Why Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine Is a Great Book

     Following the same format as the other blogs striving to make the case to draw select works of Ray Bradbury into the Great Books canon, I remind the reader that on numerous occasions, Mortimer Adler wrote about the criteria that was used to determine which books of all the books written in the West would be placed within The Great Books of the Western World.  Contrary to confusion and many misstatements I've read over the years, Adler says it was essentially three criteria and they are as follows:
1) Contemporary significance - Even though historically valuable, these works address “issues, problems, or facets of human life that are of major concern to us today as well as at the time in which they were written.”
2) Rereadability - These are books “intended for the general reader that are worth reading carefully many times or studying over and over again...indefinitely rereadable for pleasure and profit.”
As I have confessed before in blogs and lectures, I re-read Dandelion Wine every year around the beginning of summer. This has become my habit for the past several years, and it is with ongoing pleasure and intellectual profit that I have done this. In truth, this work is rich in content and form and has enough meaningful ambiguity to sustain numerous readings and a enriching conversation. Additionally, among others that I have discussed this work with on a graduate level, they unanimously agree that it calls them to remember moments from their own childhood.
3) Extensive relevance and something of significance to say about a large number of the 102 great ideas of the thinking and writing done by the authors chosen.
Of the 102 Great Ideas Adler explored, Dandelion Wine touches upon or explores in a meaningful manner the following: Beauty, Being, Cause, Chance, Change, Citizen, Courage, Custom and Convention, Democracy, Desire, Duty, Education, Emotion, Eternity, Experience, Family, Fate, God, Good and Evil, Government, Habit, Happiness, History, Honor, Idea, Immortality, Judgment, Justice, Knowledge, Language, Life and Death, Love, Man, Mechanics, Memory and Imagination, Metaphysics, Mind, Nature, Opinion, Opposition, Philosophy, Pleasure and Pain, Progress, Prudence, Punishment, Quality, Reasoning, Relation, Religion, Sense, Sign and Symbol, Sin, Soul, Temperance, Time, Truth, Virtue and Vice, War and Peace, Will, Wisdom, and World.
Additionally, Adler said that the list of Great Books needed to be regularly reevaluated. With this in mind, I hope that I have made the case for including this novel by Ray Bradbury and including it in the open and extended list Adler proposed.
As with other Bradbury writings, there is often an earlier life or version before the published date. While Dandelion Wine was published in 19 (50 years ago and still in print), there were earlier kernel versions in short stories - "The Electrocution" 1946, "The Black Ferris" 1948, a screen play entitled "Dark Carnival" 1955, another screen play "The Marked Bullet" 1956, as well as an unpublished first-person novel Jamie and Me.
     Dandelion Wine should be read as a companion story to Something Wicked This Way Comes .  Even Bradbury clustered these two stories with Farewell Summer and called these the Illinois trilogy.  
     Whether read as a nostalgic tale of days lost, or a reflection on the wonder of being human and living fully, this is a novel that should be rescued from the middle school reading list and the bin of literary obscurity and given due attention.  Beyond being a masterfully crafted exploration of numerous humane themes, it is a delightful, at times, but ultimately a profound affirmation of being alive.

Why Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles Is a Great Book

     

