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Ray Bradbury supports the true idea of the American Dream through science fiction creating unique scenarios as well as utilizing his own vision to depict people determined to achieve the American Dream. He also explores 2 main themes, censorship and conformity, to show how people perceive the American Dream differently.

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The article, “American Dream vs American Dreamers”, pushes past stereotypes to fully understand the American Dream and its connection to our rights and freedoms rather than the mainstreamed version involving riches and wealth by comparing it to the works of Ray Bradbury. We read about how, “Readers and critics highly appreciate his poetic vision of the world and close connection with real problems of real people which exists invisibly in his most unreal books.”  as well as how Bradbury attempted, “to destroy the stereotypical attitude towards the subject, presenting another vision of the Dream of New World and indicating some inaccuracies in the perception of this phenomenon.” Through these quotes, we can see how Ray Bradbury was a stand-out writer and utilized his envisionment of the world to replicate real-world problems. It also shows how he tries to change the perception of the American Dream that had been provided through social media and television. Bradbury did a good job of preserving the fictional aspect of his books while connecting to real problems.

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Tartu University Narva College

Division of Foreign Languages

American Dream VS American Dreamers

(Basing on the novel Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury)

Supervisor: Anna Golubeva

Narva 2006
Preface
It has become a custom nowadays that the USA nowadays has turned into the first-rate provider of goods to the cultural market of the planet. The seeds of the New World's culture have begun to appear on the Eurasian soil since the USA started to gain power in the military and geographical spheres. The goals and values that used to be unknown have now become cult ones. One of them is the widely known American Dream. Due to its incredible popularity the American Dream seems to be one-sided aspiration for success, respected social status and material well-being. People in this country are believed to follow this very general list of desirable and forget about spiritual development of a personality. By the way, this is one of the weakest points in the American dream and the one that it is mostly criticized for.

On closer acquaintance the existing image of the Dream raises some doubts about its credibility and correspondence with reality. Thus, the hypothessis that the author of the thesis seeks to prove is: not all Americans admit the influence of the American Dream upon their lives. How correct is our generalised overview of this idea? Can this phenomenon be called a Dream in the ordinary sense? Is it really so universal that all and each in America live for it? We decided that there is lack of unbiased information on the American Dream and these questions are worth answering. That is how we have come to the idea of carrying the research of this sort. Without pretending that our judgment is totally accurate, we suggest that people try to regard the given notion from another angle.

The research will be conducted in two approaches. On the one hand, the general image of the American Dream will be composed basing on different nonliterary sources. On the other hand by analysing the novel of the famous American writer Ray Bradbury Dandelion Wine we will show that in the USA there are not only people obsessed by the thirst for success and prosperity, but also ones who dream of natural and so to say universal things like all of us do.

The present paper falls into Introduction, three chapters of main part and Conclusion. In Introduction the author gives the lexical definition of the term American Dream. There is also information on the author of the book that is researched. The first chapter is dedicated to the historical background revealing the origins of the American Dream and the role it has been playing in the society. The second chapter gives conclusions of some modern political scientists and sociologists about the researched notion. Chapter III is based directly on working with literary materials and gives the traditional understanding of the American Dream that was developed in the American literature at the beginning of the previous century. In contrast to it, the chapter also presents the analysis of Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine in order to demonstrate the difference in the perception of the American Dream.

The aim of the research is not to reveal the drawbacks of the concerned conception itself, but to attempt to destroy the stereotypical attitude towards the subject, presenting another vision of the Dream of New World and indicating some inaccuracies in the perception of this phenomenon. The novelty of topic lies in the new approach and the nontraditional literary material it is founded on.

The paper can be regarded as universal in a way. On the one hand those who are not acquainted with the American Dream at all will get irrefragable information on the modern character of the notion and its historical path. On the other hand, the materials presented and the problems covered in the thesis are of a certain value to those who are aware of the conception in general and interested in new ideas and opinions. The literary component of the present paper shows the direction which anyone can follow for the purpose of further researches.

