Fahrenheit 451

and it was a pleasure to burn it was a special pleasure to see things heat to see things in black and cheering so begin's fahrenheit four five one by ray bradbury chosen as the big wave selection by the national endowment for the arts and that he gets donny county public library today on katie are present will take a look at fahrenheit four five one and hear from ray bradbury in a phone interview recorded live at the topeka sonic county public library i'm kate mcintyre 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 you know 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 and his love of books is so evident throughout this incredibly quick book 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 amon 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 over racist read or devouring the fairy tales of the brothers grimm alice in 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 year for instance two who would talk to the children about what they were reading in the summertime librarian valerie reef of the topeka shawnee county public library and then she'd she'd help them a cost helps to illustrate that the characters they were reading about some of his favorites at the time were the icebergs and john carter of mars and our own and the tarzan works when ray had gone through all the books at 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 bono long history and you're the leader ray bradbury's love of books goes back to like for so many others was a little boy growing up in far northern illinois in a town called waukegan east are 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 he did a lover and there's a wonderful ambiance and all the stacks of all your loved ones round you because edgar allan poe's up there watching you in jules verne is up for a company you sell the library is where the great pleasure to 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 you 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 the whole world and the job of other parts of the department i think i wrote a play about that at bars there you go when he was fourteen that family was hit pretty hard by the depression and they liked like so many other families moved to the west coast again valerie reef whenever the cardio

sixty six ray would pile out and run to the local library to see that they were you were having any of 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 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 was 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 ancient technology when they travel i thought a lot about it in the writing and my dream important on the moon when i was eleven twelve years ago and a great thing happens when i was forty nine years old

and that really hurt 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 that thomas wolfe and dorothea brands but becoming a writer which time bradbury to write quickly passionately anti trust his instincts this relationship with looks and libraries would have a direct influence on his later writings of fahrenheit four five one i'm educating your library i did make it to college and had no money to go to college that god that you can learn more about writing by going to a library and reading ten thousand will be coming aboard though library

substantial important i've learned about the burning of books when i was very young and learn about the brain to build new lines were about 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 an hour of our neighbor in the book by fallen even to love the open to think it will nachos that i was owned by every person in a graduation of ivory ahead right to protect them to buy votes quite natural that burn it or if i was hungry 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 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 wanna rock and it took me forty years the writing and four at the age of twenty four i find the roads of the villages one like which appeared in word to pay fifteen dollars more but by god i thought i turned the corner and become a writer and along the way our water rust plays but i was thirty seven after writing your even years and years and i began to write plays about ireland because i'm a law well marilyn i want to write poetry all my life i belong to poetry club in it will surround one for young women who are great poet and i was allowed a poet and a liar and then the blues won the family leaves right so i was for aging before if i wrote i poured all the radiation and was about football of all things everything you love

well i love running toward career like writing about writing by writing screenplays local knowledge it's really 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 best 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 there is most important thing you can do but find your love for the library maybe is 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 and 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 deaths and mr fowler told his employees to keep an eye out for shoplifters on a warm july day re came into fowler'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 i think you're wrong great right in many ways rather than i felt and i drew every man lot of them are where women were rather than they are but they should learn if you can marry a teacher if you marry a librarian in america for that wonderful photo that they stole my life says all the

things that gene again mike if you're like now my lover and my rent and memorable roar and that they would be a proper woman with a great line by most accounts bradbury was not the prototypical wife of the nineteen forties in a time when whites didn't often work outside the home she was the breadwinner so they're breaking 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 shirt strain called aerosols of all the churches from maus him from a drone paul and from dickens christmas

carol isolate on mars and they go on there because there's just written the book to being burned david forbes and you will destroy the baby body visible to the earth as you know people in the characters because i was 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 the topeka 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 views align what are you doing out walking around in this neighborhood and he was so outraged that has civil liberties could be violated in that manner it has set his imagination into high gear i guess hundreds of things we 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 very odd for a walk one night it was a really a character of the torah called the veterans' stories early in the nineteen fifties and it but the veteran out for a walk one night my typewriter as we turn the corner and hear with this lovely teenage girl coverage that column who lived in a gray world all her own love with books jewelry know that to the

teachers and fire coats she's very and cheered felt all my characters are me i'm on fed and clever use of be at the party and paper the products are all real characters are par right now with the urban come forward and think and i don't need them and when you talk to make a better clocks this tory 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's 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 of the library in oregon to see what was there and it sure there's a tiny room where corona typewriter for ten cents a half hour at the helmsley great pleasure to write this runoff is selling got a big advance and went down