     On numerous occasions, Mortimer Adler wrote about the criteria that was used to determine which books of all the books written in the West would be placed within The Great Books of the Western World collection.  Contrary to confusion and many misstatements; I've read over the years, Adler says it was essentially three criteria and they are as follows:
1) Contemporary significance - Even though historically valuable, these works address “issues, problems, or facets of human life that are of major concern to us today as well as at the time in which they were written.” While the work is within the genre of science fiction and fantasy, it really explores humane themes much as traditional fiction. In other words, change the setting from Mars to Montana and it still works as a literary masterpiece.
2) Rereadability - These are books “intended for the general reader that are worth reading carefully many times or studying over and over again...indefinitely rereadable for pleasure and profit.”
As I have confessed before in blogs and lectures, I re-read a number of Bradbury's works at specific times of the year as they seem fitting to the season. While The Martian Chronicles is not one part of a seasonal rotation, I have enjoyed this work more than once. Like his other "novels," The Martian Chronicles is rich enough in content and form (think Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath) and has enough meaningful ambiguity to sustain numerous readings and a enriching conversation with another who has read the work. For fans of this work, there is near universal agreement that the ending is that wonderful Bradburian twist that is a hallmark of his writing.
3) Extensive relevance and something of significance to say about a large number of the 102 great ideas of the thinking and writing done by the authors chosen.
Of the 102 Great Ideas Adler explored, The Martian Chronicles touches upon or explores in a meaningful manner the following: Angel, Animal, Astronomy and Cosmology, Beauty, Being, Cause, Chance, Change, Citizen, Courage, Custom and Convention, Democracy, Desire, Duty, Education, Emotion, Eternity, Evolution, Experience, Family, Fate, God, Good and Evil, Government, Habit, Happiness, History, Honor, Idea, Immortality, Infinity, Judgment, Justice, Knowledge, Labor, Language, Law, Liberty, Life and Death, Love, Man, Matter, Memory and Imagination, Metaphysics, Mind, Nature, Necessity and Contingency, One and Many, Opinion, Opposition, Philosophy, Physics, Pleasure and Pain, Poetry, Progress, Prudence, Punishment, Quality, Reasoning, Relation, Religion, Revolution, Rhetoric, Same and Other, Science, Sense, Sign and Symbol, Sin, Slavery, Soul, Space, Temperance, Theology, Time, Truth, Tyranny and Despotism, Universal and Particular, Virtue and Vice, War and Peace, Will, Wisdom, and World.
Additionally, Adler said that the list of Great Books needed to be regularly reevaluated. With this in mind, I hope that I have made the case for including this novel by Ray Bradbury and including it in the open and extended list Adler proposed.
As with other Bradbury writings, there is often an earlier life or version before the published date. While The Martian Chronicles was published in 1950 (63 years ago and still in print), many of the stories were written and published in various sources in the 1940s. Some scholars contend that The Martian Chronicles can, and actually should, be read in thematic relation with Bradbury's Illinois trilogy Something Wicked This Way Comes, Dandelion Wine, and Farewell Summer.  
     The NBC mini-series adaptation in 1979 was sadly flat despite some solid performances and a few great moments. The graphic novel published in 2011, and wonderfully illustrated by Dennis Calero, is really quite good. Additionally, there are plans underway (we know how this often goes) to remake The Martian Chronicles into a major film.
     Whether read as a classic sci-fi tale or a moralistic glimpse into the human condition, this is a novel that should be clustered with the greatest of science fiction and fantasy literature. It is substantially richer in form than most of what passes for sci-fi and fantasy literature. In addition to being a masterfully crafted exploration of numerous humane themes, it is delightful, at times, but ultimately a tale about the glories and pitfalls of being human and the gift of life.

NEXT BLOG: On Reading Philip Rieff or How Tough Sociology Can Help Us Understand Us

Why Ray Bradbury Loved A Christmas Carol

     On more than one occasion, Ray Bradbury was asked about his favorite books. While the answer varied, he consistently spoke of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol. For those who know and love the writings of Ray Bradbury, it makes perfect sense this was a favorite of his. The theme of living is vibrant in many Bradbury works. So Bradbury spoke with great excitement about the scene in A Christmas Carol where the culminating visits of the ghosts moves Ebeneezer, when he realizes that he has another chance, declares, I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future!  The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me.
     As good as the many movie versions may be, there is a texture in the story that is simply missed in the visual interpretations. In this interview (toward the end) Ray Bradbury speaks about his love of this great Christmas story that is a call to live life. While Bradbury says that his own The Halloween Tree is an homage to A Christmas Carol, his short story The Gift is a nice Christmas season story.

