Halloween

That friend of Bradburymedia, the writer Brian Sibley, has blogged about his friend Ray Bradbury once more.

If you visit Brian's blog, you can read the true history of Bradbury's The Halloween Tree, and read Brian's review of this autumnal classic.

Farewell Summer

I haven't got my copy yet - I have to wait for it to cross the Atlantic, so I'm holding out for strong westerly winds - but Farewell Summer, Bradbury's new novel is out now.

The LA Times published a favourable review yesterday - click here to view it. There are links to other reviews in my earlier post.

It has become clear that Bradbury's two other forthcoming titles, Leviathan '99 and Somewhere a Band is Playing will be published together in a single volume. Although Bradbury and others have described them as novels, it looks as if they are really novellas, and too short to justify mass-market publication as separate volumes.

Green Town, Illinois

I've been listening to a review copy of Colonial Radio Theatre's forthcoming CD dramatisation of Dandelion Wine (which is beautifully done, by the way). That, and thinking about the imminent release of Bradbury's new book Farewell Summer, got me curious about the relationship between Bradbury's fictional Green Town - home of Ray's alter ego Doug Spaulding - and his real home town of Waukegan Illinois.

In Eller and Touponce's Ray Bradbury: The Life of Fiction there is a sketch of Green Town that Bradbury drew in the 1950s. At the suggestion of his publisher, he drew the layout of the town and also wrote out a cast of characters. All this was to help him get a grip on the material, and to help him see one of the problems with his draft of Dandelion Wine, which was that it was really an assembly of short stories, nearly all of them dealing with different characters. The publisher was afraid that the reader wouldn't be able to keep track of what was going on. (This, of course, was well before the coming of 'blockbuster' or 'bestseller' novels, with their casts of thousands.)

Bradbury's sketch shows the layout of fictional Green Town (see below - click on image to enlarge).

What is striking is that if you look at the real Waukegan from the air - courtesy of Google Earth - you get a very similar image (again, click on image to enlarge):


...especially when you realise that the Bradbury family lived on the intersection of Washington Street ('grandpa' on the Green Town sketch) and South St James Street ('Doug and Tom' on the Green Town sketch). Note the similarity of the ravine in both images. The area around the ravine between Sherman Place and North Park Avenue is nowadays called Ray Bradbury Park. This seems to correspond exactly with the bridge over the ravine that Lavinia Nebbs uses to walk Helen Greer home before her encounter with... the Lonely One...

Walloon has reminded me that there is more information on Bradbury's Waukegan (with lots of excellent links) on this thread of the Bradbury Message Board.

More theatrical productions

Bradbury's plays continue to find a home in small theaters across the US. Fahrenheit 451 - his best piece of stage writing in my view - remains a popular choice, probably because of the continuing relevance of its themes of censorship and the dangers of the decline of literacy. An Oregon production is reviewed here.

[ Added 19 Oct 2006: Another production of F451 (in Florida) has been widely reviewed in the local press. One of the lengthier reviews is here. Unfortunately, the reviewer obviously hasn't read Bradbury's novel, otherwise he would know all about the Mechanical Hound... ]

Bradbury's own Pandemonium Theatre Company, which he founded in 1964 with director Charles Rome Smith, is the author's main outlet for premiering his plays. The company is currently presenting Ray Bradbury's Autumn People, which actually consists of two almost unrelated plays: 'Pillar of Fire' and 'Touched with Fire'. This South Pasadena production is reviewed here. Nard Kordell, who tirelessly attends many of Bradbury's productions and public appearances, has some great photos from the show.

"This isn't a good way of problem-solving"

The quote above is from a parent, commenting on the children of Bradbury's "The Veldt" plotting and observing the death of their parents.

This is the latest attempt to get Bradbury removed from the classroom. There is a great irony here: Bradbury has such a deep and intuitive understanding of the child mind, that his stories are ideal for the classroom - and in the US he is very widely taught. But because he writes tales of horror and suspense and often, famously, writes about a future in order to prevent it, he comes under attack from parents and occasionally librarians who would like to protect the innocents.

(Of course, anyone who thinks children are innocent should definitely be reading "The Veldt" and "The Small Assassin", among others.)

