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| All hail Mr. Bradbury, the First Martian! |
I’m not a Ray Bradbury erudite, but I’m mourning his demise anyway. As I said with my Jorge Luis Borges post before, a good writer can claim posterity with a powerful image, like Cervantes’ Don Quixote tilting at windmills. And boy did Mr. Bradbury succeed with that. The image of firefighter Montag burning books or that of Carl Sagan in the Cosmos minisieries clearly evoking The Martian Chronicles, by stating that with terraforming Mars the Martians would be us is enough to claim a huge success.
It wonderful that a sci-fi writer, usually associated with hi-tech vocabulary and prosaic writing could use such powerful imaginaries and lyricism in his writing style. But sci-fi is still a poor man in the literary banquet (Just imagine Bradbury’s or Asimov’s Nobel Prize acceptance speeches! No, it won’t happen anyway.), because of a stubborn pretentiousness that puts politics before art and originality.
And boy Mr. Bradbury’s oeuvre is artsy and original. To highlight, the Fahrenheit 451’s discourse in which why reading books and being an intellectual deserves scorn (Take that, Nobel Prize committee!), or how the book predated the isolating trend of the current social networks and iPods (Go ask Guy Montag’s wife)!
But what I like the most of what Mr. Bradbury did, is that he did equate books with happiness, thru the heroine of Fahrenheit 451.
God rest your soul, Mr. Bradbury. And thank you.
It wonderful that a sci-fi writer, usually associated with hi-tech vocabulary and prosaic writing could use such powerful imaginaries and lyricism in his writing style. But sci-fi is still a poor man in the literary banquet (Just imagine Bradbury’s or Asimov’s Nobel Prize acceptance speeches! No, it won’t happen anyway.), because of a stubborn pretentiousness that puts politics before art and originality.
And boy Mr. Bradbury’s oeuvre is artsy and original. To highlight, the Fahrenheit 451’s discourse in which why reading books and being an intellectual deserves scorn (Take that, Nobel Prize committee!), or how the book predated the isolating trend of the current social networks and iPods (Go ask Guy Montag’s wife)!
But what I like the most of what Mr. Bradbury did, is that he did equate books with happiness, thru the heroine of Fahrenheit 451.
God rest your soul, Mr. Bradbury. And thank you.
