This Week in Literary History: Happy Birthday to Ray Bradbury!

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THIS WEEK IN

AUGUST 22 — AUGUST 28

Happy birthday to Ray Bradbury!

On August 22, 1920, Ray Bradbury was born in Waukegan, Illinois. He loved reading from a very young age, inhaling science fiction magazines like Amazing Stories. “The creative beast in me grew when Buck Rogers appeared, in 1928,” he wrote in 2012, the same year he died, “and I think I went a trifle mad that autumn. It’s the only way to describe the intensity with which I devoured the stories. You rarely have such fevers later in life that fill your entire day with emotion.” By the time he was 11 he was writing his own stories; his first story was published when he was just 18, and by the age of 30, after being discovered by Truman Capote (sort of), he had published The Martian Chronicles, which was quickly followed by The Illustrated Man and Fahrenheit 451. Which was, of course, only the beginning.

Bradbury’s books are still frequently read (and challenged) in schools and everywhere else—particularly his enduring American classic Fahrenheit 451 (which by the way, Bradbury wrote in the typewriter rental room in the basement of UCLA’s Powell Library), a novel that not only helped define the 1950s, but also seems to get more and more relevant as the years tick on. He also wrote at least one of the most iconic short stories of all time, and probably a lot more than that. Of course, Bradbury was not only a master of science fiction, but also a master of writing creepy children and of dramatizing the nature and power of tattoos; he succeeded, too, at realist fiction and memoir. He even wrote the screenplay for John Huston’s 1956 adaptation of Moby-Dick. His work inspired countless writers and artists, including Pixies frontman Black Francis, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend creator Rachel Bloom, who is very . . . excited by the greatest sci-fi writer in history (please click this link, you won’t be sorry), and Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling—though in this last case, the term “inspire” may be up for litigation. In summary, the man could do anything.

And he learned it all in his local library. Where there is now a 12-foot-tall statue of him, riding a rocket ship, book in hand. Hey, you could do a lot worse.

MORE ON BRADBURY

On the Dark, Wondrous Optimism of Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury’s Greatest Writing Advice

The Truth of Ray Bradbury’s Prophetic Vision

WRITING ADVICE

FROM A MASTERMIND

“I’ve had a sign over my typewriter for over 25 years now, which reads ‘Don’t think!’ You must never think at the typewriter—you must feel. Your intellect is always buried in that feeling anyway.”

—RAY BRADBURY

In other (old)

news this week

“Great American Novelist” Jonathan Franzen appears on the cover of TIME (August 23, 2010) • Tom Stoppard’s classic Shakespeare remix Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is performed for the first time (August 24, 1966) • Ralph Waldo Emerson meets Thomas Carlyle (August 26, 1838) • Zona Gale, who will become the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, is born (August 26, 1874) • Claudia Emerson is named Poet Laureate of Virginia by then Governor Tim Kaine (August 26, 2008) • Ivan Franko, author of the first detective novels and modern poetry to be written in the Ukrainian language, is born (August 27, 1856) • The first issue of Scientific American Magazine is published (August 28, 1845) • Percy Bysshe Shelley elopes with Harriet Westbrook (August 28, 1811)

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“If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.”