Ray Bradbury's From the Dust Returned

     Sadly, only the most dedicated Bradbury fans seem to be aware of this lesser known work. In truth, as with many Bradbury novels, this work consists of short stories woven together to tell a unique tale. Without giving away too much, it is a work that has moments of whimsy and poignancy. There are characters and elements that are early Bradbury in tone and there are items that are the mature, reflective  and even philosophically poetic Bradbury. 
     The story focuses on an Illinois family distinguished by the fact that most are ghosts and other creatures. Two key characters are a mortal child Timothy, and Cecy, a creature hard to describe. While there are numerous great moments and several delightful passages of rich word craft, the scene that was most striking to me was as follows: 
     "Listen, now, let me provide the history of the rising tide of disbelief. The Judeo-Christian world is a devastation. The burning bush of Moses will not fire. Christ, from the tomb, fears to come forth should he be unrecognized by doubting Thomas. The shadow of Allah melts at noon. So Christians and Muslims confront a world torn by many wars to finalize yet a larger. Moses did not walk down the mountain for he never walked up. Christ did not die for he was never born. All this, all this mind you, is of great importance to us, for we are the reverse side of the coin toss in the air to fall heads or tails. Does the unholy or holy win? Ah, but look: the answer is neither none or what? Not only is Jesus lonely and Nazareth in ruins, but the populace at large believes in nothing. There is no room for either glorious or terrible. We are in danger, too, trapped in the tomb with an uncrucified carpenter, blown away with the burning bush as the east's Black Crucible cracks its mortar and falls. The world is at war. They do not name us the Enemy, no, for that would give us flesh and substance. You must see face or the mask in order to strike through one to deface the other. They war against us by pretending, no, assuring each other we have no flash and substance. It is a figment war. And if we believe as these disbelievers believe, we will flake our bones to litter the wins."
     This section is a stunning literary meditation comparable to Philip Rieff's Third Culture. This is a world drained of transcendence and signals of ultimate reality, where all has been eclipsed by the immediate and we dwell in a cave cold and alone. However, Bradbury's From the Dust Returned does not end with this note of despair. It is a fine read and both delightful and instructive.

Ray Bradbury's The October Game: A Different Read

    Many of Ray Bradbury's stories have enough ambiguity worked into the tale to lend them to rich varying interpretations. This does not mean that any and all readings are faithful to the story, but it can make for lively discussions and honest disagreement about the meaning of a particular story.  The October Game is such a story. Spoiler alert--I offer here a alternative reading of the story than the one given by most. If you have not read the story, read it before you make your way through this interpretation. If you have read it, please indulge me. The consensus is that at the end of the story, the audience is shocked because they see the dismembered body of 

The reading offered here is that the daughter is alive and well at the end and the shock is that she is there despite the panic and anticipated horror that something terrible had happened to her. In other words, the audience reaction is our reaction.



The best argument in favor of this reading is



The best argument in favor of the consensus is

Why Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 Is a Great Book

     On numerous occasions, Mortimer Adler wrote about the criteria that was used to determine which books of all the books written in the West would be placed within The Great Books of the Western World.  Contrary to confusion and many misstatements I've read over the years, Adler says it was essentially three criteria and they are as follows:

1) Contemporary significance - Even though historically valuable, these works address “issues, problems, or facets of human life that are of major concern to us today as well as at the time in which they were written.”

Numerous critical reviews exist regarding Fahrenheit 451. One testament to its value is that it has been in print since 1953 and annually sells more than 50,000 copies. Many of the themes (and there are many) explored within the novel are timeless in their nature.
2) Rereadability - These are books “intended for the general reader that are worth reading carefully many times or studying over and over again...indefinitely rereadable for pleasure and profit.”
As I have confessed before in blogs and lectures, I have read Fahrenheit 451 over 30 times in the past several years. In truth, this work is rich in content and form and has enough thematic substance to sustain numerous readings and an enriching conversation. Most importantly is that all evidence points to the reality that this work is the most read, discussed, and researched work by Ray Bradbury, but it is the most universally misinterpreted.
3) Relevance- There is extensive relevance and something of significance to say about a large number of the 102 great ideas of the thinking and writing done by the authors chosen.
Of the 102 Great Ideas Adler explored, Fahrenheit 451 touches upon or explores in a meaningful manner the following: Beauty, Being, Cause, Chance, Change, Citizen, Courage, Custom and Convention, Desire, Duty, Emotion, Experience, Family, Fate, God, Good and Evil, Habit, Happiness, Honor, Judgment, Knowledge, Law, Life and Death, Love, Man, Memory and Imagination, Mind, Nature, Opinion, Opposition, Philosophy, Pleasure and Pain, Prudence, Punishment, Reasoning, Relation, Religion, Senses, Sign and Symbol, Sin, Soul, Temperance, Time, Truth, Virtue and Vice, Will, Wisdom, and World.
Additionally, Adler said that the list of Great Books needed to be regularly reevaluated. With this in mind, I hope that I have made the case for including this novel by Ray Bradbury and including it in the open and extended list Adler proposed.
As with other Bradbury writings, there is often an earlier life or version before the published date. While Fahrenheit 451 was published in 1953 (60 years ago and still in print), there were earlier kernel versions in short stories - "The Fireman," "Long After Midnight,", and the unpublished "Where Ignorant Armies Clash By Night."
     Fahrenheit 451 should be read as a companion story to "The Smile," "The Garbage Collector," "The Pedestrian," and "The Library." Readers can purchase the book, A Pleasure to Burn: Fahrenheit 451 Stories and see the rich thematic connections.  
     Certainly not to be read as a libertarian tract against censorship, but more as a cautionary tale of the way society can nurture anti-intellectualism, and daily inhumane behavior, this work should be removed from Jr High reading lists and moved to the Senior year of High school or possibly Freshman year of college. It would be essential to have a teacher who can read and see that the work is only in a minuscule way about censorship. Beyond being a masterfully crafted exploration of a dystopian society, the work examines numerous humane themes and offers a profound portrayal of the outcome of a society living the "unexamined life."

