Raymond Douglas (Ray) Bradbury Born August 22, 1920 in Waukegan, USA - died June 5, 2012 in Los Angeles. American writer, known for the dystopia Fahrenheit 451, the Martian Chronicles series of short stories, and the partially autobiographical novel Dandelion Wine.
During his life, Bradbury created more than eight hundred different literary works, including several novels and short stories, hundreds of short stories, dozens of plays, a number of articles, notes and poems. His stories have been the subject of several film adaptations, theatrical productions, and musical compositions.
Bradbury is traditionally considered a classic of science fiction, although a significant part of his work gravitates towards the fantasy, parable or fairy tale genre.
Bradbury's plays were well received by the public, but his poems were not very successful. Bradbury's main achievement lies in the fact that he was able to awaken readers' interest in the genres of science fiction and fantasy, which before him were on the periphery of modern culture.
Ray Bradbury was born on August 22, 1920 in Waukegan, Illinois. The middle name - Douglas - he received in honor of the famous actor of that time, Douglas Fairbanks.
The writer's father, Leonard Spaulding Bradbury (1891-1957), was a descendant of the English pioneers who crossed the Atlantic and settled in North America back in 1630. Bradbury's mother, Marie Esther Moberg (1888-1966), was Swedish. The future spouses met in the small town of Waukegan, located on the shores of Lake Michigan, north of Chicago. One of the interests of Bradbury's parents was the art of cinema, which was actively developing at that time.
Bradbury had two older twin brothers born in 1916: Leonard and Sam, but Sam died at the age of two. Sister Elizabeth, who was born in 1926, also died in childhood from pneumonia, in the same year, the writer's grandfather passed away. This early exposure to death was reflected in many future literary works.
There was a legend in the Bradbury family that at the famous "Salem trial" in 1692, the writer's great-grandmother, a certain Mary Bradbury, was burned. This fact is not reliably confirmed, but Ray himself believed in it.
During the Great Depression in 1934, the Bradbury family moved to Los Angeles, accepting an invitation from a family relative who later became the prototype of Uncle Einar and who bears the same name. There Raymond graduated in 1938 high school. The young man spent the next three years of his life selling newspapers on the streets of Los Angeles. Due to the difficult financial situation of the family, money for higher education there was none, and Bradbury was never able to attend college. But the lack of further education did not greatly interfere with his life, as the writer mentioned in his article “How instead of college I graduated from the library, or the thoughts of a teenager who visited the moon in 1932.”
Bradbury first tried his hand at literature at the age of twelve, when he wrote a sequel to "The Great Warrior of Mars" by E. Burroughs. The writer mentioned in an interview that due to poverty at that time he simply could not afford to buy a book, and then he decided to imagine what could happen next. Bradbury acknowledged the influence of Burroughs on his work in particular, Bradbury's Martian Chronicles would not have been written if he had not read Burroughs.
By the age of twenty, Ray was determined to become a writer. It is noteworthy that his first publication was the poem "In Memory of Will Rogers", which was published in a Waukean newspaper in 1936. In his other early work, Bradbury imitated Poe's Victorian prose style until Henry Kuttner, to whom he showed his texts, advised him to reconsider his writing priorities.
In 1937, Bradbury joined the Los Angeles Science Fiction League, which was one of many young writers' associations that were actively emerging in post-Depression America. Bradbury's stories began to be published in cheap magazines, which printed a lot of fantastic prose, often of insufficient quality.
At that time, Bradbury worked hard, gradually honing his literary skills and forming individual style. In 1939-1940. he published the mimeographic journal Futuria Fantasy, in which he first began to think about the future and its dangers. In just two years, four issues of this magazine were published. By 1942, Bradbury finally stopped selling newspapers and completely switched to literary earnings, creating up to 52 stories a year. Then Bradbury also actively followed the development of science and technology, visited the World's Fair in Chicago and the World's Fair in New York (1939).
In 1946, Bradbury met Susana McClure (Maggie) at a Los Angeles bookstore, who later became the love of his life. On September 27, 1947, Maggie and Ray entered into a marriage that lasted until McClure's death in 2003, four daughters were born in the marriage: Bettina, Ramona, Susan and Alexandra. The dedication of the author in The Martian Chronicles is addressed to Maclure: "To my wife Margaret with sincere love."
