Remembering Ray Bradbury

pbr prisons remembering ray bradbury i'm jane mcintyre science fiction and fantasy writer ray bradbury passed away this week at the age of ninety one his writing career spanned seven years and included hundreds of short stories almost fifty books and numerous poems as safe operas and screenplay one of its best known and most influential works was fahrenheit or five one is nineteen fifty three masterpiece about five months head or fire men in a dystopian society where firefighters in two thousand seven the topeka shawnee county public library hosted a big green project and fahrenheit four five one with discussion groups are showing of the nineteen sixty six film version and a telephone 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 rang across the miles and filled the room that interview is easily one of the highlights of my six

years of doing this today we remember ray bradbury with a repeat of the two thousand seven k pr present 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 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 the guests tawny county public library today on katie our prisons will take a look at fahrenheit four five one and hear from ray bradbury in a phone interview recorded live at the topeka sunny 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 to be someone who was involved in the an active 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 rollercoaster it's fast and it's furious and the narrative move and of the story is both cinematic in its it's been ripping 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 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 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 bono 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 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 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 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 any when i was in nineteen twenty three and i've got a lot more women becoming a hunchback the launch it in the phantom of the opera and i've even more completely and movies that i thought that apartment because there was a lack of all the other parts of the department i think most i wrote her employer about that at bars there you

go when he was fourteen the 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 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 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 ancient technology

when they travel i thought a lot about it in the top image that frightening 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 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 brands but 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'm educating a library that did make it to college and had no money to go to college

that god that you can learn more about riding by going to a library and reading ten thousand will be coming aboard though library is so important i learned about the burning of books when i was very young and learn about the brain the vote in large group of alexandria five thousand years ago and i thought how terrible and then i thought of the brain were both in the streets the room environment but hitler and our of our neighbor in the book by fallen even to allow the open to think it will nachos that i was on my reports the graduate from the barbary ahead right to protect them to buy votes quite natural that burn it or if i was written 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 not writing and four at the age of twenty four i find a row of the one the 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 riding near the years and years and i began to write plays about ireland because our 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 would allow the poor and a

liar and then the those wonderful live is that correct though i was foraging report i wrote i poured all the radiation and without football look all things everything you love well i love running toward fair like writing about writing plays about writing screenplays or 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 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 there is most important thing you can do but find your love for the library and 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 rate 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 a memorable we're going to play a cure though and i thought of a few very bright in many ways rather than i felt a night or every man lot of member of play ruined were rather than they are but they should learn you could get married teacher

if you marry a librarian in america for that wonderful hotel that they stole my lies along the things that gene the game it you're like now my lover and my rent and memorable roar of bad that they leave 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 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 wrote a short story called the exiles of

all the churches from maus him from a grown paul and from dickens christmas carol isolate on mars and they go on there because they're anxious to read the book to be burned david brooks and you will destroy the baby body visible to the burger as usual 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 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 can be violated in that manner itches 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 op for a walk one night it was a really a character story called the reasons that stories early in the nineteen fifties and it but the veteran out for a walk one night my typewriter and they turned the corner and

there was this lovely teenage girl coverage but callan i live in a dream world all her own love with books jewelry 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 that party favor the philosopher all these characters are par right now with that and let them come forward and think and i don't need them and when you talk to make it better 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'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 a

basement library in oregon she was there and discovered there was a tiny room we've run a typewriter for ten cents a half hour and the helmsley great place to write the rafters so and got a big advance and went down and they're molded and 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 in the road that are included in the novel about dreaming

dreams no more to consider the lilies of the field how they grow they'd hercules was stopped by the giant wrestler and takes takes two to speak the truth and to speak and nobody here the book financed ray bradbury now said about coming up with the title of their curious about the temperature at which book paper catches for birds so i called ucla the chemistry department i said could you tell me and what temperature the book paper catches fire numbers they didn't know they called a visit to borrowers see a nasa news and question that you know so i said doubly call the fire department as you have done that first story called out time and as for the fire chief and he came on foreigners who can help erase the yes and know the cells showing a symbol of like find out and

