On Ray Bradbury

I wrote a blog once a long time ago which was supposed to be an imagined dialogue between me and Ray Bradbury because I had fallen so in love with the idea of our being friends that I wanted to bring it to life. Even a minute ago I had a good blog about it but the damn thing never materialized. In it I explained how I like to bring things to life. That was what I had attempted at  in having an imaginary conversation with him in blog form. Sort of an interesting thing to do, my last blog (there were more than a hundred of them) was a lot more playful than this one. The imaginary dialogue failed because of the vulnerable feeling it created in me since I truly loved him. I have been trying to sing on film and I fail the same way, because I truly love myself and I look awful on camera. 

And so it is with this book I have of Mr. Bradbury's. Death is a Lonely Business isn't The Martian Chronicles, or Dandelion Wine or Farenheit 451, all great books but without a certain tone that to me has dimensions that exceed the quality which makes the others classic novels. But the tone, the playful and revealing tone which pervades this novel, seems to me a sort of childlike example of a man, so I've wondered if he may have resurrected it from his youth.

I checked this book out of the library some two or three years ago and had to return it before I finished it. I like how he is in this book, where it is a lot of himself and his thoughtful looking out at the world, it is not contrived, or complex or puzzling but more playful and beautiful like a self portrait. It may have also been when he wrote this book, because I read another book that came out within this period by him as well as one of Kurt Vonnegut's within 10 years or so, both of them seem to be speaking from a voice that is authentic and doesn't need to be cleaned up for the masses, as if for a time these established authors had a friendly relationship with their readership. 

I have a hard time reading novels because of the authors voice. They have since the 20th century become more and more self expressive, which is something I pay more attention to than the story. For instance, E.M Forester is a beautiful writer but I am sometimes repainting a sky with him in so much depth that I forget where we are. It's lovely,  but defeats the purpose.  Which could be why I'm here now, writing a blog, instead of reading,  which is what I was so happy to do this morning. 

Just think Shakespeare, that's how every author who writes for his own voice is to me. I like the news writers best for telling a story.

Anyway, I fall for these old dead men a lot. I have happy visions of us in our loving abodes. I was happily living with Ray behind creepy Stephen King-like spider and webbed, rod iron gates in an old Plantation home with a Miss Havisham interior, with lit candelabras and red wine at night, and mornings of natural light and tousled hair. Everything else is between us, you know, and no one else really matters and we are happier that way.

He wrote another book in this mindset, with visits to Hollywood sets to get detective help from childhood set designer friends, and rainy day visits to the cemetery. And if I dig around my closet I may find it. The library must hate me.