I wasn’t always a Ray Bradbury fan. Back in high school, an ardent Bradbury enthusiast lent me a copy of Farenheit 451, but I found it far less convincing as a vision of the future than Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, and far more sentimental. Yes, I was something of an intellectual snob in those days, which may have been part of the problem. At any rate, Truffaut’s film version, which came out a few years later, didn’t impress me either. Nor did a Bradbury story in my college Freshman English anthology, in which astronauts carelessly despoil a pristine planet. The message, it seemed to me, was all too heavy-handed.
It was during my first year at UCLA that I got the rare chance to participate in an off-campus colloquium on The Arts Today. I was thrilled to be accepted, but not entirely pleased to learn that Ray Bradbury would be one of the honored guests. I knew he’d be spending our weekend surrounded by slavish admirers (mostly male, mostly science majors) who had signed up primarily for the pleasure of his company. I was right: the fanboys were annoying, and Bradbury’s talk on the folly of trying to adapt Moby-Dick for a John Huston film starring Gregory Peck didn’t interest me much.
But something happened at that colloquium that was magical, at least for a Southern California kid like me. We were at a rustic conference center in the mountains near Lake Arrowhead, and it started to snow. Real snow – lots of it. That’s when I learned that Ray Bradbury is a good guy to have on your side in a snowball fight. (In this he was a dramatic contrast to our other weekend guest, the composer and music critic Virgil Thomson, a smug little man who regarded us rowdy undergraduates with frank disdain.)
Over the years I became aware of Ray Bradbury as a quintessential L.A. author. He seemed to be everywhere: showing up at local bookstores, at the theatre, on TV. The rare Angeleno who didn’t drive (though he was not averse to bumming rides from friends), he could frequently be spotted on his trusty bike, or on foot. I also learned of his generous support for local institutions. Clifton’s Cafeteria, a kitschy spot in downtown L.A., was a favorite of Bradbury’s in the tough early days, thanks to the owner’s policy of feeding the hungry, whether or not they could afford a meal. In 2009 Bradbury returned to the now-shabby Clifton’s to celebrate his 89th birthday in style.
I also learned to be more appreciative of Bradbury’s writing. I think it was in my kids’ high school anthology that I first read “All Summer in a Day,” a story that uses an outer-space setting to make its point about life on earth. It’s short but almost unbearably poignant: a small, perfect gem.
My second and last personal Bradbury encounter took place in 2003. My biography of Ron Howard was newly out, and I’d been asked to speak at a ladies’ luncheon held in a hotel ballroom. When I learned Bradbury was also on the program, I felt thoroughly daunted. He was physically frail by that point, but he spoke beautifully – and he couldn’t have been more gracious to me, despite the vast difference in our writing careers.
It’s been noted that Ray Bradbury died during a rare celestial event: the transit of the planet Venus across the Sun. What an appropriate time for the poet laureate of space exploration to leave us! He too was something rare.
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