and that moliere that they demanded year was finished as it's a magical story and the fact that he could write really the entire book in nine days i think illustrates ray bradbury's creative process at work and when inspiration catches him ignites him as he will biographer 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 so you're running up and now stars in a fever and 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 mortal ever dare consider the lilies of the field how they grow at hercules was stopped by the giant wrestler and takes takes two to speak the

truth and to speak and another to hear the book finished ray bradbury now said about coming up with the title of their curious about the temperature at which book paper catches for birds psychology 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 the visit a borrower see a nasa news and question that you know so i said that we call the fire department as you have done that first story called out and as for the fire chief and he came on the foreigners who can help erase the yes and know themselves showing a symbol of 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 book off the shelf pages through it picks the

phone back out and tells ray or fire one firm until i revert to ferment for thirty one chavez won't happen so the temperature well done ballantine books published fahrenheit four five one in october nineteen fifty three it met with critical acclaim both in the science fiction crowd and in the more mainstream readership again tanya was bradbury this time already have a built in audience he was popular among science fiction readers and even though science fiction was still kind of looked down upon as a whole genre on bradbury had a solid solid audience so they saw his name on this new novel fahrenheit four

five one and it was a meal you 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 to review 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 looking just a few years back to the past at 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 since early on were being a black all were being questioned were being censored

and on 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 accusations shakedown find us ticket it was sucked into your sources to fund that was neither predict nor could contact felt an immense shouldn't be here on top of everything books from bard is his shoulders his arms his upturned face a book

that 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 their arm and all the russian fur vermont i can only an instant read a lot and what it believed in his mind for the next man as a staffer there with fiery steel time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine he dropped the book immediately another front was on its manteca done nothing is handed down that all his hand with the brain of that some of the content and the curiosity and he's trembling finger at ten feet now replace the book back under his own press to titus winning on it washed out and deal with a magician flourish here innocent look shaken about why did you feel that way out as if you are a farce and he held it close as if you were blind the book slay like great mounds of fishes left to dry them and dance and slipped and fell over them titles glittered their golden ice falling gone 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 it is that's the turning point when it all over again whither gives up her alive you'd rather die than be without them and literally things how could that woman die 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 so maybe i can learn from her how he died or something well a commentary begins to question this society and its

ban on books he began stealing bikes and hiding them throughout his home he even reads poetry out loud to his wife mildred and her bewildered friends eventually melt returns a man a man tag is forced to burn down his own home the great muslim doubt of fire leapt out loud of the book some of them against and stepped into the bedroom and fired twice between advancement of immigrants in the us with more hidden passion in life and he was supposed to play his beekeeper 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 to show that you have here in this empty houses for information would forgive him more withdrawn and quite forgotten a moment and ask for the support of the sultans of the shelf lives matter in britain have been slipped away the census form if there was no solution well that now there was no problem by the fire was best for everything the books about sled to dance like that means a place of regular folks

and then he came to the parliament to review monster slays together white sox and sometimes to be sure the portrait of the three blank walls of the fact of his stout and dismayed and even answering this but since this week he tried to think about that nothing says her perform not a people's trust so that you cannot give those loans and cut off this terrible and that gives an entirely new the bright yellow flowers via the toughest issues on the constitution is really quite finished second and under this 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 was the metaphorically wrong a metaphor that were prevented the total is the motivation that the technology and remark effective than

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 ideas my skates 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 covers troubles and this other fellows charles darwin and this one a schopenhauer and this was einstein 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 we're 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 it's his book about life is a book about death is a book about triumph in the morning when one screwed he wakes up and discovers it's not to leave he can do his life over an incentive a chance and you win for the old man and you're glad the diseases every four was too late that he can change and they can't fully come alive for the first time and fifty years ago 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 it 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 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 interesting level it's what we discover as it wasn't the government that outlawed reading that people chose to stop reading and then the government back them up get the big institutional people have censored themselves and largely through apathy they just didn't care about reading with eight they'd become passive they just won't become the sectors of information and not processors are creators of it and i think the bradbury is largely

suggesting in the nineteen fifties that technology plays a role in this apathy these words are walking and radios our products are our moral code which take your picture with urine that you guys have opposed the true true true thing includes free downloading the song which are rather to make a point and we say we vote you much part timers with the caption reading and we should be more rulings i think what's fascinating about fahrenheit is that ray bradbury's a man who didn't know the television until the mid nineteen fifties but yet he was writing about them forewarning us about the impending problems television to bring the family he was really a visionary in his

