Ray Bradbury: A Love Story

I have always adored Ray Bradbury, both as a writer and a person. He is one of my greatest inspirations. It is not so much that I want to write "like" Ray Bradbury; it's more like, I want to tap into that same boundless enthusiasm with which he tackles each new project, and life itself.

My first Ray Bradbury story, although I didn't know it, was read to my class in the first or second grade. It's strange, though, because I can't seem to imagine Mrs. Heaney or Mrs. Leonhart reading that kind of story to a classroom. Did we have a sub that day? I don't remember. But I am certain that the first time I became aquainted with the story, I heard it.

It was about a girl whose parents take her to live on Venus. Venus is very different, covered so heavily in clouds that one can barely see the sun. And the little girl misses the sun on earth. She describes it to the other kids, how it shined like a copper penny in the sky, and the others, having never seen the sun, do not believe her. She is ridiculed and shunned, and she becomes very lonely and sad. Then one day everyone is told that a special day is coming up: every 70 years (I think it was 70) Venus passes close enough to the sun to burn off the clouds for an afternoon. Everyone will get to see the sun for the first time. And the little girl looks forward to it terribly. But that day, the other hateful children lock her in the closet as a joke. The sun comes out, and in their excitment, they forget about her, and play all afternoon in the glorious sunshine. Only later, after the sun has disappeared, do they remember, and she is set free, not to see the sun for another 70 years.

When the teacher finished reading, I was weeping. What a horrible, horrible story! How could they read us such a horrible story! I was shaken, but I never forgot it.

Years passed and I got to know Bradbury's works mostly through movies: The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, Something Wicked This Way Comes. All strange, all disturbing. But they intrigued me. I read some of his short stories in high school.

While attending Gavilan College, Bradbury himself came to visit and gave a guest lecture in the theatre. He was marvelous! His energy filled the room. He spoke about writing: he said the first 100,000 words are crap, but you have to write them anyway, write them and throw them away and then keep writing, because that's when you get to the good stuff. He spoke about the space program: how one day, people with disabilites should be able to travel into space and then send their wheelchairs and crutches flaming down through the atmosphere, free at last from the gravity that holds them down. He told the story of his life. Later, I stood in line with other people, older and seemingly far more important than myself, to shake Bradbury's hand. I think I was the youngest person there. When he got to me, he didn't just shake my hand and move on after a few polite words; he stood there and he talked to me for almost 20 minutes. I had been reading a book about the movie Moby Dick--some random biography I had pulled off the library shelf--and there he was in the book: he had been the screenwriter and so figured prominently in the story of the film's creation. So we spoke of that and writing and ... who knows? What did he see in me that day? Because I found I had met a truly generous and gracious man.

When I worked at Hartnell College, the drama department put on a staged production of Something Wicked This Way Comes. Bradbury was supposed to attend, but was sick and had to decline at the last minute. I believe it was the first staged production of that particular script. He had worked on the play for them and had specifically given them permission to perform it. They did a magnificent job, and I was very pleased to have been there to witness it.

More years went by and I found myself reflecting on that story I had heard so long ago. By that time I had read more Bradbury and knew his style and suddenly I knew-- I knew in the way you know something in your gut to be true-- I knew it was a Bradbury story. And I went looking for it. I didn't know the name of the story until I opened a book of his collected works and read the table of contents. And there it was: "All Summer in a Day." And I knew without looking it was that horrible wonderful story. Because I knew by this time that the best stories are the ones that rock you to your core, the ones that you can never forget. I stood in the store and I read the story again. And I wept. I had remembered the sun shining like a copper penny. I had remembered the little girl locked in the closet while the other children played. But I had forgotten that at the end of the story, the little girl's parents had taken her back to earth. She did not have to wait to be an old woman before she saw the sun again. She had gone home.

I bought the book.

More years passed, and here I was in college again, this time at San Jose State. Somehow or other I learned through the grapevine that Bradbury's official biographer would be interviewing him via phoneline at Le Petit Trianon Theatre in San Jose. (Little did I know it at the time, but when I walked through those doors, I was walking into my place of future employment.) So I went, very happy to hear him again, if not see him. The ushers passed out slips of paper for questions. Me, being the stunning little English major that I am, asked him to comment about a paper I was writing. I had found-- I thought -- some very interesting connections between Bradbury and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, both in their life stories and in their writing. I had been comparing and contrasting Bradbury's "Uncle Einar" and Marquez's "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" and had found some fascinating resonances. I don't know what I was expecting-- I really didn't expect a huge reaction or for him to be impressed in any way-- maybe give me a pat on the head for being studious, something like that. Instead, he made a passionate exclamation that it was absolute rubbish and that he hated Marquez for his politics! The audience laughed, and I laughed, too, because I love the man and he is welcome to think anything he likes. (But I still believe there are some undeniable similarities between the two of them, whether he likes it or not!)

