Thanks again, Nard! I love his answer to the 3rd Additional Question! That could really be elaborated upon. So much negativity in the culture and expressed in the arts. Think of all those songs around the time of the Depression and World Wars, songs like "Accen-chu-ate The Positive", "Let a Smile Be Your Umbrella", "April Showers"; the list goes on and on.
So do I. I should get another thread going for this, but I got inspired!
Thanks again, again!

That's right! on the book it says they read comics, I guess the idea that no one can read comes from the Truffaut movie, where no one is seen reading something. Or they?

There are many differences between the book and the movie. Let's put someone here!
Best regards!

Johnny Holly
from México, where it happens "The next in line"!

oh!, and Nard many thanks for your excellent work interviewing Mr. Bradbury. His words are pure gold and a treasure for us, his fans!!!

Johnny Holly

In the movie, if memory serves, Montag (and maybe his wife too) is shown "reading" in bed what looks like comics without words.

Braling II:
Yes! I recall that. The movie, you recall, does not have any credits or titles, but it is spoken. That was a nice effect. But that only the books that disturbed people were destroyed is something I never realized. There should be a lot of burning on computer programming books, since it''s just too darn complicated and makes you !!crazy!!. I have a telephone book sized book on how to operate a digital drum machine. I little square item. I promptly sold it AND the telephone sized operator's manual.

GO BACK to PAGE 1~
A few more items to post, but the updated Q/A has now been posted as of 2:15PM, Los Angeles time, Tuesday, June 17th 2008

The absence of written language in the Truffaut movie is the best part of it, although it does raise the question of how anybody can read anything. (Written English should look like hieroglyphics to Montag.)

My assumption (for film and book version of F451) was always that the Montag era is one at the tail end of literacy: older people can read, but younger people can't. So Montag is drawing on a vague childhood memory. Clarisse would be too young to have "officially" learned to read, but she was brought up by educated people.

Speaking of movies. What do you think of "A Sound of Thunder" with Edward Norton and the animated "The Halloween Tree"?
Best regards!

Johnny

Can I use the word shocked to describe my reaction to Ray Bradbury's take on outerspace aliens? Isn't this idea of man must populate the stars a wee tad egocentric? This calls back to my readings years ago the position the Roman Catholic Church found itself in. The Sun the center of the universe? Must it be Bradbury's reflection in the Martian canals as the only answer to life beyond this planet?

Ray Bradbury may seeem he is at odds with himself. A person of opposites. He talks about the Martians that lived on Mars and meet visiting Earthmen, and then there are those school-children on Venus. At the same time Ray says there is no one in the universe but us right here. Although Ray was raised a Baptist, The Unitarians, who generally view Jesus less than Divine, consider Ray one of their own. Ray says he wills himself to live forever, but as a Baptist he must have read where Biblical revelation makes the case for living forever impossible without the realities of the stuff that is eternal, meaning those things that existed before time came into being, and lasts when time ceases to be. Christ said that He was 'that', and came back from the dead and forced calendars to re-start from year 1. Likely Bradbury rejects that. But at the same time has Christ appearing on Mars. He has the Mayor on some distant planet going out to visit a recently resurrected Christ in the city.

If much of Ray's stories as he claims are explosions and he doesn't analyze how they come about, panoramically they are likely a forest of contradictions.

The case for artistic and subjective feelings, practical oberservation of the phrases and logic that makes-up art may be truly complicated when it comes to Ray Bradbury's volumes of work. And Ray Bradbury as a person!

When I think of it, I think that Ray's having provided a width span of topics, themes, time frames, setttings, etc., etc., is really a great tribute to him. He certainly can not be accused of being predictable or a "formula" author. And when he says that he doesn't know what was behind some of his stories he's not tyring to be evasive, as he simply doesn't know as his "muses" were the ones who guided his thoughts transforming them into words onto a page. I know as I have many times asked him such a question with him answering "How would I know!"

But, in many cases, at the beginning or as an after thought to many of his collections, he gives a brief idea of what drove him to write the story.

I am so glad that Ray is just who he is and writes as he has written.

biplane1, if, as you say, Ray is being directed by a Muse, pray tell which one:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muse

Salamander. there you have got me! All I know is that Ray has referred to muses for years as they rattle him out bed in morning and he heads for the typewriter (now dictating to Alexandra on the telephone) and finishes up a story by noon time.

But, then again, perhaps Ray is speaking metaphorically when he refers to a muse. If you ever saw the movie Xanadu with Olivia Newton John and Gene Kelly, Olivia was a muse and a cute one at that.

quote:

Originally posted by Salamander:
biplane1, if, as you say, Ray is being directed by a Muse, pray tell which one...

Nymph is a good word.

So what have we here? Stories by Ray Bradbury are actually written by nymphs and Corycides, the likes of Clio, Erato, or Urania? Perhaps Bradbury's Mexican settings and tales are actually the work of one muse, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz? Could that mean that the muse of ol' Snoopy creator Charles Schulz was actually the muse Pluto or the Hound of the Baskervilles?

I hate to think that we are dealing with something too close to whistling in the wind.

Hey people, we don't have to take the words from Mr. Ray so literally. I think he just meant that sometimes at night he awakes with an idea for a story and then runs to his typewrter or phone. Mr. Ray calls Muses to the representation of that inspiration.

libRArY, thanks for mentioning the Tenth Muse: Juana de Asbaje aka Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.

Best regards!!