early thirties for young man who everybody dismissed as someone who was a hack when it came to writing about technology his imagination was so singular and its reflected so beautifully in this book i think he really conceded this man was really seeing in a lot of things about the power of books and the threat of silencing free speech all these different things he was addressing in this book 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 internet 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 seven with all that i'm on my wife and my three daughters that the mom and regretting that where we can we've invited report about ruby a return of that and there was sherlock holmes and was over with a great way to begin was that they were provoked by it rocco tonight though we want to have something to do with primitive tv in those days there will movie that we loved so we began on that stage of mark that you might think and we even go through very prim the budget with part of clinical way 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 tv know you gotta learn to look at these patients that have all movie it the turner louisiana all the time because they felt that ireland about three years old and fixtures over twelve years all 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 book blog movie stars who drink too much and dryer badly to have an hour of every day paying attention to her and she'd not work pay attention to the reality that within those patients got not surprisingly ray had even harsher words for reality tv and the producers of those programs and you're really an incredibly thin film to provoke you and

frankfurt screenwriter the fever to people we don't leave and rewriting and re of ideas they have no respect for writers and they have no respect for intellect though they let a bunch of strange people one or all so i really think that we've got again tanya was look at what little we get to watch on television these days there's a survivor the bachelor they're all these reality shows that revolve around people and the sort of falsified relationships which are substituting for television that makeshift bay a lot of what bradbury imagines in this work of young science fiction has really come to pass if you look around the library ipods everyone's got these little headphones crammed in their ears as they're staring at a computer screen or they've got their headphones punch at the computer and checking their cell phones and they're emailing

every instant messaging in fact the modern day i pod is eerily reminiscent of the seashells bradbury describes in fahrenheit four five one personalized in your radios that allow you did to now the world around you the music was almost like that so he could follow the tune and more than two years the literacy shows the thimble radio's tennis tight and an electronic ocean the sound of music and talk and music and talk coming and coming in on the short run something and the room was indeed and every night the waves came in and for her off on the great tyson sound floating or why i've poured morning and what does ray bradbury think of ipods it would be better if we were better live twenty years of every ten rock group or your four year of the river there are no it's been great

to the wrong with the iraq through the proper fair an unproven need forty years ago but the margin that no american that those plumes of all new moms barbara have ever have proposed to include in the movie mud 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 i don't think the debate i'm dave davies

on the other side in nineteen sixty two filmmaker francois truffaut purchased the film rights to fahrenheit four five one biographer sam weller says making a movie from this but was a troubled and difficult project he 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 it was very apparent that the regime has not even begun to bow made 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 yet herman said he wanted to avoid the electronically shays which might have been expected in a science fiction film opting for a more traditional orchestration to evoke the futuristic setting this piece which is heard over and over again in the film

uses a large string orchestra was a xylophone to accompany the images of a fire truck racing to another house where mine tag and his crew will deter more contraband the peak times but it's been it's the co equal you know

any in the realm of love the ending of a valid ever very livable people wandering in the road with no more narrowly you know but don't overdo it fb the peak he's

being sued bradbury 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 hands free that that a year ago i remember published so what happened to gene came into the room carrying a copy of one of my books and putting on the role of the teacher in that review and a change that

whether that underwater read that and in the event that long read the third paragraph one third chapter love had to give up in the pritzker rock by robert heinlein or the cat will only and that is that invading and prevent that apple fretted about whether they should get permits you go to a bookstore you go to the library and inspire your prayers and pick up the book and they have to revoke a couple pickup robert online book and read the first debate or go pick up my margin part of cairo and read the third page of that and if you don't like what that background and get someone else like one of the many contemporary science fiction authors influenced by ray bradbury again librarians tiny walls and valerie reek da di ballard's crash takes the whole notion of

a fast fast virtually empty society where you have people who are so passive and so bored with everything that's come at him that in order to have any kind of feeling anymore they have to they have to re enact celebrity car crashes for sexual gratification so that that's the extreme outcome but bribery is suggesting the handmaid's tale years where amartya i would say well what if women couldn't read but man kurd and that's a very interesting premise and valerie has just read the new chuck poli vietnam war when israel to grant still addressing the same themes that breyer agrees getting active for fine wine well so there's that there's so many people on earth that there have to be a night time people in daytime people and you have your license to be on the streets aren't far performing your life's work for your nighttime person and a person it's a