what temperature paper catches fire and burns is it weaker ray could hear the chair of the fire chief roll back that she pulled a book off itself pages through it picks the phone back out and tells ray or fire one firm and they revert to ferment for five and so that's how it happened 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 this is andrea 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 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 does 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 and so they 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 accusations shake down a fine doesn't get it was sucked and then also says they found that it was neither predict nor could contact felt an immense shouldn't be here on top of everything books from cardiff 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 fires still 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 song with a conscience and the curiosity and he's trembling finger had turned feet now replace the book back under his own press to titus winning aunt 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 drive the men dance and slipped and fell over them titles glittered their golden ice falling dollar 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 right 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 will and i thought if you

care about so much fury about the book the most recently in them that i can see but right now i wouldn't lie for anyone i would like for anything so maybe i can learn from her how he died for something slowly begins to question this society and its ban on books he began stealing but and hiding them throughout his home he even reads poetry out loud to his wife mildred and her bewildered friends eventually mildred turns a man on man tag is forced to burn down his own home the great muslim doubt of fire leapt out loud the book some of them eventually 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 just because he wants to change everything for charity vince been in the dining room the silverware investigations everything to show that you've lived here in this empty houses for information with a different wig on

and quite forgotten a moment and ask for the support of the sultans of the five cents remember that have been slipped away the census twenty years there was no solution well that now there was no problem by the fire was best for everything else about the book selected 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 levels of the fact of his detention has made and even answering this but since this week he tried to think about the bathroom upon the economic upheaval is so the facts and not in jerusalem you cut off its a terrible emptiness that gives an entirely new the bright yellow flowers and five positions on the issue is when you 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 tone of the motivation for at the end of technology now mark effective than all that which didn't work quite correctly so and then having people with killing people and technology are killing people i thought that was a rather interesting idea one tag its gates 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 me jonathan swift off of that evil political book covers travels 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 this is a 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 and then some of their chance and you win for the old man and you're going to be is discovered before it's too late that he can change and they can't

fully come alive for the first time and fifty years liver damage 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 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 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 these words are walking and radios ipod are our moral code which take your picture with urine that you guys have opposed the true true true thing includes free downloading songs which are robert a reactionary

point and we say we vote you much part timers with the caption reading and we could 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 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 we all at the mom my wife and my three daughters that the mom and we're cramped in that for weeks and we've invited variety a return of i mean there

was sherlock holmes and was over with a great way to begin what's next they're 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 marquette 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 like and i'll learn to look at these patients that have all moving itunes those big guys about when i was 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 because they forgot to working with the unions both <unk> stars who drink too much and dr bradley has 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 places 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 i don't think the debate i'm dave davies guy

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 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 it was very apparent that the regime has not even begun to bow made with having the women's row american bode 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 have very well play and i enjoy the character of mama tried and it's the way he was detected 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

the peak times but it's been just a week week you know ending in the realm of love the ending of a velvet overlay or people wandering in the world the

no you know but don't go in the peak to peak 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 there are science fiction 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 history the fifth year ago i remember published so what happened to the dream came into the room carrying a copy of one of my books and putting on the role of the teacher in that review and interview that whether that underwater read that and then they read the third paragraph one chapter of it to get up and read the pritzker rock by robert heinlein argued that

the law only and that is that invading and prevent the battle rages about whether they should get permits you go to a bookstore you go to the library and inspire your brother's you pick up the ball and they have to revoke a bold pick up robert online book and read the first page or go pick up my margin part of bio and read the first page of that and his ally what that back down and get someone else like one of the many contemporary science fiction authors influenced by ray bradbury again librarians tiny wells 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 yet the handmaid's tale years where omar benson 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 align your novel brand still addressing the same themes that bribery is getting at in four five wine for sure there is a 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 or a car performing your life's work for your nighttime daytime person it's a little bit over a refined crash too because that i can

