Ray Bradbury's passing didn't go unnoticed by me. It just came on the heels of so many important icons in my life transiting out that I have needed the time to "process". I guess when one hits one's fifties it is natural to lose "the elders" in large swatches. The mown meadow of my young adulthood now ploughed under completely...(Like all "ploughed fields", one's life--my life--begins to look cold; bleak and barren; somewhat hopeless. However, as with all ploughed fields, it is only the time of waiting for a new abundance. New life-force--or the old life-force, transformed.)
I taught Ray Bradbury at the also-passed-over UCI Farm Elementary School when I was teaching their eldest students language arts. I was allowed much freedom of choice as Head Teacher and my choices included whole novels by American Masters. No "excerpts" spread out like a potluck dinner--but real feasts of literature taken from the pantry of time. Ray Bradbury was one of my contemporary American authors. His works were excellent choices.
When I was in sixth grade I came upon SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES. It mirrored the darker side of my own hometown. It delighted me; made me feel as if someone, somewhere "got" what I intuited about life--what I saw around me. It was especially delicious that good overcame the evil and that kids were at the heart of the story. It was also wonderful that however dark things seemed, there was no pettiness in Bradbury's writing. If someone or something was evil, they were very evil and a reader could understand the malevolence of the matter. No cute and cutting commentary nor sly put-downs in his writing. If you were bad you were really bad and we all knew it. If you were good it was often a bit more complicate, but still, no mean spirited asides slipped between the lines.
I loved that. I still love it. (There is far too much meanness around. Far too much petty judgments and in-accurate diagnoses of people's character.)
The next book I discovered by Bradbury was DANDELION WINE. For me, it remains his masterpiece. Though now very dated (it almost qualifies as a historical novel of Americana), the intense plotline could have been written today. In the details of the lives of the characters, also led by children, a whole world is born. Generations grow, thrive, wither and pass. There is Spirit and there is Wonder in every house on every street--some of it is frightening. Well titled, I often feel tipsy after I re-read this novel. It is so rich and satisfying...It also is American English at its best. The purity of the words fill one's mind forever. It is the perfect "forgotten classic" that all Teachers should assign, discuss and thoroughly digest with their classes. It was a big hit at the Farm School--with kids as well as parents who picked up the novel after their children were asleep.
FARENHEIT 451 is most often the go-to book we all meet in High School or college lit classes. It is Bradbury's take on a society who begins to burn its own books. While it is interesting and well written, as are all his novels, I find it less realized than other books about a crippled future.
I preferred 1984 and ANIMAL FARM--who also occupy the niche of "holocaust novels". But most people read FARENHEIT 451 and feel its force for years.
When I moved to Laguna Beach, in the 1980's, their primary bookstore was FARENHEIT 451. Many hundreds of hours spent in those stacks are somehow bundled into my Bradbury experience and I am forever grateful. I often suggested older students, still hungry for more Bradbury, go on to the MARTIAN CHRONICLES and THE ILLUSTRATED MAN. Beyond those collections I let the young readers find their own paths to the Master.
Sometimes those paths led them to the living, fleshly man: Bradbury often gave readings and invited local schools to them. Whether it was an adult audience at a book signing in L.A. or an auditorium of students hanging on to his every word, Ray Bradbury was always witty; erudite; generous. He never failed to talk to his fans after the event--nor to sign whatever they brought for him to sign. Often, I noticed, it would be battered, duct-taped copies of his early work; DANDELION WINE one of the contenders. (That never failed to make me smile. Like I knew a secret and had met a fellow traveler--though we might both be slipping through, disguised...)
Bradbury was idyosyncratic as any of us who find ourselves in the clutch of wordsmithing. He was not perfect. Some trivialized his work as mere fantasy or sci-fi--and not the most technologically correct, at that. Others think of him as one step above a Star Trek writer--not a great American author at all. They are so wrong.
For those of us who really read the man, our lives have been validated; enriched and forever changed for the better. I feel his movement back to the stars.
I feel less because he's gone.
I taught Ray Bradbury at the also-passed-over UCI Farm Elementary School when I was teaching their eldest students language arts. I was allowed much freedom of choice as Head Teacher and my choices included whole novels by American Masters. No "excerpts" spread out like a potluck dinner--but real feasts of literature taken from the pantry of time. Ray Bradbury was one of my contemporary American authors. His works were excellent choices.
When I was in sixth grade I came upon SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES. It mirrored the darker side of my own hometown. It delighted me; made me feel as if someone, somewhere "got" what I intuited about life--what I saw around me. It was especially delicious that good overcame the evil and that kids were at the heart of the story. It was also wonderful that however dark things seemed, there was no pettiness in Bradbury's writing. If someone or something was evil, they were very evil and a reader could understand the malevolence of the matter. No cute and cutting commentary nor sly put-downs in his writing. If you were bad you were really bad and we all knew it. If you were good it was often a bit more complicate, but still, no mean spirited asides slipped between the lines.
I loved that. I still love it. (There is far too much meanness around. Far too much petty judgments and in-accurate diagnoses of people's character.)
The next book I discovered by Bradbury was DANDELION WINE. For me, it remains his masterpiece. Though now very dated (it almost qualifies as a historical novel of Americana), the intense plotline could have been written today. In the details of the lives of the characters, also led by children, a whole world is born. Generations grow, thrive, wither and pass. There is Spirit and there is Wonder in every house on every street--some of it is frightening. Well titled, I often feel tipsy after I re-read this novel. It is so rich and satisfying...It also is American English at its best. The purity of the words fill one's mind forever. It is the perfect "forgotten classic" that all Teachers should assign, discuss and thoroughly digest with their classes. It was a big hit at the Farm School--with kids as well as parents who picked up the novel after their children were asleep.
FARENHEIT 451 is most often the go-to book we all meet in High School or college lit classes. It is Bradbury's take on a society who begins to burn its own books. While it is interesting and well written, as are all his novels, I find it less realized than other books about a crippled future.
I preferred 1984 and ANIMAL FARM--who also occupy the niche of "holocaust novels". But most people read FARENHEIT 451 and feel its force for years.
When I moved to Laguna Beach, in the 1980's, their primary bookstore was FARENHEIT 451. Many hundreds of hours spent in those stacks are somehow bundled into my Bradbury experience and I am forever grateful. I often suggested older students, still hungry for more Bradbury, go on to the MARTIAN CHRONICLES and THE ILLUSTRATED MAN. Beyond those collections I let the young readers find their own paths to the Master.
Sometimes those paths led them to the living, fleshly man: Bradbury often gave readings and invited local schools to them. Whether it was an adult audience at a book signing in L.A. or an auditorium of students hanging on to his every word, Ray Bradbury was always witty; erudite; generous. He never failed to talk to his fans after the event--nor to sign whatever they brought for him to sign. Often, I noticed, it would be battered, duct-taped copies of his early work; DANDELION WINE one of the contenders. (That never failed to make me smile. Like I knew a secret and had met a fellow traveler--though we might both be slipping through, disguised...)
Bradbury was idyosyncratic as any of us who find ourselves in the clutch of wordsmithing. He was not perfect. Some trivialized his work as mere fantasy or sci-fi--and not the most technologically correct, at that. Others think of him as one step above a Star Trek writer--not a great American author at all. They are so wrong.
For those of us who really read the man, our lives have been validated; enriched and forever changed for the better. I feel his movement back to the stars.
I feel less because he's gone.
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