For more on the challenge to "The Veldt" (which was rejected, by the way), see this report from the Beaverton Valley Times.

By some quirk of irony, this week is also apparently Banned Books Week, an event sponsored by American Booksellers Association, American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, American Library Association, Association of American Publishers, American Society of Journalists and Authors, and the National Association of College Stores. Naturally, Fahrenheit 451 springs to mind whenever we think of banning books, and this report makes the customary mention.

Storyteller

Bradbury, we are often told, is a storyteller at heart. Of course, people say this about many writers. There are, I think, three things that make this a particularly appropriate characterisation of Bradbury.

First is that Bradbury's writings are mostly in the short form. Like the storytellers of old, seated around the camp fire, he keeps things short and to the point. He favours short stories. Short poems. One-act plays. Thirty-minute TV dramas. Yes, he has written plenty of novels, some poetry of epic length, and many full-length screenplays. But even his longest works are really quite short, and nearly all are highly episodic.

Second is that Bradbury likes to re-tell his stories. All good camp-fire stories are ones that have been refined, embellished and enhanced through repeated telling to different audiences. All the great stand-up comedians do this, and some of them keep the same comic tales spinning for years, always adjusting the narrative, delivery and timing for optimum delivery. Bradbury re-tells his stories in many ways. He constantly adapts and re-adapts from one medium to another: short story, play, TV script, novel chapter. And in his interviews and public-speaking engagements, he invariably re-tells familiar anecdotes, like the one about Mr Electrico, or the one about how he remembers being born.

Third is that Bradbury is (or has been until recent years, when his health has got the better of him) a great performer of his own stories. He has recorded audio books of The Martian Chronicles, Fahrenheit 451 and many others of his works. Although he's not one of the world's greatest actors, he has been one of the best performing writers.

This autumn, Bradbury's home town of Waukegan, Illinois, is staging a storytelling festival in Bradbury's honour. A small town, and a small event. But the emphasis on storytelling is surely correct. This format seems an ideal way to celebrate his works - and to usher in the Bradbury season of Halloween.

Bradbury won't be attending in person, but he is filming a contribution in California.

Bradbury 13 exclusive!

Mike McDonough, creator and producer of the classic radio series Bradbury 13 has very kindly sent me some photos from the production of the show.

I have added Mike's photo album to my Bradbury 13 page: click here to take a look.

As far as I know, many of these pictures are published here for the first time. Many thanks to Mike for his generosity, and for taking the time to scan them for me.

That UNauthorised biography again...

I thought I might regret it, but I paid good money for a copy of that unauthorised biography: Ray Bradbury Uncensored! The Unauthorized Biography, by Gene Beley. As I have mentioned before, I had concerns that this would not be a very solid piece of writing.

At some point, I will do a complete review of the book, but I wanted here to record my first responses, having speed-read the whole book, and having read a couple of chapters very closely.

My overall impression is of a book that very much needs a strong editorial hand. It needs some fact-checking (example: it reports events of Bradbury's 86th birthday, even though it was published
before that event). It needs some copy-editing (example: names of people spelled inconsistenly, sometimes within a single paragraph).

It also needs systematically revising to make it a 2006 book, rather than a slowly-accreted collection of items written over a period of years. It is rather disturbing to read that Beley had "last heard of" Charles Rome Smith in a particular place - giving the impression that the author has lost track of the theatre director - and then to read an end-of-chapter note reporting Smith's death. Many of the chapters of the book take the form of an article written ten, twenty or thirty years ago, with an "author's note" tacked on the end to bring it up to date. In chapters where Beley is reporting a specific event, such as a particular speech Bradbury delivered, this would appropriately give us a sense of being at the event, and provide important historical context. However, when the chapter is an interview that has no particular point-in-time value, this seems odd. George Clayton Johnson and Harlan Ellison, both very much alive today and (judging from interviews elsewhere) both highly accessible to interviewers, are quoted extensively on their views of Bradbury's writing and character - but the interview quotes are from the 1980s. Ellison is quoted as saying that Bradbury has done nothing of value for thirty years - but this quote pre-dates Bradbury's flurry of writing activity that would include Death is a Lonely Business, Green Shadow White Whale, Ray Bradbury Theater, The Toynbee Convector...

