My Literary Master

Ray Bradbury is my favorite all-time science fiction writer. I can vividly recall reading The Martian Chronicles for the first of several times during the hot late-70s summers. The well-worn paperback was my constant companion at my grandparents’ house, and I devoured those stories curled up under the shade of a tree or spread out among the cushions in the screened-in porch or chilling down in the cool cinderblock shelter of their semi-furnished basement. (I was not thumbing through novels perched atop houses, yet.) The anthology, as well as its cousin, The Illustrated Man, would help me survive numerous trips to the mall two decades later with my wedding-crazed wife, then just my fiancé. Stealthily leaning against a column, unobtrusive and inconspicuous among the racks of hanging dresses and gowns, I flipped page after page after page, attention firmly set in Mr. Bradbury’s world despite the half-eye kept out on watch for my better half.

But there’s no fooling her. One of my wedding gifts from Mrs. LE was a mint-condition hardcopy Martian Chronicles, autographed by Bradbury himself. I still have it, of course, sealed in its original package. (It survived the recent flood.)

Of course I read Fahrenheit 451 as a school assignment. But unlike the majority of my classmates, I enjoyed it. Ten years later, for two straight weeks, Something Wicked This Way Comes kept me company on the NJ Transit trains traveling into and out of New York. I still keep a couple of short-story anthologies on the bookshelf behind me, too: A Medicine for Melancholy, The Golden Apples of the Sun, and The Fog Horn and Other Stories.

He’s the writer, if I had my greatest wish fulfilled, I would like to be compared to.

Bradbury’s a science fiction writer, yes, surely, but those of us that read SF know he’s what’s called a “soft” SF writer. In other words, you won’t chance upon him writing about quantum fluctuations or time-space continuum shifts or even transistors or LEDs or supercomputers. Robots, perhaps, but you won’t get a detailed description of the positronic brain. Aliens, yes, but you won’t understand their anthropology or sociology or their breeding habits. Bradbury is an enthusiastic commentator of the human condition, of the mind of man, and, in a sense, his stories could be set anywhere. But to truly explore what happens when the weird assumes control, it’s best to set your tale in a world where you make all the rules. Bradbury’s science fiction is a mirror to show us the intriguing possibilities, good and bad, of man.

The single striking thing about his writing, to me, is something I strive for, too. Poetry. His sentences sing off the page, the images dance in your head, the dialogue has the power to tug at your heart or set your jaw granite-tight. It’s picture painting with the written word, and I can forget myself in his writing every time I read one of his stories.

A while back I borrowed a book of his on the craft, Zen in the Art of Writing, and took a couple of pages of notes. I recently found them. Care for a few tips from the book? Okay, how ’bout three. The first thing I noted was his simple observation that writers need to read poetry. Every day. The astute literary buff will note that many of his titles come straight out of the poetry world. (Two in this blog post alone – Something Wicked from Shakespeare, and Golden Apples from Yeats.)

Second, it was the first place where I learned of the writer/editor dichotomy. Those of us that write are aware of this well-known dilemma: How do you silence your inner editor as you’re rushing through the first draft of your magnum opus? To paraphrase my idol, you gotta write with excitement. Gusto. Zest. Passion. What wonderful words! So, if you aren’t, you are writing about the wrong things. Instead, you must: Write about what you hate. And I mean, hate. Similarly, write about what you love. What you really love. Be passionate, and repercussions be damned!

The last little tidbit I’ll tell you is the word game. Simply, be aware of words, cognizant of their personalities, their ethnicities and genealogies. Write down those of them that … stir a little something in you. Words that are comfortably unsettling. It’s impossible to define, precisely, but you’ll know it when you start doing it. For example, I did this around 2003 or so and soon I had a list of about fifty or sixty words. Words such as Armistice, Amplitude, all the way to Zephyr. Then, when you got you some writer’s block, pick a word and start typing. I wrote an 8,500 word short story called “Armistice” in a week or so back then. It’s okay, a little embarrassing and by far not my best, but it really taught me the power of a single word. I wrote a story based on a single word.

So … if you are a writer, read the book, especially if you’re a fan. It can’t hurt. Oh, and a bonus tip: Mr. Bradbury highly recommends purchasing and studying On Becoming A Writer, by Dorothea Brande (he did). The book is an arm’s-length away from me, purchased at an Unnamed Used Book Store for the simple sum of three dollars.