Thanks for the technical (mechanics) of the task. Now, my question is, HOW did you find the article on the Internet? Sorry about being so inquisitive, but I just am. Looking forward to you answer. Say do you live in Florida by any chance?

Biplane,
From time-to-time, I Google Ray's name to see what comes up and post a link here on the board. That's what I did the other day.

The Lake

Hey thanks for the heads up. I have to admit that I would never have thought of doing that.

New interview about Mars from RB. Some of it is familiar but his words are always charged with life:

http://www.washingtontechnology.com/news/20_23/last-byte/27472-1.html

"...follow what you love." RB

In this new interview on the first day of 2006, Ray gives us much to celebrate. Namely, life.

http://washingtontimes.com/books/20051231-095710-3132r.htm

Happy New Year, all.

Thanks for posting this great interview, The Lake. I enjoyed all his comments, as usual. The comments about television really struck a chord with me today. Just before reading this interview, I had been thinking about New Year's Resolutions, and had decided that I needed to shut off the television more often and read, read, read. Compared to many people, I already do read quite a bit, but I know I could be reading so much more. Some nights I flip aimlessly through the television programs and before I know it, three hours have passed. In most cases, it was a huge waste of time. There are some great shows on, but not that many. So I had decided that in 2006 I would have that for my goal (that along with paying off my credit cards, which has been my goal for 20 years!!). Then I read Ray's thoughts on the matter and it gives me encouragement. Hopefully, this will be one resolution I can keep!!

Thanks, Imskipper.

I vowed to read more about a year ago for many of the reasons that you listed. A good friend who is a workaholic keeps a list from year-to-year of every book she has read. Each time she writes down a new title, she feels rewarded.

I tried it last year and this simple act has made me realize that I read more than I thought, and it's fun to look at the titles that have entered my life over the year. I keep them on a post-it on my computer so they're always "looking" at me.

I also vow this year to turn off the news more often...too much misery makes me forget the good that people do. I'm not in denial just wanting to love life more.

A few collected quotes we may have seen before, but here again, nonetheless!
http://www.quicklyfind.com/quote-ray_bradbury.html

Looked for the Brown University '95 speech but only the "jump off the cliff" line appears from my searches. Ideas?

Quit your job and write!

Quotes from Bradbury and Lewis that make sense but can't always be done. Yet, I do agree that real writing is not a hobby. It must be done every day.

Also, if anyone lives in CA, there is an essay contest listed toward the end of this article.

http://presstelegram.com/news/ci_3512998

When I mentioned house and garden projects to Ray, he said, "Forget all that and just read and write."

It may not always pay the bills, but RB knows what's important!

Lake

New article and interview with RB. I love his idea for an epitaph. Interesting...life affirmations from beyond the grave rather than sad verse.

http://www.sacbee.com/107/story/32802.html

The link in the previous post doesn't take you to the article. So I copied the article from The Sacramento Bee below:

#######

Every day is fantastic for prolific Ray Bradbury
By Allen Pierleoni - Bee Staff Writer
Published 12:00 am PDT Tuesday, October 3, 2006
Story appeared in SCENE section, Page E1

Print | E-Mail | Comments (1)

Ray Bradbury once advised, "Go to the edge of the cliff and jump off. Build your wings on the way down."

The writer has certainly followed his own words, inventing a stellar career for himself that has flourished for 66 years.

His latest book is the lyrical "Farewell Summer" (William Morrow, $24.95, 224 pages; on sale Oct. 17), a sequel to his semi-autobiographical "Dandelion Wine," published in 1957.

It continues the story of 13-year-old Douglas Spaulding and his pals, who are railing against the end of summer and, metaphorically, their transition into young adulthood. Before he and his family moved to Los Angeles when he was 12, Bradbury had an idyllic childhood in Waukegan, Ill., which appears as the fictional Green Town in "Dandelion Wine" and "Farewell Summer."