My Summer Vacation in Green Town, Illinois

     Most of us had the childhood experience when returning to school after summer break having to write the mandatory, "What I Did This Summer" essay. Of the range of things we rarely wrote "slept a lot more," "nothing," or "stayed in trouble." We would often write about the summer vacations.
      Anyone who knows earthly geography, knows from the title of this blog that my summer vacation was spent in the sub-creation of Ray Bradbury. While this is true, it does not make the grandness of my vacation any less fantastic. Vacations should be about leisure, rest, laughter, reflection, and fine conversations. Additionally, one should return from vacation a better person.
     While I have read Dandelion Wine many times before this summer's read, I had never read this wonderful work with Summer Morning-Summer Night, and Farewell Summer. Enough good cannot be said of these summer works by Bradbury. It would be impossible to read these works together and not be thrown into memories of one's own summers past. Of all the reasons to read Ray Bradbury's stories, the distinctly human act of introspective reflection and reminiscence of years ago is a main motivation.
     The people we meet on the streets, in the shops, and in the homes of Green Town are easy to connect with despite the gap in historical setting. We understand these people because we can see ourselves in them. Our longings, fears, secrets, pains, and joys are here in these characters. Possibly one of the best reasons to read is not merely to escape, but to see our lives more clearly.
     Anyone who travels to Green Town will also be reminded of what really matters in this world, this gift of life. The various rituals, ceremonies, discoveries, illuminations, and the particulars of life to savor. Many of those who inhabit Green Town, also call us to live. They call us to better see this life that we are called to live. While there are elements reflecting a world that is not perfect, there is much there to enjoy.

