RIP Ray Bradbury
Was planning on avoiding LJ until I finished finals, but I felt I needed to say something. It won't do justice to the man, but its the best I can do at the moment:
Ray Bradbury was an amazing man. There will never be another of him--that is the nature of humanity. There will be other great authors--there already are. Many of those authors owe themselves, their viewpoints, to Bradbury, and many more will owe themselves to him in the future.
Today there was an awards ceremony at my school. I got three awards, was not particularly proud of any of them--they were largely academic, and as academics have always come fairly easy to me, I wasn't really raised to be proud of them. But while I was standing in the long line of High Honor Roll recipients, the girl standing next to me turned to me and said: "I really liked your speech today."
She was talking about a speech I had given in English class, written for an assignment--we were all supposed to write speeches we would give at graduation if we had the opportunity. The fact that she not only remembered it hours later, but enjoyed it enough to remember to mention it...combined with the look on a close friend's face when she heard my speech, large parts of which were inspired by her...I realized something. I don't care about awards, I don't care about academic achievement--or rather I do, but it never seems to satisfy me. I have power. That satisfies me. My words can make people feel things. They can make people think. My words. Mine.
When I read Fahrenheit 451 earlier this year, I loved it right off. It made me feel rather...guilty, almost, that I didn't spend more time reading and writing, using the power that people have, that I have, to change the world. (And I spend rather a lot of time reading and writing). Fahrenheit 451 described all the things I thought and felt about books, and it was wonderful. I worshiped it like I worshiped Brave New World when I read it (and I love that book still), like I worshiped Beggars in Spain (and that book has forever changed my life in a way perhaps no other book has).
I haven't read many of Bradbury's works--I imagine I would have loved them in middle school, but I was usually in too much pain to be able to see very well, let alone think well enough to read. That's not to say I don't love his writing now, of course--I had planned to spend the summer reading Bradbury and Nancy Kress, and that plan hasn't changed. As it stands now, I'm pretty much just read All Summer in a Day and Fahrenheit 451. Even having just read those two works, he's had an amazing influence on me--I can't imagine what more exposure will do, what it must have done for those who have read more of his stuff than I have. 'All Summer in a Day' was...well, I don't remember much about it, to be honest, but I remember that it was vivid, so vivid I could feel it. I don't even remember what the imagery was, really--but I remember feeling, a lot of it.
Since I found out about Bradbury's death, my mind is full of strings, glorious and complicated and colorful, full of ideas and implications. I haven't the time now to devote myself to vocalizing them--I have to get through finals, I have to graduate--but by my Lady, those strings are beautiful. I know, when I can finally put them into words, that the words will be beautiful too.
Those strings are thanks in large part to Bradbury, those words will be thanks to him.
One thing that I believe, and this too is partly thanks to Bradbury: As long as people read books, as long as they think and have ideas, the books that they read will mean something. The authors that wrote those books will be remembered, will be--in some way at least--still alive.