During the first few years, Maggie worked hard so that Ray could be creative. Writing at that time did not bring him much income; the family's total monthly income was about $250, of which Margaret earned half.
Bradbury continued to write stories, the best of which were soon published in the first collection, called "Dark Carnival". The publication, however, was greeted by the public without much interest. Three years later, a collection of "Martian" stories appeared, making up the novel "The Martian Chronicles", which became Bradbury's first real commercially successful literary creation. The writer later admitted that he considers the "Chronicles" his best book. When Ray took this collection to New York to see literary agent Don Congdon, he did not even have money for a train: he had to travel by bus, and he contacted Congdon exclusively by phone at a gas station located opposite his house. But already on his second trip to New York, Bradbury was met by fans of his work: during a stop in Chicago, they wanted to get an autograph for the first edition of The Martian Chronicles.
World fame came to Bradbury after the publication of the novel Fahrenheit 451 (Eng. Fahrenheit 451) in 1953. The novel was first published in the recently launched Playboy magazine. In the novel, Bradbury showed a totalitarian society in which any books are subject to burning. In 1966, director François Truffaut adapted the novel into a feature film, Fahrenheit 451.
Cinema in general played an important role in the life of the writer: he created many scripts for films, the most famous of which is Moby Dick. Also, Bradbury could have become a screenwriter of Hitchcock's famous film The Birds, but at that time he was busy with the TV series Alfred Hitchcock Presents, so he could not take on another project.
After becoming a popular writer, Bradbury continued to write actively, working several hours each day. In 1957, his book "Dandelion Wine" was published, to which he then wrote a sequel called "Summer, goodbye!". However, the editors refused to publish the sequel, citing the "immaturity" of the text: the writer released the second part only in 2006, half a century after the first.
The novel Dandelion Wine, like The Martian Chronicles, was composed of individual stories, some of which had previously been published. This book, however, is a more complete work than the "Chronicles ...". "Dandelion Wine" is considered the most autobiographical novel by Bradbury, and the author's features can be seen in two heroes at once - the brothers Tom and Douglas Spalding, who live in the town of Green Town, the prototype of which was Bradbury's native Waukegan.
Some readers have noticed the similarity of this book with another work of American literature - Anderson Sherwood's novel "Winesburg, Ohio" (Winesburg, Ohio), which is also divided into separate stories, combined actors, the plot also develops in chronological order. But at the same time, Anderson's protagonist, George Willard, is older than Bradbury's brothers Tom and Douglas, so spiritual experiences and thoughts in Anderson's book are more "adult". The brightness and colorfulness of childhood and the feeling of life are the main themes of both works.
Bradbury's next novel, Trouble Coming, also known as Something Wicked Is Coming, was published in 1962. In English, the name sounds like "Something wicked this way comes", which refers to Shakespeare's Macbeth, to a phrase from the fourth act, uttered by a witch. The witch speaks of the sympathy for evil that the witches have awakened in Macbeth; also Bradbury's hero Charles Hallway talks about the sympathy for evil, always lurking in hearts open to even more evil, in people who have given up and exchanged "something for nothing", turning themselves into absurd characters that feed on the pain and fear of others.
After 1963, Bradbury continued to publish new stories, but also concentrated heavily on another genre, the drama. His first collection of short plays, The Anthem Sprinters and Other Antics, came out in 1963 and focused on Ireland, where Bradbury spent six months. Soon, two shows based on Bradbury's plays appeared on television: The World of Ray Bradbury (Eng. The World of Ray Bradbury, 1964) and The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit (Eng. The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit, 1965). Also in the 1960s, the writer participated in the creation of a film on the history of America for the 1964 New York World's Fair. His interest in fantasy and drama continued into the 1970s, but at that time Bradbury also developed a passion for poetry, releasing three collections of his poems. In 1982, all the poems were published in one volume in English. The Complete Poems of Ray Bradbury. During this period of his life, Bradbury also created many literary works, far from fiction, published in magazines of various subjects: from Life to Playboy.
Bradbury republished some of his early stories in 1984 in the special collection A Memory of Murder, and later published the detective novel Death Is a Lonely Business (1985). Also at that time, the Ray Bradbury Theater series began to appear on cable television, in which many of the writer's stories were filmed. During this period of his life, Bradbury received many awards in the field of literature and the arts in general.