people get its rolls with automobile racks 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 playwrights of the play band three ball and we don't we really point and i read the writing or more like they knew and the thought that our university back the iron curtain fellow or forty years ago and you were all to go with it oh no the north korean of elemental and avoid that from that brilliant writer a row of 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 of a page you are on a new book about the future and boy was going to say sometimes and you'll learn to play that 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 writers have forgotten that we write a monthly in climate ten dollars but just embark on that and you and when i was twenty three and twenty because 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 buy a car 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 children and that was great because women are the world is yours 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 b 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 like that from mexico that were played in three hundred thousand immigrants from all the country of the world though we're still a great

nation were the revelations of every three years 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 three 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 has slowed down a bit but he is still writing there are things that question where you live where you get your idea of a company they only thing happened and damian than either happening i run to the typewriter and i write them oh my the couple with their own day after day and realized that we're going to see a move or i got over the blackbird in mourning as the private

who took part in the mood i thought it was completely new and i'd really rather the typewriter and wrote a poem about the revelation that that really i were the people wonder where i get ideas and they ran into the they collide with me all the time and i you're listening to an encore presentation of a pr prisons from two thousand seven in remembrance of ray bradbury who passed away this week at the age of ninety one i'm kate mcintyre and now a remembrance of bradbury john tibbets associate professor of film and media studies at the university of kansas a ten year old boy still lives inside ray bradbury impatiently scuffling running teasing provoking and challenging the man he has become similarly ray's own literary children

including some of the first stories he ever wrote still cry out to him and demand to be recognized now half a century later they're not through with him yet and he is not through with them either memory and meth are like that shape changing with the guests and eddies of history's cross weapons i wrote those words in nineteen ninety seven as i prepared an interview article and ray bradbury's newest book publication from just returned at the time ray and i were driving through the plaza in kansas city missouri our way west to the university of kansas we had just visited the thomas hart benton murals at the nelson atkins museum he had expressly wanted to see them now fifteen years later and just a few days after his death at age ninety one i remember moments like that and still find myself applauding the present tense re always lived in the present tense in the more than forty years of our friendship

which saw his visits to my home in kansas city my many visits to his home in los angeles car sharing the podium together at several science fiction conventions during his work on spaceship earth at disney's deadly e d facility in burbank many interviews a continuing correspondent he was never less than present always in the moment until the next and the next even today i still believe in that present that presence but what is there to say about him that hasn't been remembered expounded celebrated analyze critiqued and talk to death all this time well i can merely offer up some thoughts of my own about some of the things i learned about him perhaps not so well now but to begin with in a half century of writing fantasy science fiction and satire ray bradbury has taken us on a safari to have to run a source rex crouch among the mummies in the catacombs beneath mexico city chase demons in a midwestern carnival midway

resurrect ghosts in the hollywood back lots sprint for dublin streets and colonize mars we met firemen burned books vampires who worked in mortuary as robots look like grandmother's and space men who trailed the son of god from planet to planet ray bradbury is his own macrocosm and microcosm by turns touching the sun and probing at his own bones is more than thirty books including dar carnival the martian chronicles fahrenheit four vive la and the illustrated man dandelion wine something wicked this way comes and more recently from dust returned along with dozens of plays and screenplays hundreds of poems and many consultancies a city planner and disney epcot designer well they are all known to millions all over the world so we're like a man ray bradbury had many good companions in his lifetime kindred spirits beckoning muses i'm not referring to his contemporaries necessarily

the friends and relatives like his beloved aunt in the fir back in waukegan illinois or cartoonist charles addams or illustrate joe's of mainly about all of whom i've written elsewhere and i don't necessarily cite the great catalog of literary references which is celebrated so frequently and enthusiastic from the john carter adventures in launching these movie grotesques during his youth to the weird tales coterie of robert e howard and hp love craft during his apprentice days and the walt disney louis mumford and his later years a public celebrity no i speak here of three other men the filmmaker a writer a composer who he certainly never met but who are no less noted in the bradbury pantheon of heroes we sometimes know ourselves by knowing our heroes and inciting them i believe i'm further defining bradbury himself to begin with there is the great swashbuckling or douglas

