I was hugely saddened this morning to hear that Ray Bradbury has died. I know, I know, he was 91 and had a marvellous life. But still -- I found myself getting teary upon reading the news. I've loved his work for years and find him inspirational. He wrote every day for nearly 80 years, and shared his belief in words, libraries and paying attention to life in constant, strong terms. He was a unique individual, whose writing has affected me in many, many ways. Just thinking of
the library scene in
Something Wicked This Way Comes gives me shivers. The final line of his short story
Zero Hour completely creeps me out; I still scream a little every time I reread it!
The stories that have stuck with me since I read them in grade school, though, are
All Summer in a Day and
The Pedestrian. They are both short tales but both of them constantly arise in my memory...whenever it's been too rainy for too long, I quote from
All Summer in a Day. Whenever I feel too isolated and think we are all amusing ourselves to death, I think of
The Pedestrian. But there are so many classics...
The Veldt. There Will Come Soft Rains. All of the
Martian Chronicles. His novels:
Fahrenheit 451. Something Wicked. Dandelion Wine. His nonfiction book on writing:
Zen in the Art of Writing. (loved it)
Here's a representative quote that I think shows his writing mettle:
You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.... And what, you ask, does writing teach us? First and foremost, it reminds
us that we are alive and that it is a gift and a privilege, not a
right.
And as for his well-known support for public libraries:
I spent three days a week for 10 years educating
myself in the public library, and it's better than college. People
should educate themselves - you can get a complete education for no
money. At the end of 10 years, I had read every book in the library and
I'd written a thousand stories.
Here, finally, is a quote from Fahrenheit 451, which encapsulates his own legacy, and how I feel about his passing on:
When I was a boy my grandfather died, and he was a sculptor. He was also
a very kind man who had a lot of love to give the world, and he helped
clean up the slum in our town; and he made toys for us and he did a
million things in his lifetime; he was always busy with his hands. And
when he died, I suddenly realized I wasn't crying for him at all, but
for all the things he did. I cried because he would never do them again,
he would never carve another piece of wood or help us raise doves and
pigeons in the backyard or play the violin the way he did, or tell us
jokes the way he did. He was part of us and when he died, all the
actions stopped dead and there was no one to do them just the way he
did. He was individual. He was an important man. I've never gotten over
his death. Often I think what wonderful carvings never came to birth
because he died. How many jokes are missing from the world, and how many
homing pigeons untouched by his hands. He shaped the world. He DID
things to the world. The world was bankrupted of ten million fine
actions the night he passed on.
In honour of all he's written and shaped, here is an hour-long lecture he gave in 2001 all about his writing life. I just watched it last week, enjoying his curmudgeonly individuality. I hope you will find it equally informative and engaging.
Elizabeth Jane Howard was an English writer best known for her quartet of novels about the Cazalet family, set in wartime England. Just two months ago, at age 90, she published volume 5 in this series. She died earlier this week, on January 2.