Ray Bradbury is often referred to as the "master of science fiction", one of the best science fiction writers and the founder of many of the genre's traditions. However, he himself did not consider himself a science fiction writer and did not constrain himself with narrow frames - only part of his works were written in the science fiction genre. Nevertheless, in addition to many general literary awards, Bradbury is the owner of several awards in the field of fiction: Nebula (1988), Hugo (1954).
Being already quite an elderly man, every morning Bradbury began by working on the manuscript of the next story or story, believing that one more new work would prolong his life.
Books come out almost every year. The last major novel was published in 2006, having received high consumer demand even before the release.
At 79, Bradbury suffered a stroke, after which he was confined to a wheelchair for the last years of his life, but retained his presence of mind and sense of humor.
Bradbury passed away prolonged illness June 5, 2012 in Los Angeles at the age of 91. In Russia, the NTV television company was the first mass media to report this on the air in the nineteen-hour newscast of the Segodnya program. And on the prime newscast at 11:15 p.m., the death of a world-famous sci-fi classic was the number one news story. Russian news agencies gave information 15-20 minutes after the program "Today". Many American publications placed obituaries on their pages. The New York Times called Bradbury "a writer who has managed to bring modern non-fiction into the mainstream".
Throughout his life, Bradbury showed an interest in science and spoke of weaknesses humanity, which are capable of leading it to the brink of self-destruction. These elements are hallmarks Bradbury's fiction, which provided significant influence on literature, especially the most famous Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles. With his lively, imaginative stories, written in a fresh, poetic style, Bradbury was able to popularize the genre of science fiction, making possible its kind of revival.
The New Yorker wrote that Bradbury was one of the most widely read American writers in the Soviet Union, along with Ernest Hemingway, Isaac Asimov and Jerome Salinger.
Unusual, unique, extraordinary - such epithets can be applied to the work of the outstanding science fiction writer Ray Douglas Bradbury. When you pick up his novel or story, you are surprised at the non-standard of what is written. With his heroes, you can fly away in a time machine into the distant past, step into another world, defeat the forces of evil and fight enemies. Over the course of his life, more than eight hundred different works came out from under the pen of the writer Ray Bradbury.
Talented child Born August 22, 1920 in Waukegan, Illinois. His mother, Marie Esther Moberg, was from the large Swedish Moberg clan. The woman lost two children (a son and a daughter), and therefore overprotected Ray, not allowing him to get out of bed even with a cold for a long time. The impressionable boy, who had an amazing memory, bitterly received the news of the death of his brother and sister Elizabeth. This influenced his stories in the future, one of the main themes of which is the escape from death to fantastic, fictional worlds.
Incredible was the fact that Ray, unlike other children, remembered the first hours after his birth. Maybe this is due to the fact that he was born overweight. The boy clearly remembered the first snowfall, and how he was taken to the cinema for the first time at the age of three. The image of the freak in the film called "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" struck an impressionable child.
Ray's relationship with his father Leonard Spalding Bradbury and his older brother did not work out. The dissimilarity of characters affected: Ray Bradbury was very different in dreaminess and love of reading. Fantasy is one of the genres of the writer. In the images of heroes, you can often recognize members of his family. For example, Uncle Einar (his image is presented in the eponymous fantasy story by the writer Bradbury) actually existed. He was Ray's favorite relative, his uncle, who moved to Los Angeles with his family. Also from real life the names of Bion and Aunt Nevada are taken in the stories.
From the pen of Ray Bradbury came out over four hundred stories. This and "Tomorrow the end of the world" ( The Last Night of the World), and The Shoreline at Sunset, and The Smile, as well as A Sound of Thunder and many others. The author calls many stories and novels quotes from the works of other famous writers and poets: "Something Wicked This Way Comes" - from Shakespeare; "Outlandish wonder" - from Coleridge's unfinished poem "Kubla (y) Khan" ... It is surprising that the author of these unique creations received only school education, although at school he attended a poetry circle, whose visitors, besides him, were thirteen talented girls.
With the choice of who he wants to become, young Ray decided at the age of 12. Persistently, step by step, he masters the difficult profession of a writer, despite the Great Depression that reigned in America.
The beginning of a career as a writer
His first publication was the poem "In Memory of Will Rogers", published in 1936 in a Waukean newspaper.
