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juushikaRay Bradbury died this morning.
I have, as we know, a strange relationship with death. I never know when I'll mourn, or how. But I mourn this.
Bradbury wrote a certain sort of nostalgia literature that never appealed to me—the golden midwestern summers of 8-year-old boys were not my own, and I can't wish to revisit them. He wrote short stories I adored, not always in collections I loved—Bradbury short fiction is always a delightful tossup: inspired, pulpy, emotionally resonant; in short form, the same nostalgia which never drew me to a lost childhood often drew me to the barren landscapes of post-colonial Mars. I can look back now on some of his most impassioned diatribes—in their stylistic repetition, their rhythmic restatements—and see a number of flaws.
But it doesn't matter. This man helped to make me who I am. I've reviewed Fahrenheit 451 before and I did a shit job of it—moreover, I now disagree with much of what I said about its message. Again, it doesn't matter. Bradbury wrote as someone who loved books, who saw them as magical and valuable and defining, who fought to save them from every fire, who could cast a man in the shape of a book and book in the skin of a man, and I had never encountered that before. When I read F451 as a high school freshman, I discovered for the first time the same sentiment and passion for books that I had; it was validated, and set alight. That changed everything.
This year I've been taking a break from reviewing books, given the casual exception; as such, I've primarily been rereading old favorites—a happier compromise than reading books and then angsting about my unwillingness or inability to discuss them. Some of these books I read every year, and it's never a waste. I want to internalize them, to hold them within myself, to become what they are. I haven't gotten there, yet; they're new every time. But it's a worthy effort.
Bradbury taught me to consume pages like fire, and he told me I was not the only one who thought doing so was important, essential, a vital part of society and self. Indeed, he told me, it is one of the most important things anyone can do.
And to do so is beautiful.
Against that, every specific is irrelevant.
My reviews of:
Fahrenheit 451
From the Dust Returned
The Illustrated Man
The Martian Chronicles
Something Wicked This Way Comes
So! A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man's mind. Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man?
—Fahrenheit 451, 58
I have, as we know, a strange relationship with death. I never know when I'll mourn, or how. But I mourn this.
Bradbury wrote a certain sort of nostalgia literature that never appealed to me—the golden midwestern summers of 8-year-old boys were not my own, and I can't wish to revisit them. He wrote short stories I adored, not always in collections I loved—Bradbury short fiction is always a delightful tossup: inspired, pulpy, emotionally resonant; in short form, the same nostalgia which never drew me to a lost childhood often drew me to the barren landscapes of post-colonial Mars. I can look back now on some of his most impassioned diatribes—in their stylistic repetition, their rhythmic restatements—and see a number of flaws.
But it doesn't matter. This man helped to make me who I am. I've reviewed Fahrenheit 451 before and I did a shit job of it—moreover, I now disagree with much of what I said about its message. Again, it doesn't matter. Bradbury wrote as someone who loved books, who saw them as magical and valuable and defining, who fought to save them from every fire, who could cast a man in the shape of a book and book in the skin of a man, and I had never encountered that before. When I read F451 as a high school freshman, I discovered for the first time the same sentiment and passion for books that I had; it was validated, and set alight. That changed everything.
This year I've been taking a break from reviewing books, given the casual exception; as such, I've primarily been rereading old favorites—a happier compromise than reading books and then angsting about my unwillingness or inability to discuss them. Some of these books I read every year, and it's never a waste. I want to internalize them, to hold them within myself, to become what they are. I haven't gotten there, yet; they're new every time. But it's a worthy effort.
Bradbury taught me to consume pages like fire, and he told me I was not the only one who thought doing so was important, essential, a vital part of society and self. Indeed, he told me, it is one of the most important things anyone can do.
And to do so is beautiful.
Against that, every specific is irrelevant.
"Would you like, someday, Montag, to read Plato's Republic?"
"Of course!"
"I am Plato's Republic. Like to read Marcus Aurelius? Mr. Simmons is Marcus."
"How do you do?" said Mr. Simmons.
"Hello," said Montag.
"I want you to meet Jonathan Swift, the author of that evil political book, Gulliver's Travels! And this other fellow is Charles Darwin, and this one is Schopenhauer, and this one is Einstein, and this one here at my elbow is Mr. Albert Schweitzer, a very kind philospher indeed. Here we all are, Montag. Aristophanes and Mahatma Gandhi and Gautama Buddha and Confucius and Thomas Love Peacock and Thomas Jefferson and Mr. Lincoln, if you please. And we are Mark, Luke, and John."
—Fahrenheit 451, 151
My reviews of:
Fahrenheit 451
From the Dust Returned
The Illustrated Man
The Martian Chronicles
Something Wicked This Way Comes