Contents

Introduction

The American Dream is a notion in everyday use. It is heard in speech of politicians, sociologists or analysts. There is large amount of literary works dethroning it and showing its dangerous impact upon peoples' minds.

Various sources of information (mass media, critical essays, Hollywood movies, etc) have "encouraged" non-Americans to assemble a number of rather perfunctory models regarding the American Dream. It may be understood as averaged stable material well-being of a usual family as well as successful career development. And the path from a dustman to a millionaire in its different variations is considered to be the wildest dream of every American. These are stereotypical images provided by cinema (movies for the whole family where all the events take place against the background of a quiet family life); books (recollect characters of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Theodore Dreiser) as well as show-business, sports etc.

Having such models in front of their eyes people create for themselves a collection of trappings of the American Dream: success, public recognition and prosperity depending directly on money. And there is little doubt that someone has ever tried to muse on what actually there is behind the phrase American Dream.

It is impossible to move any further in trying to comprehend the deep sense of the phrase "American Dream" or to estimate its nature without a generalised definition of the concept. The first definition was formulated and used by James Truslow Adams in his book The Epic of America first published in 1931. There he stated:

"The American Dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position" (1971: 214-215).

This term and the book itself came in handy. The aim of the author was to encourage the society in early years of Great Depression, to give hope and to remind people of the remarkable past of their country. His attempt was doomed to success.

In the course of time the term "American Dream' has been developing new meanings and getting more indistinct. Its definition is virtually taken for granted. According to Wikipedia web-page the American Dream is the conviction, widespread in the United States, that by working hard, being patient and persistent anyone can change his or her life for the better. Such changes traditionally involve improvement of the financial or social status. The article discusses both the past and the today's state of the Dream. The opportunity to get free enterprises or/and escape from war or persecution has always been luring people from different countries thus causing waves of immigration. Nowadays the examples of realisation of secret hopes and wildest expectations still keep lots of people believing in their lucky star. The concluding part of the article is a fly in the ointment since it enumerates a number of aspects which rouse the censure of critics. The main principles of the conception - the equality of opportunities and its accessibility - are disputed on social, ethical, economical and some other levels. In some critics' opinion, the idea on the whole is believed to be misleading and even meaningless. Nonetheless, the question about the Dream and its weak and strong points is still open and highly disputed in the American society. (Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: American Dream, para.2-8)

Both definitions of Adams and Wikipedia authors are too concrete in the former as well as too general and narrow in the latter for describing such a complex subject precisely. The same can be said about all the previous works on this topic. The other authors believed this particular concept describes something very contemporary. They regarded the Dream as a social phenomenon only. However, it can be viewed as an iceberg: we see only a small part of it, all the important is hidden in human memory under remote ages. In order to understand what the American Dream truly is we need to look back. That is what the famous publicist and writer Jim Cullen did while working on his new book The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea That Shaped a Nation. He has chosen a slightly different approach linking the Dream with history and social changes. He believes the American Dream is like a mirror reflecting all the needs of the American nation during its development. Currently, his work is the most complete and detailed research of the given phenomenon. In the text he insists that Americans are the nation of American "Dreams" in the plural. That is where the originality of his book lies.

The six main chapters are each devoted to a different Dream. Cullen begins with the Puritan dream of building a perfect new society of believers where every person would be free from Old World's impact. For Cullen the most American feature and crucial point here is the strongest "faith in reform" (2004: 15) and the belief that, with effort, things could be different and better than they are at the moment.

This links the Puritans to the second American Dream which is embodied in the Declaration of Independence. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are terms no less ambiguous and no less mythic than the notion of American Dream itself. However, this is the reason why the founding charter has been a recurrent inspiration for such people and movements which the Founders could never imagine having a place within the political life of the nation. Democratising of the Founders' vision and the expectations of upward social mobility for people of humble beginnings is the third version of the Dream considered by Cullen. Together with social and political changes he mentions a few new tendencies in the language development. The fourth Dream is that of social equality which he explores particularly through an intense discussion with Martin Luther King, Jr. Fifth. He regards " home ownership" as the sixth American Dream and emphasises here, in the discussion of suburbanisation after World War II that of all the Dreams this one is most widely realised. Finally, he approaches the dream "of the Coast" - Californian dreaming which is another vision of good life. Unlike the previous dreams that imply hard work and patience, the dream of the Coast originates from the gold rush, the gambling represented by Las Vegas, the cult of personality (rather than character) that as Cullen claims, is provoked by Hollywood and in particular by the great and successful actors of that time.