In the 1930s, the Bradbury family moved to Los Angeles. And at the age of 20, Ray began to read the works of Dostoevsky, which were a kind of textbook for a talented young man. The future writer saw a model of how to write novels correctly.
In 1937, Bradbury joined the Science Fiction League, an association of young writers. After a while, his first stories could be seen in cheap paperback editions. But among other works they stood out for their lyricism and depth of thought.
The first serious works of Ray Douglas Bradbury are his collection of short stories called "Gloomy Carnival", published in 1947, as well as the works "The Martian Chronicles" and "451 degrees Fahrenheit", which were released in 1950. The first edition of The Martian Chronicles won fans of the writer's talent: when he returned from a trip (to sell books, Ray had to travel from Los Angeles to New York), he was met by a crowd of people who wanted an autograph.
If you are not familiar with the famous popular science fiction story, we suggest that you familiarize yourself with its summary before reading.
By the way, the first copy of The Martian Chronicles was typed by the hands of a devoted comrade-in-arms and wife Margaret (and is also dedicated to her). With this woman, the author of unique fantastic works connected his fate on September 27, 1947. She gave great importance creative work Ray and therefore, from the day of her marriage, she gave her husband the opportunity to stay at home and create.
An erudite and educated woman, Margaret spoke four languages, knew the peculiarities of literature well and preferred some writers (among them Agatha Christie, Marcel Proust and, of course, her beloved Ray Bradbury). In the marriage of this wonderful couple, four daughters were born: Alexandra, Susan, Bettina and Ramona. Another serious work of Bradbury can be considered the book "Dandelion Wine" published in 1957, a novel that was compiled from separate stories. Unfortunately, its sequel, which was called "Summer, Farewell", was not immediately printed due to, as the editors claimed, "the immaturity of the text." This novel was published only in 2006.
What is the main achievement of Ray Bradbury? The fact that he managed to interest his reader in new genres of science fiction and fantasy, which had rarely been used in literature before. After 1963, Ray Bradbury, as before, continued to publish stories, but, in addition, he became interested in a new genre - drama. A consequence of this is the first collection of plays, The Anthem Sprinters and Other Antics, dedicated to Ireland, which was released in 1963.
Bradbury's passion for poetry manifested itself in the writing of three collections, which in 1982 were released in one volume. During this period of his life, the author created many novels and short stories that were far from the fantastic genre, and was published in various magazines.
An important component creative life became for Ray Bradbury and cinema. Raised on classic Hollywood movies, the science fiction writer calls his short stories, novels, and novellas "cinematographic." In addition, many screenplays came out from under his pen, in particular for the film "Moby Dick", which became the most successful.
From 1985 to 1992, the Ray Bradbury Theatre, a series of television shows, consists of sixty-five mini-films based on Bradbury's stories. Ray Bradbury is also honored by the fact that his work as a screenwriter was highly appreciated by the outstanding director Sergei Bondarchuk.
last years of life
When Ray Bradbury was already in his old age, he wrote either a story or a novel every day in the hope that this would prolong his life. The most recent major novel was published in 2006. At the age of 79, the writer suffered a stroke, as a result of which he was forced to sit in a wheelchair. But even in this state, the author was able to joke and maintain good spirits. “Imagine the headlines in all the newspapers in the world,” the writer answered reporters when he was ninety. – Bradbury is 100 years old! I'll be given an award right away." Alas, before centenary famous writer did not live eight years. He died in 2012.
Such is the fantastic fate of the prose writer and screenwriter, poet and science fiction writer Ray Bradbury.
Biography and creative activity of Ray Douglas Bradbury
5 (100%) 2 votesThe future science fiction writer was born on August 22, 1920 (according to other sources - on the 25th of the same month) in Waukegan. A small town located in Illinois, next to Lake Michigan. Parents called the boy by name famous actor silent film by Douglas Fairbanks (the writer's full name is Ray Douglas Bradbury). When the whole country plunged into the Great Depression, the Bradburys moved to live in Los Angeles, where they were invited by one of their relatives.
Parents from childhood instilled in the boy a love of nature and reading books. They lived in poverty and could not provide Ray with a college education - Bradbury received only a secondary education. So for the next three years, the boy sells newspapers on the street.