little bit over a riff on crash too because i can people get its rolls with automobile rex and ladies ray bradbury doesn't read many contemporary writers he's still ever races reader that he prefers to revisit classics and old savory also barred from george bernard shaw you the great playwright of the twentieth century paul and me and re reading point and i read the writing no more like they knew and the thought that our university back the iron curtain that we got there four years ago and you were all these books with it oh no the north koreans of elemental and avoid that that brilliant writer who wrote american poetry not surprisingly

some of those old favorites are the ones ray bradbury says he would hide in his house if books were forbidden like they are in fahrenheit four five one and i think i think about beijing's well on a new book about the future and boy was going to say sometimes a new turn and a plague of shakespeare in book form and i today at the age of eighty seven ray bradbury still lives in la and in that car crazy city he has never driven a cart it has a driver but she's never driven a car love that roderick have forgotten almost all the writers that i know that when i was reading it i began writing my team and i thought with a reserve to climb a ten dollars but just embark on that and you and when i was twenty three and twenty three i was like a very dark

week that writing and what i was the thirty two year the army though making only at the work week at weddings you can't park and you had nothing to do with the moral actions and then only when i would love molly the bar car and i bought one for my wife and you know and that was great because women are the worlds you can hear ray bradbury sense of humor and his love of life something that often comes as a surprise to fans of this writer of dystopian society in fact ray maintains his optimism and his ability to see the good in this world the incredible thing about american lived through the fact that we continue to attract immigrants from all over the world live set from mexico that were thinking of three hundred thousand immigrants

from all the country of the world though we're still a great nation where the best nation that never existed all the immigrants who were aware of our private ryan or anyone or india or china or japan where they coming years tracking people are reading and toward the muppet eighth birthday to think about it but should private more ticket i worried that we've come to say we are out of the hundred thousand people are coming here every year following a stroke in nineteen ninety nine and maggie's the death in two thousand three ray bradbury had slowed down a bit but he is still writing there aren't paying same question where you live where you did your idea of a company they only thing happened and damian than other happening i run to the typewriter and i write them oh

my a couple weeks earlier that day after day and realized that we're going to see a move or i got over the blackboard in mourning as the private who took part in the mood i thought it was completely moon and i only read of the typewriter and wrote a poem about the revelation that that really i were the people wonder where i get ideas and they ram into me they come by julie all the time and i movie one thing that has changed since ray bradbury wrote fahrenheit four five one he no longer does his writing in the public library he's got an office in his basement sure there's a typewriter pens paper the telephone and as always lots of books but ray says you'll find other things in his office as well from one family

that i admired by very far at one time or another i like to be the robin by maggie and in three dimensional want to run all my dear objects i like to call it is the lib oratory of his imagination biographer sam weller linda's basement office is just a rack above ideas toy rocket ships rubber godzilla was symbols that he would look out metaphors you would tell you that to ignite is imagination you could look at them symbols from his past to start a crime it's his followers hacked his old stetson hat hangs above his desk masks he had collected in mexico while on a trip there in the nineteen forties are strewn about hanging up and gifts he'd received from fans every letter has ever been sent from fans are kept on there and you can go through it i found a letter i wrote to him as a child down there in the book in november two thousand the national book

foundation gave ray bradbury their highest honor the medal for distinguished contribution to american letters in giving him this award the national book foundation issued this statement mr bradbury is life's work has proclaimed the incalculable value of reading the perils of censorship and of vital importance of building a better more beautiful future for ourselves and our children what better honor for this self educated lover of books and reading and to be recognized by the national book foundation for his own contribution to the world of literature we can keep your prisons with this final passage from fahrenheit four five one as seed of hope as guy montag and that exiles began their journey back to society today was writing all about them as voting plant had been given moment there was a long morning's walk into an end if the

men were silent it was because there was everything to think about unmatched remember perhaps later in the morning when the sun was up and warned them they would begin to talk to say the things they remembered to be sure they were there to be absolutely certain that things were safer what i felt a slow server it's a slow some and when it came his turn quickly say quickly off on a day like this to make the trip a little easier to everything there is a season yes time to break down and the time to build yes a time to keep silence in a time speaking yes all that but what else something and on either side of the river with their tree of life which they're twelve men are fruits and you had her from everyone in the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations yes that's the one every part of the remark that kind of work you're doing and i deeply appreciate my love to all of you

that we love that we're importing you've been listening to kate pr presents the degree of fahrenheit four five one by ray bradbury the degree that is a joint program of the national endowment for the arts and the tpp as shawnee county public library ray bradbury spoke via telephone to a live audience at the library on june seventeen two thousand seven additional source material was provided by the national endowment for the arts the recording engineer was jason slow i'm kate mcintyre kbr present is a production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas these are nice

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