Walking, just walking, walking?

First Things, a publication and website of The Institute on Religion and Public Life, has published a thoughtful article on Ray Bradbury's short story "The Pedestrian". John Wilson writes about the text itself, and explores the commentary on the text put forward in Jon Eller's Becoming Ray Bradbury.  Wilson tries to answer the question "Why didn't Ray Bradbury drive?" After considering biographical and psychological factors he concludes quite simply: "Why didn’t Ray Bradbury drive? Because he was Ray Bradbury." Read the full article here.

Bradbury's "The Pedestrian" was first published in the now defunct magazine The Reporter in August 1951, and subsequently collected in his books The Golden Apples of the Sun, Twice 22, S is for Space, Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales and A Pleasure to Burn. This makes it one of his most reprinted tales - and it has had an even more extensive life in anthologies and magazine reprints.

The complete archive of The Reporter is available online, and so we can view Bradbury's story in its original publication context here.