Bradbury Inspires Exhibition

An art gallery in Ray Bradbury's old home town of Venice, California, is currently staging an exhibition of works related to Bradbury. In fact, L&M Gallery is located on the exact spot where Bradbury lived in the 1940s, and where he wrote some of his early works in including much of The Martian Chronicles. The exhibition runs until January 2013. Here's some more detail from the Gallery's press release:

Curated by Yael Lipschutz in honor of Bradbury and his journey into the red unknown, the exhibition will include the original manuscript of The Martian Chronicles, alongside artists ranging from Yves Klein—whose mysterious blue sponge sculpture from 1958 is as strange and disconcerting as any Mars rock—to Larry Bell, Jonah Freeman & Justin Lowe, Matthew Ritchie, and Vija Celmins, whose exquisite renderings of the cosmos serve to propel the viewer forward through space as we travel with Bradbury on his interstellar mission. Some works directly invoke the Red Planet, such as Ed Ruscha’s Hold on For a Minute, I’m No Martian (1980), and Tom Sachs’ Phonkey (2012), a large-scale sculptural tableau, in which a lone radio sits silent, stranded atop a scorching Martian terrain.

Cordella (1988-1992), an ethereal blue resin and fiberglass plank by the late John McCracken, (1934-2011) more abstractly suggests Bradbury and the perceptual doors of the mind he opened with his literature. Mars represented not only a stage upon which the writer projected our dreams and fears as a society, but another dimension of thought. Today, as exploration of the fourth planet from the Sun continues, we revisit this philosophic arena.

“Myth, seen in mirrors, incapable of being touched, stays on,” wrote Bradbury. The exhibition is also honored to include works by the late Michael Asher (1943-2012), Mike Kelley (1954-2012), and Ken Price (1935-2012), as well as Scoli Acosta, Kenneth Anger, Brian Butler, Sarah Cain, Corazon Del Sol, Noah Davis, Liz Deschenes, Fred Eversley, Thomas Houseago, Lipschutz & Lipschutz, Anthony McCall, Cameron Parsons, Judson Powell, Noah Purifoy, Ry Rocklen, Eddie Ruscha, Ben Sakoguchi, Jim Shaw and Marnie Weber.

For more information on the exhibition, visit the L & M Arts website.

Juan Diaz

The marvellous bare.bones website has published another of Jack Seabrook's insightful reviews of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. This latest instalment is a detailed breakdown of the episode "The Life Word of Juan Diaz", which was scripted by Bradbury and based on his own short story. You can read Jack's review here. (My own review of the same episode is on my Alfred Hitchcock Hour page, here.)

Jack's other reviews of Bradbury/Hitchcock episodes are all worth reading. There are collected here.

Lost and Found

Here's an unusual little item, a supposedly "lost" interview with Ray Bradbury. I say "lost" because it seems absurd to suggest that Bradbury - one of the most widely interviewed and media-friendly writers of his generation - could possibly have done an interview that contained anything so unique that its loss would be significant. There are whole BOOKS of interviews with Bradbury out there, and he was profiled for interview-based documentaries at least four times across his career.

Anyway, reservations about the title apart, The Lost Interview of Ray Bradbury does give us a nice glimpse of Ray and his thoughts from about twenty years ago. At this point he was in his early 70s, a time when most people would have long since retired, but not our Ray. Instead, he was writing scripts for his long-running TV series, putting together the short story collection Quicker Than The Eye, and launching his novel Green Shadows, White Whale. I think this is what they call a third act... The film ends with Ray reading his poem "Doing is Being", which alone makes it worth watching.

The Lost Interview of Ray Bradbury - twenty-year-old footage blended with stock footage and (in my view) rather unnecessary visual enhancements - is directed by Harry Hall, and can be viewed in three episodes on Vimeo:

Episode 1
Episode 2
Episode 3

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Meanwhile, the Ventura County Star reports that Michael O'Kelly's documentary about Bradbury - Live Forever: the Ray Bradbury Odyssey - has been screened, and that O'Kelly is now looking for a distribution deal to get the film released to TV and/or DVD. The report recaps much of the story of the making of the film during the last three years or so of Bradbury's life, and also recaps the highlights of Bradbury's life and career. The report is here.

Belated Halloween...

As the days, weeks, months go flying by I somehow managed to miss blogging anything about Bradbury on Halloween. If there is one month of the year that is Bradbury's, it is undoubtedly October: the month that figures centrally in at least three of his books:

• The October Country - where it is right there in the title; a collection of his weird tales, derived from Bradbury's earlier (out of print) collection Dark Carnival
• Something Wicked This Way Comes - where October is right there in the opening line ("First of all, it was October, a rare month for boys.")
• The Halloween Tree - which is all about the history and traditions of Halloween

Fortunately, others kept Bradbury visible this Halloween. For example...

Bradburymedia's friend Brian Sibley reminded us once again how a blog post should be done, with his excellent account not only of the creation of Bradbury's Halloween Tree, but of his friendship with the late author, and of the spreading tradition of the Halloween Tree concept. You can read Brian's post here.

Radio Station KPFK re-broadcast an archive programme which includes a performed reading of The Halloween Tree - including Ray Bradbury himself as one of the readers. This show is currently available in the stations online archive, but I expect it will only be there for a short while, as don't think they archive everything forever. So, listen while you can, but make sure you allow yourself a full three hours. Here's the direct download link.

Rosebud

Bradburymedia has been rather quiet of late. There's no big explanation for this, other than my general state of busy-ness... partly connected to my resolution to complete a cover-to-cover reading of Moby Dick in two weeks or less.

Of course, when John Huston invited Ray Bradbury to write a screenplay for Moby Dick in the 1950s, Bradbury replied "But I've never been able to finish the damned thing." Me neither, until now.