Bradbury, 86, is an icon, one of the few geniuses of the fantasy, horror and science-fiction genres that he helped pioneer along with such giants as Robert Heinlein, Richard Matheson, Isaac Asimov, Frederik Pohl and Robert Silverberg. Surprisingly, Bradbury is adamant that he is a fantasist and never has been a sci-fi writer, despite his many stories about space travel and futuristic worlds.

Bradbury's bibliography includes novels, short stories, movie and TV screenplays, stage plays, essays, poetry and nonfiction books -- more than 500 published works in all.

Perhaps his best-known titles -- all of which were made into movies -- are "The Martian Chronicles" (1950), "The Illustrated Man" (1951), "Fahrenheit 451" (1953) and "Something Wicked This Way Comes" (1962). "The Ray Bradbury Theater," which aired on TV from 1985 to 1992, dramatized 65 of his tales.

Last year, director Peter Hyams released the movie "A Sound of Thunder," starring Edward Burns and Ben Kingsley. The adventures of time-traveling dinosaur hunters who inadvertently change history was made from one of Bradbury's most popular short stories, first published in Collier's magazine in 1952.

Because his body of work has been so ubiquitous for so long, Bradbury's name continues to pop up in the most unexpected places. For instance, he shared the screenplay-writing credit with film director John Huston for the 1956 blockbuster "Moby Dick."

Bradbury has certainly collected his share of honors -- a National Medal of Arts (presented by President George W. Bush), a National Book Award, the National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, an Emmy Award, an Oscar nomination and World Fantasy and Stoker awards for life achievement, to name a few.

He was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, had an asteroid named after him ("9766 Bradbury") and can even claim some property on the moon. Dandelion Crater is named after his novel, "Dandelion Wine." In 2001, October was designated Ray Bradbury Month.

Bradbury is rarely out of words or out of the news. For instance, in 2004 he was publicly incensed over filmmaker Michael Moore's play on the "Fahrenheit 451" title for Moore's documentary film "Fahrenheit 9/11."

"He stole my title and changed the numbers without ever asking me for permission," Bradbury said at the time. "What he has done is a crime."

Bradbury is a widower who has lived in Los Angeles for most of his life yet has long refused to drive a car. He won't board an airplane, either, and does not own a computer. He has four daughters and eight grandchildren. I caught up with him by phone last week.

Q: Can we open with a description of your daily routine?

A: It's the same today as it was 50 years ago. I wake up every morning and there are metaphors running around inside my head. I have a ganglia and a gut reaction to those metaphors, and they collide with each other and explode. My stuff is good because it's emotional and passionate, not intellectual. So I jump up and run to my typewriter. I start at 9 in the morning and write a short story that's finished by noon.

Writing has never been a task for me; it's always been play. In a way, I'm still wearing my tennis shoes from when I was 12. I put on my tennis shoes and then I go to the typewriter and play.

Q: I understand that "Farewell Summer" was actually the second part of "Dandelion Wine."

A: That's right. When I was in my 30s, I wrote an article for Gourmet magazine on how my grandfather would make dandelion wine. That memory collected other memories around it, including articles I had written on front porches and about buying new tennis shoes and having the ability to run ahead of your enemies and toward your friends.

I collected all those stories into "Dandelion Wine" and submitted the manuscript to my publisher in 1956. He said, "It's too long. Why don't we cut it in half and publish the first half and keep the second half, which continues (the story)?" That's what we did. It got good reactions. I had my first book-signing and 10 people showed up.

I kept "Farewell Summer" these 50 years. I revised it and finally gave it to my publisher about a year ago.

Q: As a boy growing up in small-town America, you lived the life of Douglas Spaulding from "Dandelion Wine" and "Farewell Summer."

A: So much of that is me and my background. Something happened back then that changed my life. When I was 12, I met Mr. Electrico at a carnival by the lake. He touched me with his sword full of electricity from his electric chair, and he cried, "Live forever!"

The next day I went to visit him and he told me I'd lived before. I had been his best friend in a war in 1918 and he was glad to see me back again. I walked away from him and stood by the carousel and watched the horses go around.