Cullen's well-written book is objective and unbiased. It enlarges the existing idea about the notion. As well as every good piece of writing it raises a number of questions. The author confesses that he cannot formulate the uniting features of all the Dreams and suggests that each of them is about "freedom" and equally about "agency that individuals have control over course of their lives" (2004: 10).

When Americans finally noticed and admitted the obvious weak points of their national conception numerous discussions and debate flared up. We find life of the notion within literature to be the most captivating and worth of attention since this space is multi-dimensional and immense. There is a certain list of books traditionally associated with the problem of the Dream. That is where readers gain a rough about a typical "conqueror" and follower of the Dream. Authors' talent and art of word together with readers' vivid imagination definitely bare fruit. The world is aware of the main tendency of anxiety and discontent now inseparable from the notion of the American Dream. However, more intimate knowledge of the national literature lets us conclude that people's minds are occupied by some other things beside the notorious aspirations and aims. From the context and literary reality of books we may single out the other models of behaviour and ways of thinking of Americans.

One of the authors whose characters are different from typical Americans is Ray Bradbury. This man is famous and popular all over the world for the incredible variety of plots and brilliant writing skills. During more than half a century of his creative work Bradbury has been demonstrating inexhaustible imagination and unusual vision of life.

Ray Bradbury was born on August 22, 1920 in Waukegan, Illinois. Los Angeles high school was the one and only school he attended and graduated from in 1938. Although he decided not to go further he continued his education individually and became "a student of life". During next four years he was selling newspapers, "spending his nights in the public library and his days at the typewriter. He became a full-time writer in 1943, and contributed numerous short stories to periodicals before publishing a collection of them, Dark Carnival, in 1947" (About Ray Bradbury. Biography: para.1). The Martial Chronicles became his first masterpiece and manifestation of his stunning talent. Next came The Illustrated Man, Fahrenheit 451 (1953), Dandelion Wine (1957) and Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962). Currently, in the list of his works there are more than 300 books including 12 novels, scores of short stories and several poems. During his amazingly long life Bradbury has been nominated for numerous prestigious awards in literature and few other disciplines repeatedly. (About Ray Bradbury. Biography: para.1-4)

Not only has his talent of a science fiction writer been recognised. Readers and critics highly appreciate his poetic vision of the world and close connection with real problems of real people which exists invisibly in his most unreal books. His creation staggers with the depth of philosophical and human content.

For Bradbury there are two opposite categories of people: some love beauty as it is while the others are ready to betray it for the sake of material benefits or satisfaction of basic instincts. His works reveal by implicit, though sharply, on whose side the author is. The novel Dandelion Wine which is analysed in this thesis is not an exception. This particular book once again proves that Bradbury is indeed a handy-man in literature. Besides being a careful contemplator, sentient artist and witty mentor (using unobtrusive moral or inoffensive humour) he has shown himself as a delicate psychologist and expert on children's souls. The world of childhood in Bradbury's opinion has great significance being more than just a stage of life. This is where we learn to see, feel and love beauty. This is when we realise its unrivalled power and even vital importance. In further analysis of the novel special attention will be paid to the characters that whether live at this stage or left it long time ago but remember and follow all the lessons taught to them. The breed of people depicted in this book is the object of the author's strong faith and hope for future.

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Рэй Брэдбери.Ру Елена Гомзина. "American Dream VS American Dreamers". Рэй Брэдбери.RU Рей Бредбери.RU

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Tartu University Narva College Division of Foreign Languages American Dream VS American Dreamers (Basing on the novel Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury) Supervisor: Anna Golubeva Narva 2006 Preface It has become a custom nowadays that the USA nowadays has turned into the first-rate provider of goods to the cultural market of the planet.

