I have to do a research paper, and I need someone who knows a about Ray Bradbury so that I can ask them questions via E-Mail or Message Board.

Hey!
Ask away...................

Thank you very much for your patience and cooperation.
What university did Ray Bradbury go to?
Were there any personal preferences or experiences that affected his writing?
Which kind of writing did he prefer (i.e. poetry, short stories, novels)?
What was his first major work?
Is Bradbury working on anything now?

I'll take that first one. There wasn't money for him to go to college, so he studied on his own, and self-taught, graduated himself from the library at the age of 28. At some point during or after this period (1938-1948) he formed the idea that "a writer shouldn't go to college." (A frequent argument between us from which Ray has never backed down.) He did take a college course or two and is certainly not adverse to setting foot on a college campus. (And if you got paid what he does for lectures, neither would you be.) At one of these talks, telling about graduating himself from the library, some students sneaked out, procured a cap, gown, and diploma, and formally "graduated" him from the library.

I'll take the second.
Others can add to the second...or the other remaining questions...

Much of what Ray Bradbury writes is based on his childhood experiences, as well as people he has known.

'Dandelion Wine' is very much about his growing up in Waukegan, Illinois, a northern suburb of Chicago. In the book, and in other short stories, Waukegan has been given the name of Green Town, Illinois. Many of the characters are representations of his family. For instance, in his story, 'The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit', most everyone in there is based on someone he knew.

His fears are displayed in his novel, 'Something Wicked This Way Comes', a traveling carnival/circus that makes its way to Green Town, Illinois. Mr. Electrico, that appears in the novel, was an actual person that placed a sword on 'boy' Ray's shoulder and promised he would live forever. Impacted greatly, Mr. Electrico, who toured with the traveling carnival, was written into the story years later.

Ray was hired by famed director John Huston to write the screenplay for Moby Dick. The months he spent in Ireland brought forth a stream of Irish stories, based on his experiences there and people he met, including a taxi driver that shuttled Ray back and forth from the hotel to the movie location. The taxi driver on one particular day drove madly and crazily. Ray discovered that the taxi driver drove like this ONLY when he was 'sober'. Ray bought him a 'bottle' to soothe the nerves and bring sanity to the wheel. He was thusly written into a Ray Bradbury short story.

Probably very little has been written by Ray that has NOT been affected one way or another by his upbringing and the people he has known along the way....

As to your LAST question:

Even after a stroke, Ray still spends a good portion of the day dictating stories to his daughter, who types them out. He has a book forthcoming, screenplays (couple movies in the works, The Sound of Thunder, re-make of Fahrenheit 451)...more poetry, and stage work. He still works with his Pandemonium Theater Company, which within the last month or two, presented the play, 'Something Wicked This Way Comes', in Santa Monica,California. And as always, Ray introduced the play and shook everyone's hand opening night. And when one of the actors was caught in the horrendous LA traffic that night, Ray stood up and entertained the audience with his memories of how the story originally came to be.

All that, and Bradbury still gets out to autograph books and speak to eager audiences.



[This message has been edited by Nard Kordell (edited 12-06-2003).]

I'll take a crack at the fourth question. Obviously, what is a "major" work depends on how you define the word "major." Ray's first professional sale, which was certainly a major event in his career, was the short story "Pendulum", which he co-wrote with Henry Hasse. It was published in a magazine called SUPER SCIENCE STORIES in its November, 1941 issue. The story that Ray himself has acknowledged as his first really good one, a story which he has said left him with tears in his eyes and the hair on the back of his neck standing up upon its completion, is "The Lake." It was first published in the May, 1944 issue of WEIRD TALES magazine, and has been included in several collections of Ray's work, including the still in-print THE OCTOBER COUNTRY and THE STORIES OF RAY BRADBURY. Finally, Ray's first book under his own name, now a recognized classic, was DARK CARNIVAL, published by Arkham House in 1947 and re-issued by Gauntlet Publications in 2001.

As for what "kind" of writing, I'd say fiction, period. He's produced volumes and volumes of short stories, novels, poetry, and plays, so it would be hard to identify one "preference." The only thing he hasn't done much of is factual writing requiring research. He says facts put him to sleep at noon. This would be one reason he's written very little requiring hard science, or historical fact. He'll write about facts he knows, or speculate on known facts, but he never lets facts get in the way or impede a story. (If we're ever feeling really mean, we could start a nitpick thread about "given the facts, could this story event really happen in this way?")--questions to which Ray would no doubt display great impatience.