The next day I traveled with my parents to Arizona. When I arrived there, I wrote my first story. So, Mr. Electrico was the one who started me out. Because of him, (my life) has been filled with the electricity he put in my body.

Q: In "Fahrenheit 451," the "firemen" are dedicated to burning books. Last week was Banned Books Week, a program that fights censorship. Is there any real difference between burning a book and banning one?

A: Book-burning has never occurred in the United States. Hitler burned books, and burnings occurred all over Russia and other communist countries. People have been put into jail because they wrote certain books.

Q: But we do have book-banning.

A: That's always temporary. Sometimes you'll have a board of education that looks at a book list and they'll take "The Martian Chronicles" off the list for a year and put it back the next year. But that's not dangerous, you see, because it occurs only for a small period of time. If I can get people to pick up a book, that's great. People all over the country are still examining "Fahrenheit 451."

Q: Didn't actor-director Mel Gibson buy the rights to "Fahrenheit 451" for a remake of the movie?

A: Yes, but he's got 16 different writers who have written 16 scripts. That's ridiculous! You don't need 16 scripts! What you do is shoot the book.

All of my writing is cinematic. Films are part of my blood. You can pick up any of my books and shoot them -- the scripts are right there.

"Something Wicked This Way Comes" began as a screenplay for Gene Kelly because I loved his films. He didn't do my screenplay, so I wrote it into a novel, which you can shoot right off the page.

Everyone complicates things. Universal bought the rights to "The Martian Chronicles" to do a new version of it. But there are 17 scripts of that, including five by me. They don't think I can write, you see. They've let eight years go by since our Mars landing. So if we don't hurry up, we'll be going off to Mars again before the damn film gets made.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: I'm finishing a double novel. One is "Somewhere a Band Is Playing." I began work on it 35 years ago as a project for Katharine Hepburn. I wanted her to make a film of it, and of course she grew old and died in the meantime. The novel will be published next spring.

The other one is "Leviathan '99," which is "Moby Dick" in outer space.

(Writer's note: This originally was a play. The whale is replaced by a Great White Comet, pursued by an embittered Ahab-like spaceship captain who was blinded by the comet when he was an astronaut.)

Q: What is the role of the artist in society? To inspire, to disturb, to provoke thought?

A: No, you can't (provoke readers) because you'll be self-conscious.

(But) you can inspire people. I lectured at the Santa Monica Library two nights ago in front of 200 people. When I finished, they were on their feet, cheering.

What had I done? Mr. Electrico's electricity came out of me and into their souls. I inspired them to explode, to be passionate, to fall in love, to know how to love books and stage plays and motion pictures and their friends and the world. Because being alive in the world today is a fantastic experience.

Q: Have you given any thought to a fitting epitaph?

A: Oh, God. ... It should read, "Here lies a man who loved life from beginning to end, and he's sorry that the goddamn thing is over."

About the writer:
The Bee's Allen Pierleoni can be reached at (916) 321-1128 or apierleoni@sacbee.com.


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iandymac at 10:32 AM PST Tuesday, October 3, 2006 wrote:
Yes Mr Bradbury has always had a way with words. Gotta love his sense of humor too. I think almost ...more

Just did Sound of Thunder, Dandelion Wine, and Illustrated Man, this month in 9&12 lit (w/ "RB Theater" episodes that correspond). Yes, just take it off the page!

What modern cinematographer has the artistic genius to capture his words right off the page and deliver them to the big screen. (Thunder movie didn't get it done.) The RB Theater Episodes, though not high-tech by any means, still win the students over after we have read and studied the words.

Thanks, Lake. Your post is timely. October is ripe. From the article, Mr. B sure seems to be in fine, fine form! What an epitaph...

I think Mr. B is mistaken in the article above regarding books never being burned in America. I think quite a few times in recent times, there has in fact been book burnings by religeous groups and some parent groups. The latest of these happened in Oct. 2005. Most were condoned by onhand officials. Scary! I think if anyone wants to learn more, there is a banned book webpage. I don't have it here, sorry.