I was introduced to Ray Bradbury when a high school girlfriend of mine suggested that we head down to the local Borders where one of her favorite authors was signing books. Having spent most of my high school years with my nose buried in the medievalesque worlds of Tolkien I had not taken much time to venture into the science-fiction realm and had not yet read any Bradbury. I knew he had written the Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451 but it was easy to simply classify him as a sci-fi author and dismiss him. This is a perception which I now fight to mend, but I will talk more on that below.
When we arrived at the Bookstore a modest line had wrapped itself around the side of the building. As it wound its way inside I perused the stacks of books set out for the occasion, deciding that I might as well get a book signed while I was there. The volume I chose was entitled Death is a Lonely Business which I will talk about next week. But some of the volumes that I did NOT choose strangely became some of my most significant experiences of that author.
Past the table of books was a small card table with a white haired, kindly old man in shorts and sitting in a wheelchair. He signed each book with a swift flick of his wrist which I would later discover to be incredibly consistent (keep posted on this) and a surprisingly firm handshake that made him seem genuinely glad that each fan had at some point enjoyed his writing. I received the same signature, the same smile, and the same handshake and I like to think that Bradbury himself had welcomed me into the fraternity of his readers.
There are a number of books of Bradbury's that I have read and own but there are four in particular which define for me the experience of his writing. In no particular order:
Fahrenheit 451: despite Michael Moore's unwelcome intrusion into the signfication of this title, this novel illustrated something that I myself have come to hold more and more dear as our technological world progresses; the preservation of our cultures works of literary art. Bradbury's high expectation for a literary aesthetic is a perspective I have easily adopted first as a book lover and now as a student of literature (in a lecture delivered at my alma mater, Point Loma Nazarene University, just one year before I started there (unfortunate, I know) Bradbury spoke long on how a writer MUST be capable of reading, enjoying, and carrying with him/her the classic works of literature, a form of preparation that is all-to-often ignored in modern writing programs).
Dandelion Wine: Bradbury grew up in the mid-west and in no other work does he share his sense of mid-american nostalgia quite so poigniantly. I can't remember exactly how he did it, but this homogenous collection of stories easily brings a native Generation Y Californian boy into some golden vision of the boyhood of a mid-american member of the Silent Generation. This book embodied nostalgia without the kitsch; it was youth distilled and fed through a typewriter.
From the Dust Returned: I read this book in a single day and though I am not sure how that effected my experiece, it undoubtedly says something about the author's ability to engage his audience. I suppose the only identifiable comparison we could make to the narrative of this novel would be The Addams Family, but only if the Addams lacked silly humor, took pride in their mysterious genealogy, had a proud genealogy, took their relationships seriously, and lived in fear of being forgotten. I could probably devote a whole blog to simply explaining this book but to be brief: imagine if all of the classic movie monsters cohabitated in a spooky old house yet composed a loving family unit while the changing world outside seemed intent on depriving such creatures of the magic that had made them a poignant part of the human imagination.
The Martian Chronicles: If you have ever watched Star Trek you know that science-fiction, while it uses the backdrop of fantastic new worlds and alien races and astounding technology can tell us much more about what it is to be human. The Chronicles does exactly this. Though usually classified as a good spaceship story Bradbury's vision of another planet and what our race may actually do to it makes a particularly embarassing commentary on our own internalized justification of exploitation. I won't do it here but this book has a lot to say about the modern world that some people may do well to examine.
I have only selected a few books of Bradbury's but I hope it is easy to see that merely classifying him as a sci-fi author really does not do the man credit. I wouldn't begin to plase him in a category since each new story of his that I have read seems to explore a new avenue of human experience that may not be as artistic as Joyce or as prolific as Shakespeare but definitely strikes a quiet but rounded chord in my soul.
Interesting addendum:
ReplyDeleteI was taking a look at the Wikipedia article on From the Dust Returned and apparently the stories that ultimately resulted in the book were written in cooperation with Charles Addams before he went on to create The Addams Family cartoons that were published in The New Yorker almost half a century ago.