Apart from these editorial weaknesses, does the book have anything to offer? Well, it has a biography of Bradbury, but necessarily with less detail than Sam Weller's The Bradbury Chroniclesoffers. It reports on some of Bradbury's public speaking, quite successfully giving a sense of what it is/was like to be present at such events. It covers Bradbury's legal action against CBS over copyright infringement of Fahrenheit 451, in more detail than I have read elsewhere. It gives some insights into Bradbury's forays into theatre, revealing/claiming clashes between Bradbury and Smith, and between Bradbury and Shank.

It has some charming quotes from "ordinary people" who knew Ray at various points in his life, and some negative comments about Bradbury from various people who have had dealings with him.

And it sounds slightly unkind when discussing Bradbury's disabilities and his current state of health.

And quite a few photos, rather randomly arranged.

Overall, it's a real mixed bag. Probably essential reading for the Bradbury completist, but for anyone else I would say: buy Weller instead.

My top tip is to buy the ebook version, which is a lot cheaper than the printed edition!

Birthday interview; theatrical productions

Ray Bradbury made a brief appearance on KPCC Radio, Pasadena, yesterday for this 86th birthday interview, conducted by Patt Morrison.

Bradbury is best known for his short stories and novels, but less well known for his poetry and plays. And yet there seems to be a Bradbury play in production somewhere in the world at almost any given moment. I have only actually seen one production, the British premiere of Fahrenheit 451, but have also read a number of other Bradbury plays. If you want to read them just for pleasure, a good starting point is On Stage: A Chrestomathy of His Plays, which combines three earlier play collections (The Anthem Sprinters and Other Antics (1963), The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit and Other Plays (1972), and Pillar of Fire and Other Plays (1975)) into a single volume. This one volume contains the following plays:

• The Great Collision of Monday Last
• The First Night of Lent
• A Clear View of an Irish Mist
• The Anthem Sprinters
• The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit
• The Veldt
• To the Chicago Abyss
• Pillar of Fire
• Kaleidoscope
• The Foghorn

There are also useful introductions and afterwords to each section.

Some of the plays are remarkable for their economy of staging. "Kaleidoscope", for example, dramatises the last minutes of a crew of astronauts after theirship has been destroyed and they find themselves flung apart in empty space. Bradbury's stage directions call for no scenery. The play begins in darkness, and each astronaut appears, one by one, in a single spotlight against the dark stage. There is no need to show anything else.

Anyone interested in staging a Bradbury production would be well advised to visit the website of Dramatic Publishing. They supply single plays at reasonable prices, and will also manage the licensing arrangements, and publicise productions on their site.

They currently list the following current and imminent productions (to which I have have added links to the theatres or companies staging the shows):

Dandelion Wine

(Chicago, November to January)

Fahrenheit 451
(Talent, Oregon, October to November)
(Civic Theatre of San Juan, Puerto Rico, October to November)


The Martian Chronicles
(Seattle, until 26th August)

The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit

(Albuquerque , New Mexico, August to September).

Ray Bradbury at 86

Today is Ray Bradbury's 86th birthday. He says he is going to live forever, so he is now one year closer to achieving that aim!

Bradbury has, on many occasions, written of time machines. Some of these are more or less literal transports, such as the device that takes Eckels and Travis back to the Jurassic for a touch of dino hunting. Others are more metaphorical. In "The Toynbee Convector" (1984), a man in an ice-cream white suit claims to have travelled to a glorious future world, and by so preaching of it causes such a world to come into existence. This man sounds very much like Ray Bradbury.

In the much earlier Dandelion Wine (1957), Douglas Spaulding and his friends sit and listen in awe of Colonel Freeleigh, an old man whose reminiscences are so vivid that they feel transported back to the American Civil War. The old man is a time machine.

In this recent interview, Bradbury is conscious that, at eighty-six, he is now such a time machine. It is remarkable to think, as you read Dandelion Wine, that the book's author (thirty-seven years old at the time it was published) is able to project himself into the characters of young Doug and old Freeleigh, is capable of simultaneously being the child and the time machine.

Birthday greetings for Ray are being gathered on his official message board. Brian Sibley offers a birthday tribute to Ray on his ex libris blog.