Ray Bradbury
The beginning of creative activity
Ray Bradbury wrote his first short story at the age of 12. This piece continued famous story"The Great Warrior of Mars", one of his favorite writers - Edgar Rice Burroughs. Back in 1937, when he was finishing school, Bradbury became a member of the Science Fiction League of Los Angeles. It was then that the author began his first publications in journals.
With no money for a college education, Ray educates himself. The boy spends 3-4 days a week in the city library, reading a variety of books.
In addition to self-education, Ray Bradbury writes for hours, honing his literary skills. In late 1939 - early 1940, Bradbury is engaged in publishing the magazine Futuria Fantasy. On the pages of the magazine, he shares his thoughts about the future of mankind and the dangers that it is fraught with.
Already in 1942, Bradbury finished selling newspapers and was closely engaged in writing fantastic stories. Ray Bradbury publishes up to 50 works a year, literary earnings become the main source of income. The writer has always closely followed scientific breakthroughs, was a participant in two world scientific exhibitions in Chicago and New York.
Bradbury's fascination with achievements in modern science and his vision of the future, formed the further direction in the writer's work. Fantast wrote his stories and novels in the genre of technocratic utopia. In the future that Ray described, there were no wars, famines and lawlessness. In his works, he revealed the life of heroes, consisting of love and meetings, pain, separation and hope.
Personal life and world fame
In 1946, in a bookstore where he was a frequent visitor, the writer saw Margaret Maclure. She became the only beloved woman of Ray Bradbury. During next year Margaret and Ray have formalized their marriage. It lasted until 2003 - this year Margaret died.
Over the years family life, the couple raised four girls: Bettina, Ramona, Susan and Alexandra. The first years after her marriage, Margaret was the main breadwinner in the family. The writer has not yet conquered world fame and money was sorely lacking. But the wife put financial worries on her shoulders so that Ray continued to write stories.
Bradbury continued to write and in 1947 released his first collection, Dark Carnival. But the stories were lukewarmly acclaimed by critics. Three years after the publication, the famous "Martian Chronicles" of the writer are released into the world. It was the author's first successful project. Later, Bradbury admitted that he always considered The Martian Chronicles to be his best creation.
World fame came to Ray Bradbury after publishing the novel Fahrenheit 451. And for the first time the novel was published not in fantasy magazines, but in Playboy. In the novel, the writer shows a totalitarian society in the near future that fights dissent by burning all books. The work gained such popularity that in 1966 it was filmed, having shot the film of the same name.
The last years of Ray Bradbury and his death
Ray Bradbury believed that work prolongs life. The morning of the science fiction writer began with the fact that he wrote several pages for the next novel or short story. Now new Bradbury books appeared on store shelves every year. The novel "Summer, Farewell" was published in 2006 and became the final work in the writer's work.
The last years the writer spent in a wheelchair, after suffering a stroke at the age of 76. But despite this, he was always in good mood and with a great sense of humor. For example, when asked why Mars has not yet been colonized, Bradbury joked: “Because people are idiots. They only want to consume.”
Interesting facts from the writer's life
Ray Bradbury was an extraordinary person, his biography is filled with interesting and intriguing facts:
- At the age of 4, the boy watched the film Notre Dame Cathedral. In it, the forces of good were at war with the dark forces. The film so frightened Bradbury that after that he fell asleep only with the lights on, afraid of the dark.
- All his life, as the author himself claimed, he dreamed of flying to Mars. At the same time, all inventions not related to space caused him to panic - even with the advent of personal computers he continued to write stories on the typewriter.
- Ray Bradbury created over 800 works. Despite the fact that the main focus of his work was fantasy stories, Bradbury wrote poetry and even drama. He also wrote several scripts for films and TV shows - "Trouble Coming", "Alien from Space" and others.
- There was a legend in the writer's family that his grandmother was a witch and she was burned during the infamous Salem Trial. There is no documentary evidence of the legend, but the writer himself believed in it all his life.
- Ray Bradbury never drove a car himself - he was afraid to get behind the wheel after witnessing two terrible accidents as a child.
- Bradbury was a devoted family man and lived his whole life with one woman. It was with her hands that the first copy of The Martian Chronicles was typed.