Walking to See: Ray Bradbury's The Pedestrian

     Set in the city on an early November evening in the year 2053 at 8:00 pm, The Pedestrian is a powerful fable about the glories of walking as a human activity, but the perils of walking in an age that no longer walks, sees, listens, or thinks.  Walking “was what Mr. Leonard Mead most dearly loved to do.”  It has been during this “ten years of walking” “just walking" “every night” for “hours and miles” at a time that Leonard Mead has come to be a man that clearly sees his world.  In fact, Mr. Mead is a model for us all.  It is astonishing what Leonard has come to see in all this time of walking.
     Mr. Mead was at one time a “writer,” but now that “magazines and books didn’t sell anymore” he did not write.  It may very well be that where Leonard used to write to see, he now walks to see.  Mead lives in a time when most people simply stay at home with their “viewing screen."  It is on his many walks that Leonard observed the empty and alienated lives that people in 2053 were merely passing through.  Their homes are described as “tomb like building(s)” inhabited by “gray phantoms.” It is in this wasteland that Mead makes his daily “journey” on the streets overgrown with grass, due mainly to the non-use by any other pedestrians.
     Not all is hopeless as Mead walks. Once he thinks that he hears the “murmur of laughter” but sadly concludes that it is not. Even when the humane is absent, Leonard is still a human who is walking and who is seeing.  A scene of keen engagement occurs when the reader is with Mead as “he listened to the faint push of his soft shoes through autumn leaves with satisfaction,…occasionally picking up a leaf as he passed, examining its skeletal pattern in the infrequent lamplights as he went on, smelling its rusty smell.”
     It is in this world of alienation, loss of walking, where most have their viewing screen “to see with” that normalcy has been defined to match social behavior and Leonard Mead is simply odd.  On one particular evening, he is accosted by police.  Even Leonard is incredulous because police are “…a rare, incredible thing; in a city of three million, there was only one police car left…”  This story, as well as Fahrenheit 451, seems to make the case that social and cultural change came first, and then political and municipal changes followed.  In other words, there was no longer a need for police (except for the extreme oddities such as Leonard Mead) because with the decline of literacy, civility, and conversation, the masses were no longer good or bad citizens. In fact they were not citizens at all. It is in this barren world that Leonard Mead, the walker and seer, is ordered by the police to “Stand still. Stay where you are! Don’t move!” It is in this world that such misbehavior as walking merits a trip to the “Psychiatric Center for Research on Regressive Tendencies.”
     Many of Bradbury’s stories blend both a dark realism with elements or hints of hope.  This story is of that type. The story ends with both a reference to “one particular house” that was brilliantly illuminated.  This house was Leonard Mead’s.  However, the story also ends with the police car that has Mead in it, headed toward Meads new destination.  Behind is left “empty riverbed streets…empty sidewalks, and no sound and no motion all the rest of the chill November night.”
     Throughout the story, light and darkness are contrasted.  In reference to people, we read of the artificial light of their televisions with “the gray or multicolored lights touching their faces,” on the streets of the “infrequent lamplights” and with Leonard’s arrest of the “fierce white cone of light” the police car shined on him. Apart from the stunning description of Leonard’s home all aglow, is an early reference to lights in terms of a simile. “There was a good crystal frost in the air; it cut the nose and made lungs blaze like a Christmas tree inside you; you could feel the cold light going on and off, all the branches filled with invisible snow.”
     It could be argued that The Pedestrian is a tale that celebrates one of the most human of endeavors.  The story conveys the activity of walking, with all of its possibilities for sight, and in Mead’s case, with all of its perils in a dystopian world.  It is walking that forces the walker to breathe deeper, and possibly breathe deeper of life, and potentially moves the walker to deeper reflection on what is seen, and heard and what might be known.

Why Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked IS a Great Book

     On numerous occasions, Mortimer Adler wrote about the criteria that was used to determine which books of all the books written in the West would be placed within The Great Books of the Western World.  Contrary to confusion and many misstatements I've read over the years, Adler says it was essentially three criteria and they are as follows:
1) Contemporary significance - Even though historically valuable, these works address “issues, problems, or facets of human life that are of major concern to us today as well as at the time in which they were written.”
Numerous critical reviews when Something Wicked This Way Comes was published considered it a most important and timely work and it was ranked on the New York Tribune's best books of 1962. Many of the issues explored within the novel are timeless in their nature.
2) Rereadability - These are books “intended for the general reader that are worth reading carefully many times or studying over and over again...indefinitely rereadable for pleasure and profit.”
As I have confessed before in blogs and lectures, I re-read Something Wicked This Way Comes every year around Halloween. This has become my habit for the past several years, and it is with ongoing pleasure and intellectual profit that I have done this. In truth, this work is rich in content and form and has enough meaningful ambiguity to sustain numerous readings and a enriching conversation. Not this this would seal the deal, but even popular novelist Stephen King deemed Something Wicked This Way Comes as Bradbury's finest work.
3) Extensive relevance and something of significance to say about a large number of the 102 great ideas of the thinking and writing done by the authors chosen.
Of the 102 Great Ideas Adler explored, Something Wicked This Way Comes touches upon or explores in a meaningful manner the following: Beauty, Being, Cause, Chance, Change, Citizen, Courage, Custom and Convention, Desire, Duty, Emotion, Eternity, Evolution, Experience, Family, Fate, God, Good and Evil, Habit, Happiness, Honor, Immortality, Judgment, Knowledge, Law, Life and Death, Love, Man, Memory and Imagination, Mind, Nature, Opinion, Opposition, Philosophy, Pleasure and Pain, Prudence, Punishment, Reasoning, Relation, Religion, Senses, Sign and Symbol, Sin, Soul, Temperance, Theology, Time, Truth, Virtue and Vice, Will, Wisdom, and World.
Additionally, Adler said that the list of Great Books needed to be regularly reevaluated. With this in mind, I hope that I have made the case for including this novel by Ray Bradbury and including it in the open and extended list Adler proposed.
As with other Bradbury writings, there is often an earlier life or version before the published date. While Something Wicked This Way Comes was published in 1962 (50 years ago and still in print), there were earlier kernel versions in short stories - "The Electrocution" 1946, "The Black Ferris" 1948, a screen play entitled "Dark Carnival" 1955, another screen play "The Marked Bullet" 1956, as well as an unpublished first-person novel Jamie and Me.
     Something Wicked This Way Comes should be read as a companion story to Dandelion Wine .  Even Bradbury clustered these two stories with Farewell Summer and called these the Illinois trilogy.  
     Whether read as a moral fable, Christian allegory, or a moralistic horror tale, this is a novel that should be rescued from the middle school reading list and the bin of literary obscurity and given due attention.  Beyond being a masterfully crafted exploration of numerous humane themes, it is a delightful, at times, but ultimately light, tale about the sin of narcissism and the possibility of human connectedness in the presence of that most damnable of sins.