A few more years went by. Now I'm in grad school at SJSU. I'm working in the theatre, Le Petit Trianon, for The Steinway Society. Commonwealth Club, which hosts many author events, including the previous Bradbury event, share offices with us in the building. And I hear through the grapevine that Ray Bradbury will be interviewed via video at Sequoia High School, in the theatre, in Redwood City. So off I go on another adventure.

I arrived a little bit late; the theatre was already dim, but I could see, once again, I am still the youngest person there. Bradbury was already speaking. His face was projected on a massive screen that filled the stage. It must have been 50 feet high. He is ancient now, not quite as spry as when I met him 20 years ago. But the sparkle in his eye is still there, and he speaks passionately about his true loves: books, movies, dinasaurs, spaceships, people, life itself.

He told all his best stories.

He told how he hated school, but loved books, and that libraries gave him the best education he ever had. When he learned of the burning of the Library of Alexandria, it was one of the saddest things he had ever heard. And then he heard of Hitler burning books, and later Russia, too. And that was the impetus for Fahrenheit 451. He recalled how he had finished the book, but did not yet have a title, and so phoned around to various places to find out the temperature at which books caught fire and burned. He called the chemistry department at UCLA. They didn't know. He called the Physics department. They didn't know either. And then he thought, Of course! The fire department! And sure enough, they knew. He first sold the story in installments to a young editor of a brand new magazine called Playboy. (He says that you gentlemen out there have him to thank for stacks under your beds, because he contributed to its success!)

His theme for the evening was Love: Do what you love and love what you do, and the rest will take care of itself. Again and again he gave examples from his own life of how he had thrown himself completely and passionately into the things that he loved, and somehow, things always managed to work out for the best. Maybe not always perfectly, but he had no regrets.

He told how he had met John Huston. Bradbury asked to buy him a drink and gave him a copy of his book and said that he hoped Huston would love his book as much as Bradbury loved his movies, and if he did, he hoped they could work together one day. Later, Huston wrote Bradbury and said, "You're right. I do want to work with you. How would you like to write the screenplay to Moby Dick?" Bradbury said, "I'll do it!" He struggled with the script for eight months, and then finally one morning he woke up and looked at himself in the mirror and said, "You ARE Melville!" and sat down and finished the script that day. When he took the script to Huston, Huston was all set to roll camera. He asked, "How did you do it?" and Bradbury replied, "You're looking at Herman Melville, but you better look fast because he'll be gone in a few minutes!"

He told how he met Walt Disney, wandering through a store in Disneyland. He saw Disney and went up to him and said, "I love your movies!" And Disney said, "I love your books!" Bradbury said, "That's wonderful! Can I buy you lunch?" And Disney said, "Tomorrow?" They had lunch the very next day and spoke of movies and books and everything they loved. Years later, Bradbury was invited to help design the Spaceship Earth section of Epcot Center, which he proudly described as "a world's fair that never has to be torn down."

He told how he gave a script called Dark Carnival to Gene Kelly. Kelly was thrilled and wanted to make the movie. He took it to every producer in Europe but couldn't get funding. He returned it sadly to Bradbury, but Bradbury said, "It's okay, Gene, you tried." Later, he reworked the script into the novel Something Wicked This Way Comes.

He told how when his wife was two months pregnant with their first child, he was invited to New York. At that time he was writing short stories for $30 a story, just struggling along. He went to publisher after publisher-- no one wanted him because he wrote short stories, not novels. Finally, he met with one publisher at Doubleday, coincidentally also named Bradbury, who said, "Maybe you have written a novel and don't even know it." He asked him to write an outline putting all his martian stories together and The Martian Chronicles was born. Bradbury received $700. Then the publisher said, "Maybe you have another novel that you don't know about." They talked further about his other stories and The Illustrated Man was born on the same day. And another $700. Bradbury went home $1400 richer with enough money to pay for their the birth of their first child.

Story after story after story. The man is full of stories. How he remembers being born; how he memorized a Lon Chaney movie when he was three and proved it at 20 by reciting the whole thing from memory to his friends before they went in to see the picture together; how he met Mr. Electro at 13 who changed his life. Mr. Electro was circus/sideshow magician who told Bradbury he would live forever. He's still with us, so it looks like he just might do it! Mr. Electro also told him that he had been his best friend in a former life, that he had died in his arms in a field in France and now here he was back again. It loses something in translation. When Bradbury tells the story, you really believe it.

And he's still going! He has so many projects. He's set on seeing a monorail built to cross the country. He absolutely believes we will return to the moon, and visit Mars and Alpha Centaurii, and beyond, because that is our destiny. We're going to live forever.

And, yes, I wept through the whole thing, and laughed through my tears. I don't know about the rest of us, but Bradbury will live forever. He most definitely will.

Current mood: Elated

Current music: Pan's Labyrinth soundtrack