Ray Bradbury is an American writer, thanks to whom science fiction has taken its rightful place in the world of literature. He is the author of more than eight hundred novels and short stories, short stories and plays. But the most famous works are, of course, Dandelion Wine, and Fahrenheit 451.
Bradbury's biography is amazing. He never visited literary courses and did not go to college, but already in his youth he was an extremely erudite person. He began by writing poetry, and years later he received the title of "master of fantasy." He worked for many years as a newspaper salesman, and subsequently received millions in royalties for the publication of his books. And finally, Ray Bradbury, whose biography covers almost a century, was confined to a wheelchair for the last years of his life, but did not lose his sense of humor and only complained that he could not live to see his centenary. “But a hundred sounds more solid,” he said in one of his recent interviews.
How Ray Became a Writer
Bradbury's biography began in the city of Waukegan, in 1920. We can say that the childhood of the future writer was happy. Mom used to read The Wizard of Oz and, oddly enough, the stories of Edgar Allan Poe before going to bed. His parents took him to the movies to see The Lost World and The Phantom of the Opera. Ray was surrounded by love and attention.
Observation, love for magical fiction, a penchant for reflection - all this manifested itself in the author of the philosophical story "Dandelion Wine" very early. Without these qualities, he would never have become a writer.
It is worth saying that Ray Bradbury, whose biography includes both attempts to realize himself as a poet, and years of work in cheap literary magazines was born into a poor family. And the lack of wealth is not Better conditions for creativity. Nevertheless, he wrote his first work at the age of twelve. And it happened precisely because of the poverty to which his family was doomed during the years of the Great Depression.
Ray Douglas Bradbury, whose biography contains rather dark periods, with early years read voraciously. But my parents didn't have money for books. One day, after reading The Great Warrior of Mars and unable to buy Burroughs' next book, he decided to write a sequel. So twelve-year-old Ray became a writer.
Literary debut
If you try to set out a brief biography of Bradbury, you get a simple story about a talented boy from a poor family, living in a dream world and becoming rich and famous solely through hard work. A story like a fairy tale. But life was more difficult.
Ray Bradbury published his first work at the age of sixteen. short biography mentions this event in any reader). But one could hardly call it a literary debut. The first published work was a poem. Bradbury then wrote several short stories that showed the influence of Poe. These works were published by cheap magazines, containing, as a rule, the creations of novice and immature authors. It will take many more years until Ray Bradbury finds his own style of writing.
A brief biography of this writer, included in textbooks on the history of American literature, certainly tells how he, in order to hone his literary skills, worked for many years, being published in various magazines. Every month he created at least five stories. At the same time, he found time to follow the development of science, visit various exhibitions.
Margaret
In 1946, Ray Douglas Bradbury met his future wife. The biography of every great man contains at least a small romantic story. Usually sad. Bradbury's biography is no exception. However, the love story of this prose writer is by no means sad. He lived a long happy life with Margaret Maclure, had four children. And, perhaps, he could not have made such a significant contribution to world literature, if not for the meeting with this woman.
"Martian Chronicles"
Writing fees did not bring Bradbury the desired wealth. Margaret worked hard in order to feed her family and give her husband the opportunity to be creative. Success came with the publication of The Martian Chronicles, which Ray quite rightly dedicated to Margaret.
"Trouble Coming"
This novel was first published in 1962. Bradbury originally wrote the screenplay. The film was supposed to be based on it. However, due to lack of funding, the shooting never began. The writer had no choice but to rework the script into a book, which was called "Trouble Coming". The characters in the story are children. The boys run away from home one day, they dream of getting to the carnival. They succeed, but during the holiday, the children witness an amazing transformation.
In the early sixties, Bradbury continued to publish short stories. But during this period, he was also interested in dramatic art. The first collection of plays was published in 1963. A few years later, the project "The World of Ray Bradbury" was launched on television. As you might guess, the show was filmed based on the plays of the creator of Dandelion Wine. Drama Bradbury was fond of until the early seventies. At the same time, a collection of poems was published. Bradbury published in various magazines, wrote stories, of which not all were related to the science fiction genre.
"451 degrees Fahrenheit"
In 1951 he published his main book Bradbury. The biography of this American prose writer, as it has already become clear, tells not only about fame and huge writing fees. Fame came to him a few years after the publication of Fahrenheit 451. At least in Bradbury's homeland.