Ray Bradbury R.I.P.

     I begin my lectures and presentations about Ray Bradbury with a confession.  The confession is simple and one of which I express a deep sense of loss and a degree of shame.  I did not start reading Ray Bradbury until a few years ago.  I did not read him because I judged a book by its cover.  There was a sense that I knew what his books would be about because the covers of his books told it all.  One cannot be more wrong.  
     It was an endorsement I read on a Russell Kirk book that came from Ray Bradbury.  I thought, if Ray Bradbury liked Russell Kirk, then maybe, just maybe, I might appreciate Ray Bradbury.  After going to the local bookstore and buying Something Wicked This Way Comes and reading it, I was hooked.  My repentance took the form of reading The Martian Chronicles and the delight and feeding of my mind was tremendous.  I then went out and bought Fahrenheit 451, Dandelion Wine, and a collection of his short stories.  I have never been the same since.  As a matter of fact, every Halloween season for the past six years I've re-read Something Wicked This Way Comes, and every first day of the summer for the past several years I have re-read Dandelion Wine.  
     Ray Bradbury's passing brings to my mind numerous scenes in his novels and short stories where a character comes to the realization that life is a precious gift, and that gift is to be enjoyed.  On numerous occasions, Ray noted his favorite novelist Charles Dickens in A Christmas Carol makes this profound point when Ebenezer Scrooge is transformed by the ghosts that had visited him.  That moment of "I'm alive, I'm alive," is what it is all about in literature and life.  For Bradbury's own unique twist on this, read the short story "Jack-in-the Box."
     For the past few years I have been blessed to visit The Center for Ray Bradbury Studies and gain such insight of Ray's life and writings from the top two Bradbury scholars in the world (this is not an exaggeration), it has been equally as exhilarating giving lectures through the Big Read Events where thousands of people read, think about, and discuss Fahrenheit 451.  A number of you who have read my blogs know that I even have a section "All Things Bradbury" as a partial testament that as a Professor of Great Books, I consider his writings as worthy to be added to the canon of the best books penned by the human hand.
     One of my summer blog projects is to make the case that the novels of Ray Bradbury need to be rescued from middle school reading lists and make their way among serious readers.  With Bradbury's death, the hope is that now more literary scholars will give attention to his genius and explore his literary output and recognize that some of his writings deserve the designation of "masterpiece," "classic" and "Great Book."
     Sad is the reality that now with Ray Bradbury's passing many will give him proper attention and proper respect for being the extraordinary figure he was and is to the life of letters.  If you have never read anything by Ray Bradbury, do what I did and go out and get some of his books and short stories.  Be delighted, and receive a literary prompt to "live," to really live before you die. 
      

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.
      

