all summer in a day ray douglas bradbury

Whenever I’m on a subway, I’m always curious to see what books – if any – kids are reading these days. Glittery names, to be sure, but Ray’s influence runs deeper. I’ll stop there, other than to say this is but a partial list of Ray Bradbury’s fan club. Stine, Buzz Aldrin (among dozens of astronauts), Walt Disney, John Steinbeck, Charles Laughton, Rod Steiger, legendary editor Bob Gottlieb (who helped to shape many of these stories), Sam Peckinpah, and Steve Martin. Weller’s book, you’ll find the tributes and friendships of a diverse group: Bernard Berenson, Christopher Isherwood, Aldous Huxley, Stephen King, Federico Fellini, François Truffaut (who managed completely to screw up the film version of Fahrenheit 451), John Huston (for whom Ray wrote the screenplay to his Moby-Dick), R.L. It is perhaps Ray’s influence on other writers – to say nothing of his readers – that sets him apart. The ‘‘Also by’’ page of a recently published book of his essays, Bradbury Speaks, lists thirty-two titles. According to his able biographer, Sam Weller,* he has written one every week since he started.

It is hard to think of a writer who has done more wi th the short story form than Ray Bradbury. He is a self-professed ‘‘sprinter’’ at the short story, rather than a ‘‘marathon runner’’ novelist. Ray Bradbury published his first short story in 1938, which means that he has been a working author for seventy-one years. (His middle name derives from Douglas Fairbanks, an idol from another era.) It’s a throwaway l ine, a fleeting tip of the hat by Mad Men’s creator, Mat thew Weiner, to the ult imate Writer’s Writer: Ray Douglas Bradbury, who, as I type these words, is one day away from his eighty-ninth birthday here on Planet Earth. ‘‘The Jet Propulsion Lab? Ray Bradbury?’’ The boss, Don Draper, played by Jon Hamm, smiles coolly. He asks his boss in a smug, New York City way, ‘‘What’s in L.A., anyway?’’ In an episode of the hi t TV show Mad Men, set in 1962, one of the characters is skeptical about a planned business trip to the West Coast. The End of the Beginning Supplemental Materials The Terrible Conflagration up at the Place

Boys! Raise Giant Mushrooms in Your Cellar!

All summer in a day ray douglas bradbury