A short biography, which outlines only the most important events in the life of the writer, certainly mentions the incident that happened to him during the Oscar banquet. At the solemn event, the writer met director Sergei Bondarchuk, who not only recognized the author of the famous dystopia, but also preferred talking to him to meeting Hollywood celebrities. The USSR was the most reading country, and a book about a society in which any aspirations to think critically are pursued turned out to be much closer to its inhabitants than to R. Bradbury's compatriots.
There are still many interesting facts in the biography of the hero of this article. But before talking about recent years life of a writer, it is worth answering the questions: what is the uniqueness of creative style Bradbury? What contribution did he make to modern literature?
Features of Bradbury's work
The biography and work of the American science fiction writer is a rather interesting topic. Especially because, in the opinion of many, he represented the most "non-American writer." Born and raised in the USA, Bradbury is often referred to as the "master of science fiction". At the same time, his literature tends to parable, fantasy. And he himself raised in his works questions that worried a few of his compatriots. The tragedy of a society whose members are deprived of the ability to create, think independently, is shown in the book Fahrenheit 451. Yet Bradbury is perhaps the most optimistic writer of the last century. In most of his works, it is the joy of life or, as one of the critics put it, “the happy absorption of life experience” that plays the main role.
Last years
Even when the writer was confined to a wheelchair, he did not stop working. His works are published every year. Last novel Bradbury was published in 2006. At the age of 79, the writer suffered a stroke, after which he was partially paralyzed, but according to the writer's relatives and friends, he did not lose his sense of humor and presence of mind. In one of his last interviews, Ray Bradbury joked: “It would be nice to live to a hundred. Then I will immediately be given some kind of award. Just because I'm not dead yet."
Ray Bradbury died at the age of ninety-two on June 5, 2012. After his death, The New Yorker published an article in which this writer, along with Hemingway and Salinger, was named one of the most widely read American prose writers in the Soviet Union.
Ray Bradbury Born August 22, 1920 at 11 St. James Street Hospital, Waukegan, Illinois. Full name- Raymond Douglas (second name in honor of the famous actor Douglas Fairbanks). Ray's grandfather and great-grandfather, descendants of the first settlers - the English who sailed to America in 1630 - in late XIX centuries, two Illinois newspapers were published (in the provinces this is a certain position in society and fame). Father - Leonard Spaulding Bradbury. Mother - Marie Esther Moberg, Swedish by birth. By the time Ray was born, his father was not even 30, he worked as an electrician and was the father of a four-year-old son, Leonard Jr. (his twin brother, Sam, was born along with Leonard Jr., but he died two years old). In 1926, Bradbury had a sister, Elizabeth, who also died as a child.
Ray rarely remembered his father, more often his mother, and only in his third book (A Cure for Melancholy, 1959) can one find the following dedication: "To the father with love that woke up so late and even surprised his son". However, Leonard Sr. could no longer read this, he died two years earlier, at the age of 66. This unexpressed love is vividly reflected in the story "Desire". In Dandelion Wine, which is essentially a book of childhood memories, the main adult character is named Leonard Spaulding. The collection of poems “When the Elephants Bloomed for the Last Time in the Courtyard” the author provided the following dedication: “This book is in memory of my grandmother Minnie Davis Bradbury and my grandfather Samuel Hinkston Bradbury and my brother Samuel and sister Elizabeth. They all died a long time ago, but I remember them to this day.” Often he inserts their names into his stories.
"Uncle Einar" existed in reality. It was Ray's favorite relative. When the family moved to Los Angeles in 1934, he also moved there - to the delight of his nephew. Also in the stories there are the names of another uncle, Bion, and aunt Nevada (she was simply called Neva in the family).
“I started reading Dostoyevsky's works when I was 20 years old. From his books I learned how to write novels and tell stories. I read other authors too, but when I was younger, Dostoevsky was the main one for me.”
Ray Bradbury has a unique memory. Here is how he tells it himself: “I have always had what I would call an “almost complete mental return” to the hour of birth. I remember cutting the umbilical cord, I remember the first time I sucked my mother's breast. The nightmares that usually lie in wait for a newborn are listed in my mental cheat sheet from the very first weeks of life. I know, I know it's impossible, most people don't remember anything like that. And psychologists say that children are born not fully developed, only after a few days or even weeks gaining the ability to see, hear, know. But I - saw, heard, knew ... ". (remember the story "The Little Killer"). He clearly remembers the first snowfall in his life. A later memory is about how his parents, still three years old, took him to the cinema for the first time. There was a sensational silent film "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" with Lon Chaney in leading role, and the image of the freak struck little Ray to the core.
