From NPR - with links to audio interviews and more:
Ray Bradbury, author of The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451, died Tuesday. He was 91. Bradbury was known for his futuristic tales — but he never used a computer, or even drove a car.The rest is HERE. Enjoy.
Bradbury was born in Waukegan, Ill., in 1920 and grew up during the Great Depression. He said it was a time when people couldn't imagine the future, and his active imagination made him stand out. He once told Fresh Air's Terry Gross about exaggerating basic childhood fears, like monsters at the top of the stairs.
"As soon as I looked up, there it was, and it was horrible," Bradbury remembers. "And I would scream and fall back down the stairs, and my mother and father would get up and sigh and say, 'Oh, my gosh, here we go again.' "
Bradbury dove into books as a child. Wild tales from authors Jules Verne and H.G. Wells captivated Bradbury — and made him dream of becoming a great author. So he started writing, churning out a short story every week during his teens. After his family moved to Southern California, he would escape to the basement of the UCLA library. There, he'd focus on his craft.
"For 10 cents a half-hour you could rent a typewriter," Bradbury recalled. "And I thought, my gosh, this is terrific! I can be here for a couple hours a day. It'll cost me 30, 40 cents, and I can get my work done."
Bradbury made his mark in the literary world with The Martian Chronicles, a collection of short stories released in 1950. During the height of the Red Scare, he set off a warning flare about censorship with his signature work, Fahrenheit 451 — and he did so in a controversial new magazine: Playboy. The story was later printed as a novel, and in 1966 director Francois Truffaut introduced movie audiences to this bizarre society Bradbury created: one in which firemen burned books to keep the masses completely ignorant but couldn't extinguish their curiosity.
"Fahrenheit 451 is the temperature at which book paper catches fire and starts to burn," explains firefighter Guy Montag.
Oscar-nominated director Frank Darabont wants to bring a new version of Fahrenheit 451 to the big screen. He was inspired by the outlaws in the book — the people who worked desperately to preserve literature and pass wisdom along to future generations. Darabont wants to do just that — deliver this author's lessons to today's youth.
"Bradbury takes us into a journey to the core of the human heart and glories in the potential of humankind," Darabont says. "That's a great message to get at a time in your life when you're looking around and seeing that the world kind of sucks."
A little sadder tonight by his passing, but knowing that I can read his works again on my Kindle.
And so it goes.
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My favorite of his books is 'Dandelion Wine'. I read it first when I was about age 14 and have probably read it ten times since. I still enjoy reading it, it is magical to me.
ReplyDelete@Anonymous: I remember that one, too. It's been decades since I read it. Another to add to the list for the Kindle. Thanks for the visit.
ReplyDeleteAnother great one goes.
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