fairbanks sr he was raising eternal youth his peter pan douglas was raise middle name bradbury boasted about the connection and not only signed all three names to my own biography affair banks but he always did the same in the more than forty years of our correspondents maybe that was because he knew of my own lifelong research into for banks or maybe it was his own code for the fleet boyd spirit he followed in the fee for baghdad and robin hood and there with gilbert keith chesterton gilbert was raise every man his job grappling with an elusive got an immense and curious apostle of logic and lunacy who haunted british letters until his death in nineteen thirty seven chesterton turned the world upside down and space inside out with his paradox now i had no inkling of ray's enthusiasm for him until one day i spot on his bookshelves a number of gestures in volumes the moment was like a stroke of lightning of course

how could these men not be bound at the hip many happy conversations followed exchanges back and forth about the poetry of both a particular love chesterton's ballad of the white horse the father brad detective stories and questions about those famous paradox it's just who or what was the character of somebody in the man who was thursday third was the great french composer hector berlioz another bolt from the blue mighty hector was raised barbarian at the gate breathing fire and brimstone race chance reference one day to the great romantic firebrand pricked my attention in every x plus jewish in an exclamation point raid matched their wails his volcanic outbursts the cannon fire explosive rhetoric of the simply fantastic and harold in italy brave new barely else's forays into science fiction to in particular that strange story of a mechanized the city of the future you see in some their baseline project

trees were those of ray's flights to mars the sun and beyond they sang together their parents to almost pagan youth and nurtured the spirit of the boy a man who would never grow old at least onscreen and on the page just rich and sturdy optimism was the smile with which will halloway defeated <unk> dark and leo asked mom built his happiness mixing but when the smile turned upside down we had just hit and gargoyles and bradbury's often people significantly they growled and a grand almost interchangeable moreover chesterton search for god on earth was like raise search for christ on the planet mars they shared the divine paradox of divinity and spirituality imminent in the dust of men indeed i like to think that because of chesterton's topsy turvy insights and spiritual quest he knew bradbury better than reagan himself

now if you insist quite rightly that they never met then read chesterton's nineteen eleven novel man alive and you will see in print the best portrait anyone ever did or ever will execute a bragger as for barely else's bursts of energy well just try to avoid one of ray's big bear hugs like the blare of barely else's brash trombones those hugs come at you from everywhere at once was your daily dose of mr bradbury shouted loved and hated at the tops of their voices together they plunged into the hell of the damnation of faust and wrote the infernal merry go round of something wicked this way comes indeed they were the children of fast outsiders ever loper is damned and exalted i have no doubt the grays early story the homecoming is his own damnation offense evoking a yearning for a dark sublime that would never be satisfied writers filmmakers composers all they were not in the business of shrinking from

life or from themselves i have sometimes wondered how it was that a man like ray with little formal education managed to acquire his experience in love with a seemingly remote influences like these so apart from the more familiar fantasy worlds of weird tales or the hard realities of space travel maybe it's because douglas and gilbert and hector we're like ray also died at sea they're deployed they're equal opportunity enthusiasms and the never ending search for youth god and the devil and some conclusion when i bid farewell to the earthly remains of my friend i want to say simply goodbye rain weekend katie our concerns with this final passage from fahrenheit four five one seed of hope as diamond head and the 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 in tillman and if the men were silent it was because there was everything to think about it much remember perhaps later in the morning when the sun was up and warmth and he would begin to talk to save 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 summer and when it came his turn quickly say what could be off on a day like this to make the trip a little easier to everything there is a season yes a 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 a new litter for every mode and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations yes that's the one that remark kind of work you're

doing and a deeply appreciative and a lot of you that we love that we're there for 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