“My early impressions are usually connected with the picture that still stands before my eyes: a terrible night journey up the stairs ... It always seemed to me that as soon as I step on the last step, I would immediately find myself face to face with a vile monster waiting me upstairs. I rolled down head over heels and ran crying to my mother, and then the two of us climbed the stairs again. Usually the monster was running away somewhere by this time. For me, it remained unclear why my mother was completely devoid of imagination: after all, she never saw this monster.
There was a legend in the Bradbury family about a witch in their own lineage - a great-great... great-grandmother, allegedly burned at the famous Salem witch trials in 1692. There, however, the convicts were hanged, and the name of Mary Bradbury in the list of those held “on the case” could turn out to be a mere coincidence. Nevertheless, the fact remains: since childhood, the writer considered himself the great-grandson of a sorceress. It should be noted that in his stories devilry just kind, and otherworldly creatures turn out to be much more humane than their pursuers - puritans, bigots and "clean" lawyers.
The Bradbury family moved to Los Angeles in the 1930s, at the height of the Great Depression. When Ray graduated from high school, they couldn't buy him new jacket. I had to go to prom in the costume of the late uncle Lester, who died at the hands of a robber. The bullet holes on the belly and back of the jacket were neatly mended.
All his life Bradbury lived with one woman - Margaret (Marguerite McClure). Together they had four daughters (Tina, Ramona, Susan and Alexandra).
They married on September 27, 1947. From that day forward, for several years, she worked all day so that Ray could stay at home and work on the books. The first copy of The Martian Chronicles was typed with her hands. This book was dedicated to her. Margaret learned four languages in her life, and was also known as a connoisseur of literature (among her favorite writers are Marcel Proust, Agatha Christie and ... Ray Bradbury). She was also well versed in wines and loved cats. Everyone who knew her personally spoke of her as a person of rare charm and the owner of an extraordinary sense of humor.
“On trains ... in the late evening hours I enjoyed the company of Bernard Shaw, JK Chesterton and Charles Dickens - my old friends who follow me everywhere, invisible but tangible; silent, but constantly agitated... Sometimes Aldous Huxley sat down with us, blind, but inquisitive and wise. Richard III often traveled with me, he ranted about murder, elevating it to a virtue. Somewhere in the middle of Kansas, at midnight, I buried Caesar, and Mark Antony shone with his eloquence when we left Eldebury Springs ... "
Ray Bradbury never went to college, he formally completed his education at school level. In 1971, he published an article entitled "How I Graduated from Libraries Instead of College, or Thoughts of a Teenager Who Went to the Moon in 1932."
Many of his short stories and novellas are named as quotes from the works of other authors: "Something Wicked This Way Comes" - from Shakespeare; "Outlandish Wonder" - from Coleridge's unfinished poem "Kubla (y) Khan"; "Golden apples of the sun" - a line from Yeats; " electric body sing" - Whitman; “And the moon still silvers the space with its rays ...” - Byron; the story "Sleep in Armageddon" has a second name: "And it may be possible to dream" - a line from Hamlet's monologue; the conclusion of Robert Louis Stevenson's "Requiem" - "Home the sailor returned, he returned home from the sea" - also gave the story its title; the short story and collection of short stories "Happy Machines" are named after a quote from William Blake - this list is far from complete.
“Jules Verne was my father. Wells is a wise uncle. Edgar Allan Poe was mine cousin; he's like bat- always lived in our dark attic. Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers are my brothers and comrades. Here is all my family. I'll also add that my mother, in all likelihood, was Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, the creator of Frankenstein. Well, who else could I become, if not a science fiction writer with such a family.
Ray Bradbury's car number F-451 is nailed to the wall in Ray Bradbury's office, despite the fact that he himself never got behind the wheel.
“What about my gravestone? I would like to borrow an old lamp post in case you wander to my grave at night to say "Hi!". And the lantern will burn, turn and weave some secrets with others - weave forever. And if you come to visit, leave an apple for the ghosts.”