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A new issue of Rosebud magazine is now available, issue 53. This is "the magazine for people who enjoy good writing", and which has in the past included a fair amount of Bradbury-related material:

• Rosebud 25 featured “Last Rites,” a reprint of an earlier Bradbury story (also collected in Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales and Quicker than the Eye)
• Rosebud 28 featured “To Ireland,” a poem by Bradbury, and “Rendezvous with Ray Bradbury,” an article by Laura Treacy Bentley
• Rosebud 34 featured “The Trivial Pursuits Transporter,” a short story by Ray Bradbury which has yet to appear in a Bradbury collection
• Rosebud 39 featured an exclusive interview with Ray Bradbury by Gregory Miller
• Rosebud 52 featured Bill Goodwin’s “Citizen Ray,” an essay about his friendship with Bradbury

All issues are still available for purchase from the Rosebud online store - most for $6.95, but issue 34 with its uncollected Bradbury story will set you back a cool $100.

There's no Bradbury in issue 53, but I understand from editor Rod Clarke that there will be something about Bradbury in the next issue. More details to follow.

(My thanks to Eric Carter for pulling the information together on Bradbury appearances in Rosebud back issues.)

Waukegan 2.0

It's too late to attend the actual event, which was several days ago, but a press release announcing "Waukegan 2.0 - Rebuilding Jack Benny's and Ray Bradbury's Hometown" caught my eye. It's not the first time we have read about plans to revitalise the city, but it is a plan with very definite goals.

 No mention there of the Carnegie Library, I notice...

Planetary Society Tribute

In September, the Planetary Society held a tribute to Ray Bradbury. Founder Louis Friedman talked about Bradbury's siginificance to real-life planetary exploration. Bradbury's contribution to this field was not scientific or technical - he was no scientist, after all. What Bradbury DID bring was an immense enthusiasm on the key question of why our species is driven to explore.

Whether you agree with Bradbury or not, there is no doubt that he was a prominent poetic voice, particularly when the American space programme went into contraction post-Apollo.

Here is Louis Friedman's talk. It includes a lot of archive photos of Ray at JPL (and elsewhere), some of which I had never seen before.

New Ray Bradbury Review - Vol 3

The third volume of the journal The New Ray Bradbury Review is now available. You can order directly from the publisher, Kent State University Press, or from the usual outlets such as Amazon. (Amazon usually has it for a lower price, and sometimes lists third-party suppliers with even lower prices.)

Although it's an academic journal, all issues of the Review so far have been very accessible, with informative articles that work for the general reader and fan, not just the Eng. Lit. scholar.

This new issue is made up almost entirely of fragments of Bradbury's own writing. As such, it will be a useful resource for the Bradbury scholar, as it gives direct access to so many story openings and undeveloped raw ideas. But this also will appeal to those who just love Bradbury's writing. It's like being allowed to look through Bradbury's personal files and getting a glimpse of work in progress.

Ray's Last Composition?

According to his biographer Sam Weller, the last thing Ray Bradbury wrote for publication prior to his death was "The Book and the Butterfly" It's a short essay written as the introduction to The Best Nonrequired Reading 2012. How does Sam know this? Simple: Ray dictated it to him in April and they worked on the revisions in May, shortly before Ray passed away.

"The Book and the Butterfly" has been reproduced online by the Huffington Post, and can be read here.

Ray Bradbury Square

I'm very late in reporting this, but better late than never!

On 18th September, Los Angeles City Council voted to name an intersection Ray Bradbury Square. The intersection is of Fifth Street and Flower Street - click here to view it on Google Maps. You can read a brief account of the council proceedings here.

Three key figures in this renaming were Steven Paul Leiva (co-ordinator of 2010's Ray Bradbury Week in Los Angeles), Sue Bradbury Nixon (Ray Bradbury's daughter) and Jose Huizar (LA Councilmember). The three are pictured together after the event in this photo from Steven's Facebook page:

Steven has also posted a transcript of Sue's comments to the Council, which I would like to reproduce here:

First of all, I’d like to thank the many councilmembers who worked on, and supported, the motion to name the intersection of 5th and Flower, near the Los Angeles Public Library, Ray Bradbury Square. My father would be so proud to be honored in this way.

My father moved to LA in 1934, with his family, in the middle of the Great Depression. My grandfather was looking for work and they ended up living in Boyle Heights. After my father graduated from LA High School there was no money for college, so Daddy found himself several days a week reading anything and everything he could lay his hands on at the Central LA Public Library. As my father mentioned so many times in his lectures, the library was his university.

Along with the LA Public Library, the City of Los Angeles molded Ray Bradbury into the man, and writer, he was to become. LA featured in several of his stories, like “The Pedestrian” and “The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit”.

Daddy didn’t just take from Los Angeles, he also gave back to the city that he loved. In 1963 he worked with the Board of Supervisors on a rapid transit monorail system, which, unfortunately, was never approved. He worked as a consultant on the Hollywood and Highland commercial development. My father was always urging more pedestrian-friendly areas and more open-air shopping areas and restaurants with outdoor seating since our weather is so fantastic.

But I think my dad’s proudest accomplishment was to keep some of LA’s struggling libraries open. He would lecture at the libraries for free, with any admission charges going directly to the library. To him, keeping the libraries open, with their contents available to everyone, was so important. He was concerned that without everyone’s support, the libraries would close.

I can’t think of a better way to honor my father’s memory and legacy than to name the intersection of 5th and Flower, near the Central Los Angeles Public Library, Ray Bradbury Square.

Thank you.

If you haven't already seen Steven's own photographic record of 2010's Ray Bradbury Week, it's well worth taking a look. In some ways the naming of this intersection is the culmination of that week of celebration. Steven's photos and account are here.