Russell Kirk Was Right About Ray Bradbury and Bradbury About Kirk

     When two great men of letters exchange letters, and form a friendship, it is of importance and we should take note.  Currently Kirk and Bradbury scholars are at work exchanging some of this material and it will be available in the years to come.  In this blog I'll share some of Bradbury's and Kirk's written thoughts about each other.  
     I actually started reading Ray Bradbury several years ago as the result of reading some positive remarks that Bradbury made about Russell Kirk.  On the back of the dust jacket of Ancestral Shadows (2004 Eerdmans), Ray Bradbury is quoted as saying, "For too many years Russell Kirk, almost like the title of this book, remained half seen in the American Literary scene. It is time his critics and readers brought him out into full light.  He deserves to be considered a fine writer and an amazing thinker in literature and politics." Bradbury was certainly right about Russell Kirk.
     If you would like to read longer and extremely insightful comments Russell Kirk made about Ray Bradbury, then track down a copy of Enemies of the Permanent Things, 1988, where Kirk has much good to say of Bradbury among an otherwise bleak analysis of the literary landscape of that moment.  
     With the passing of Bradbury, many fans and admirers speak of his immortal place among the writings of science-fiction.  However, Kirk more accurately gets at the truth of things when he moves beyond genre and says, "Bradbury is not writing about the gadgets of conquest; his real concerns are the soul and the moral imagination."  
     Characterizing both the writings and the life of Ray Bradbury, Kirk poetically affirms that 
"The love of life burns brighter in Ray Bradbury than in any other man of letters I have known--except, possibly Roy Campbell."  It is also worth observing that this same love of life burns bright in the ghost stories of Russell Kirk. Indeed, it is this love of life that I have found in the fiction of Kirk and Bradbury that moves me personally to love life and to live it more fully.  Fiction that celebrates the good, the true, and the beautiful is a most worthy guide in assisting us in living.  Fiction that celebrates life (even ghostly Gothic stories) is a way of seeing and understanding the world that we live within and can help shape the moral imagination to live well and fully.