census form if there was no solution well then now that was not televised fire was best for everything so smart slept advanced placement notification and then he came to the parliament to review monster slays the white sox and he shot a portrait of the three blank walls of the vatican just out of this meeting even answering this but since this week he tried to think about that nothing says her before he kills just sort of action cannot give you cut off its a terrible emptiness to back and even entire distillation bright yellow flowers and five positions on the cost of insurance when you quite finished in under a

month and flees the scene and he's chased by a mechanical hound and the scene that tracks them across the city while the whole world watches the chase on television county the metaphor of the metaphorically wrong a metaphor that were prevented the tone of the motivation for them in technology and the mark effective and all that it didn't work quite correctly going to having people are killing people and technology are killing people i thought that was a rather interesting idea leaves the city and comes across a group of exiles taking a theme from his short story the fire man each of these men has memorized a book in order to preserve it i want you to meet jonathan swift off of that evil political book lovers travels and this other fellows charles darwin and this one a schopenhauer and this was

einstein's and this one here at my elbows mr albert schweitzer a very kind philosopher indeed here we all are montana aristophanes and mahatma gandhi and buddha and confucius and thomas of peacock and thomas jefferson and mr lincoln if you please where also matthew mark luke and john when asked which but he would memorize is joining this group of exiles ray bradbury chooses a classic tale from charles dickens you really christmas carol i think that's that book as you froze my life more than most any other book because this is a book about life is a book about that is a book about triumph in the morning when one screwed who wakes up and discovers it's not to leave he can do his life over and he has another chance and you win for the old man and you're going to be discovered before it's too late that he can change and they can't

fully come alive for the first time and fifty years their retirements to move home or read the book i whoop with joy that he'd hidden way until it was too late he didn't die like marty and be debt forever and scrooge is cover his life and it will live for as a result in fahrenheit four five one we're left with the hope that the books will live forever thanks to the efforts of this group of exiles again i knew was it's like almost like a minute you just keep you know layers of meaning in this i think it is a deceptively simple because it's not a simple work on on a real basic level is about the danger of suppressing knowledge by denying the by denying reading to a society by ana an even more tension level is what we discover is it wasn't the government

that outlawed reading that people chose to stop reading and down the government back them up get the big institutional people have censored themselves and largely through apathy they just didn't care about meeting with eight they'd become passive they just won't become the sectors of information and not processes are creators of it and i think the bradbury is largely suggesting in the nineteen fifties that technology plays a role in this apathy walker and radios ipod are part mall aleppo which take your picture with urine that you guys have opposed the true true true thing includes free downloading of farms which are a reactionary point

and we say we are too much part timers with attraction of reading and we should do more routine this dialogue we have with the written word is something we we really don't get much from television and i think that is largely what bradbury was getting at with this inundation of reality interactive television environment for fine wine and i think this is something that as a culture we're still wrestling with today many species have gone away and that's why i think this novel is still so relevant although ray bradbury's vision of a world dominated by technology is graham you might be surprised to know that he has quite fond memories of his own first experience with television back in nineteen fifty that they were all at the mom my wife and my three daughters that the month and we're cramped in that are we in we've invited variety they return of that and there

was sherlock holmes and was over with a great way to begin what's next they're provoked by it so we want to have something to do with lucrative tv in those days there were all the movies that we love so we began an update of mark that might they then very clever ways that's in stark contrast to much of what you might find on television fifty years later in fact ray bradbury has very little good to say about television today that very little good to be newt and i learned to look at these patients that have all moving it those big guys about three years old and

fixtures ordered twelve years north and twenty years old i'm really looking back to my pet though you're going to take away for most patients have forgotten worked with the unions both started to drink too much and brier barely an hour of every day it is paying attention to her and she's not work pay attention to the reality there with the most patient they're just caught in nineteen fifty five ray bradbury tried to write a stage version of fahrenheit four five one although it wasn't successful he says it was a good exercise in developing his character's further thank you days bye bye

in nineteen sixty two filmmaker francois truffaut purchased the film rights to fahrenheit four five one biographer sam weller says making a movie from his book was a troubled and difficult project it took three and half years to start filming going through six producers and for screenwriters along the way and yet ray bradbury says he was pleased with how the film version turned out in many ways that was a very effective recruitment all even though they were married with having the women's row american vote very confusing part and go the wife from the book loving character and he leaped out the character of paper and he leaped out the mechanical arm

though the great part of the world the word really and you very well play and i enjoy the character of mama tried and it's the way he was depicted and scored by bernard hermann which is quite amazing bernard hermann had just ended a long professional relationship with filmmaker alfred hitchcock when truffaut asked him to write the film score for fahrenheit four five one in writing it her mom said he wanted to avoid the electronic cliches which might have been expected in a science fiction film opting for a more traditional orchestration to evoke the future it's exciting and this piece which is heard over and over again in the film uses a large string orchestra was a xylophone to accompany the image of a fire truck racing to another house where mine tag and his crew will burn

more contraband books your listening to an encore presentation of kbr presents marking the one hundred anniversary of ray bradbury's a number of librarians authors actors and students participated in or read a thon of fahrenheit four five one on his birthday august twenty second including the old gay man and william shatner you can feel it this week as ray bradbury dot com you're listening to keep your presents and kansas public radio it's b ending in the realm of love the great ending of a velvet overlay of all people wandering in the world the no

no that don't go on ms benita power and i think and bribery will last and last novelist orson scott card i consider him a great american writer he was inside science fiction at the same time he always wrote in such a way that his work

was accessible outside their size six writers are i dare say a majority of science fiction writers who depend on having an audience of orange tans the tropes of science fiction bari knows its way into the work bradbury never relied on having an audience like that he always wrote every story as far as i remember is meant to be accessible to as wide an audience as possible the great thing about pantry my own head three fifth year ago i remember published so what happened to the dream came into the classroom carrying a copy and well marbled and putting on the role of the teacher in that review and a change that whether that underwater read that and then they read the first paragraph one third chapter love it that the government for its farewell by robert heinlein a lot of the capital

only a military maybe that would prevent the battle rages about a very firm that's important bookstore you go to the library and inspire your prizes you pick up the ball and fated to revoke a couple pickup robert online book and read the first debate hi mara today i'm katie our percents we're marking what would have been the one hundredth birthday of science fiction and fantasy legend ray bradbury and j mcintyre kbr prisons will continue right after this