After seeing some of the glorious illustrations done for early Bradbury stories in Illustrated Life, I decided to purchase some old Saturday Evening Post and Collier's issues. They are really gorgeous--they just don't make 'em like that anymore.

Anyway, I noticed after reading SOUND OF THUNDER as originally published that the ending is a bit different than the version I read in Dinosaur Tales.

How often does Ray revise his stories? Have any been substantially changed (aside from stories reworked for his "novels")?

It seems to me as if he revises every dang chance he gets. Practically every time retypesetting is required he takes the opportunity to change something.

The first time I noticed anything really blaring...was the dates, in the chapter titles, of the landings in ...The Martian Chronicles. Or was that the publisher's idea???

I know that most of the stories that appeared in "Dark Carnival" were revised from their original appearance in the pulps. When those stories later appeared in "The October Country" they were revised even more.It's probable that many writers, as they develop skills throughout their careers'will make changes and updates to earlier material when the opportunity arises.

Hmm!

Dandelion, and others:::

Don't know what to think about that! Does Van Gogh go back and re-arrange the flowers in the vase? Leonardo worked 14 years on Mona Lisa's lips... but when they were done, they were DONE.

I don't know what to think about altering, changing, adding, subtracting, clarifying, maximizing...whatever you call it... I don't think I'm for it.....

Remember that Van Gogh was crazy, so using him as a model may not be wise. Maybe Bradbury sees his writing as kind of like a marriage -- in constant need of little improvements and adjustments to keep it alive and fresh. I'm glad he's still around to do the tweaking.

But Ray has said that he wakes up every morning with "voices" talking to him, and then he has to get up and get those ideas down. He said years after the original publication of Fahrenheit 451 one of the characters (Montag, if memory serves) spoke to him about a new plot point and he then did a revision on the novel. I love the idea that the characters are percolating around in his subconscious and sometimes stand up and shout something altogether new to him. After all, why should a book be static? Nothing else in life is!!

Rembrant was known to revise his works to the point of painting right over them. Revision isn't always a good thing in any kind of art.Somebody should tell Lucas and Spielberg.Still, I wonder how many records would be sold if we had to listen to the band's first take.At least with Bradbury, you can go back and listen to the original if you don't prefer the re-mix.

Mr. Dark:::::::::

Mr. Dark, Van Gogh was NOT crazy. But was he just unusual.....? Was Edgar Allen Poe Crazy? Was Mozart crazy, thinking that some demon was at his door? Oscar Levant. Crazy or just mentally messed up?

What is """crazy??""""

My mother had Alzheimers. Was she crazy??? The firing of her brain messages across chemical rivers wasn't working properly, because of plaque, so does that make her crazy? Allen Poe went into a 'whirly-twirillymind' during a politcal rally one afternoon, and never came back. In fact, he died there. That makes him crazy?

Nero was the crazy one !! He burned people around his palace to light the night. That's crazy ! Hitler wants to get rid of a race of people That's crazy !

Some person thinks that monsters are in his attic, and refuses to go up there for the last 20 years. That's pretty wierd...

I moved back to Chicago in 1993 to take care of my mother who had Alzheimer's. I can do a one man play on all the stages of Alzheimer's. Was she crazy? Is Crazy ...just people who are physically normal... but do absolutely abnormal things..??.




[This message has been edited by Nard Kordell (edited 02-19-2003).]

Sorry about that. The use of the term crazy was meant to be light-hearted. Instead, it was probably insensitive.

I'm really of two minds when it comes to the "revising" of art by their creators.

Does the "art" belong to us, the masses, once it is published, produced, displayed or whatever? I mean in the sense that it is no longer simply the creation of the artists, it is now interacting in a sort of mass consciousness.

Or is art always the property of the artist? Does the artist have the right to constantly rework a piece until Death?

I think it was Terry Gilliam who said he resists the urge to revise his work for DVD releases, because he considers his movies to be time capsules of sorts. I like that idea. Why not let the work stand as a testament to its time and context, and to who the artist was at that moment of creation, even though he or she may have grown and changed since.

Hearing of Bradbury's unceasing desire to improve past perfection is inspiring. It's just one more reason to admire a man who could rest on his laurels, but instead chooses to improve his legacy.

As long as the author is alive, he should retain the ability to revise. His admirers, now and in the future, only stand to gain from his evolving insights. Study groups from overlapping professions could delve into his revisions and evaluate his progressive states of mind. Parallels to his personal and professional life could be used to examine the stimulus. Wonder if his spiritual growth would be more evident in his later writings. Or perhaps it's just technoligical advances that drive his pursuit of perfection.

Works of art are just that: An item that can be viewed in one glance and retained by photographs and the observer's eye. Restoration seems feasible, but revisions could devalue the piece. It seems a companion piece might achieve more. But then, how many masterpiece artists are alive these days? For that matter, how many Ray Bradburys are still with us?

Celestial

Mr. Dark:::
I think it is "I"...that got carried away a little....probably could have stated my position in one... calmer sentence.

Pro and con on the various posts pertaining to author's right to revise, but I still stick pretty much to my above posting opinion....on revision!

No problem. My dad had Parkinsons before he passed away. He was such in intellect, that it was very hard to watch his mind stay sharp but see his frustration when his body just would not respond and let him express what was clearly going on. Watching someone suffer through Alzheimer's must be tough.

In 'Zen in the Art of Writing' he also talked at length about resisting the urge to change or add to parts of his works, including Fahrenheit 451. Even though many new ideas were coming into his head decades later, he stated (at least at that time) that he did not believe in altering a young writer's work, especially when that young writer was himself. But his growth process as a writer seems to be neverending, and I would have to believe that the urge to change his past words sometimes gets the better of him.