Ray Bradbury's The Flying Machine as a Cautionary Tale

     Some Literary theorists through the ages have spoken of the ability of stories to be both delightful and profitable. Bradbury's short stories are rich with truth and told in a delightful manner.  Reading them aloud presents the ears with pleasure.  Bradbury is a first rate wordsmith and master of metaphor.  His short story, The Flying Machine is both delightful and instructive. 
      Certainly the story can be read in large part as a reflection of the human spirit exploring and seeking freedom.  However, it would be a shame to miss the common Bradbury warning about the other side of the coin of innovation.  Bradbury recognizes that with new technologies and inventions, something is lost. This is very clear in Dandelion Wine and Fahrenheit 451.  
     Read this story as both a celebration of human innovation and as a cautionary tale of human innovation.  Here are some questions for reflection on a few key quotes, "....the people in his dominion were neither too happy nor too sad."  Is this saying that they were, "just right" or that mediocrity had set in among the people?  What is the reader to make of Emperor Yuan's fear?  Some people mistakenly see him as a brutal dictator, but he is described as being fearful more than once.  If the story is anti-technolgy, what does one do with the miniature mechanical garden?  How does one interpret the ending of the story in light of the entire story?

The Most Humane Ray Bradbury

I just ran across a fine essay (with a less than fine title) about Ray Bradbury in The American Conservative.  Daniel J. Flynn understands some of the key humane themes in Bradbury's fiction.  Flynn, notes regarding Martian Chronicles that Bradbury’s retro heaven meshes with his skepticism of progress, science, and technology. His life exhibits throwback tendencies; his fiction, all the more.
My favorite Flynn observation is what actually caused me to love the writings of Bradbury.  "Ray Bradbury loves human beings, and his hatred of the digital devices that divide us from us stems from their dehumanizing influence."
Over the past few years people have asked me regarding my research of Bradbury, "is he anti-technology"?  The short answer is "no."  Bradbury, unlike most others, realizes that our human technologies act back upon us in unintended ways.  Again, Flynn states, "Bradbury’s vision of the future germinated from what he saw in the postwar present: gadgeted distractions, screens separating humans from humans, televisions raising children, the vicarious life replacing life itself, leisure time becoming a waste of time. He sensed in which direction the world spun, and he didn’t want to go there. Alas, from Fahrenheit 451’s televised helicopter fugitive chase to the television-as-babysitter of “The Veldt” (1950), we live in the real world that his fiction had warned us about."
One point where I both agree and disagree with Flynn is regarding Fahrenheit 451.  "The obvious reading of Fahrenheit 451 reveals a story about censorship...But the more subtle and important theme involves passive entertainment displacing the life of the mind. It is less about right-left than about smart-stupid."  I believe that the more obvious reading of Fahrenheit 451 is about the death of the American mind and soul and the more obvious mis-reading is that the work is about censorship.  It seems the mis-reading, may actually prove the thesis that the American mind and soul was buried sometime ago, but the zombies have not gotten the email.

I would add, that if one desires to move beyond the popular biographical version (with some inaccuracies) on the life of Ray Bradbury, the definitive biography is currently being written by Dr. Jonathan Eller. Eller's Becoming Ray Bradbury provides a depth and texture that popular biographies lack. Additionally, Drs. Eller and Toupounce are assembling a multi-volume, critical edition, chronological compilation of Bradbury's stories with the first volume already published.

The NEA "Big Read" As a Sign of Literary and Civic Hope

     This past September 26th -29th, my wife Tina and I were in Helena, MT.  I had been invited to be part of the National Endowment for the Arts, The Big Read.  Beyond the extraordinary enjoyment of creation, we both were encouraged at the high level of literary and civic engagement found in this city.  We interacted with several hundred people in various settings including small public libraries, a few school libraries, and the main Lewis and Clark library  branch.  
     The people were most engaging and highly enthusiastic.  Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 was the book that approximately 3000 people were reading and discussing over a month long period.  There were all sorts of events planned for the month including community led discussions, art exhibits, new works of poetry and other creative ways of encountering this modern masterpiece.  
     While I hope that I encouraged many to rethink the meaning of this literary work, my wife and I also were reminded what happens when the right people are in the right place at the right time and are all striving for excellence.  The staff were fantastic and the ethos that they put into place was stunning.  All over the library there were signs and symbols highlighting The Big Read.  My favorite is of the picture on this blog.  Within the library there was a large doll house display, and as we got closer and admired the beauty and detail of the doll house, we discovered that even the inhabitants of this little world were part of "The Big Read."
     So, while many are bemoaning the death of reading, know that there are people in towns all over the country reading, thinking, and conversing about important books.  Despair not and search out a "Big Read" near you.