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Ray Bradbury at 100: A Conversation between Sam Weller and Dana Gioia

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Ray Bradbury at 100: A Conversation between Sam Weller and Dana Gioia

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In the transcripted interview between Sam Wellen and Dana Gioia, “Ray Bradbury at 100: A Conversation between Sam Weller and Dana Gioia”, they discuss the significance of Ray Bradbury’s writing style as well as provide an example of Bradbury’s literature making a difference in the real world. We hear how “he began to write children’s literature” and “mixed in elements from the realist tradition,” as well as beginning to “attract a large female readership.” It shows how Ray Bradbury was “before his time” and how he utilized a new genre to help get his stories out to reach separate audiences. He was one author who aimed to provide every age the chance of learning the American Dream. We know that, “immigrant workers, whom American intellectuals consider beyond the compass of literature — you know all the social, cultural, and racial barriers that exist — were part of Ray’s audience.” This real-life scenario provided by a first witness shows how people were looking up to Bradbury and finding strength and motivation to achieve the dream through his stories. We can say that Ray Bradbury began to reform the ideas or people and teach them what it means to dream of the American Dream.

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COMMEMORATING THE CENTENNIAL of the great Ray Bradbury, biographer Sam Weller sat down with former California poet laureate and former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts Dana Gioia for a wide-ranging conversation on Bradbury's imprint on arts and culture.

¤

SAM WELLER: The first time I met you was at the White House ceremony for Ray Bradbury in November 2004. You were such a champion for Ray's legacy - his advocate for both the National Medal of Arts and Pulitzer Prize. As we look at his 100th birthday, I want to ask: Why is Bradbury important in literary terms?

DANA GIOIA: Ray Bradbury is one of the most important American writers of the mid-20th century. He transformed science fiction's position in American literature during the 1950s. There were other fine sci-fi writers, but Ray was the one who first engaged the mainstream audience. He had a huge impact on both American literature and popular culture. He was also one of the most significant California writers of the last century. When one talks about Bradbury, one needs to choose a perspective. His career looks different from each angle.

It's interesting. You see him as a California writer. He moved to California from Illinois in April 1934. He was 13 years old and he's often associated with the Midwest, the prairie, and its ideals. How do you separate those two things? Is he a Californian or Midwestern writer? Is he both? Or does the question ultimately not matter?

Regional identity matters more in American literature than many critics assume. We have a very mobile society, so today many writers are almost placeless. But Bradbury is a perfect example of a writer for whom regional identity was very important.

How do you decide where a writer comes from? There are two possible theories - both valid. The first theory looks at where a writer was born and spent his or her childhood. But I favor a different view. I believe a writer belongs to the place where he or she hits puberty. That's the point where the child goes from a received family identity to an independent adult existence.

Once Bradbury came to Southern California, he never left. He lived in Los Angeles for 77 years. All of his books, all of his stories, novels, and screenplays were written here. The great imaginative enterprise of his life - bringing science fiction into the American mainstream - happened in California.

Is there any way to measure Ray's impact on popular culture?

Let me offer one perspective. If you compiled a list in 1950 of the biggest grossing movies ever made, it would have contained no science fiction films and only one fantasy film, The Wizard of Oz. In Hollywood, science fiction films were low-budget stuff for kids. The mainstream market was, broadly speaking, "realistic" - romances, comedies, historical epics, dramas, war films, and adventure stories.

If you look at a similar list today, all but three of the top films - Titanic and two Fast and Furious sequels - are science fiction or fantasy. That is 94 percent of the hits. That means in a 70-year period, American popular culture (and to a great degree world popular culture) went from "realism" to fantasy and science fiction. The kids' stuff became everybody's stuff. How did that happen? There were many significant factors, but there is no doubt that Ray Bradbury was the most influential writer involved.

It's interesting you say this because you don't seem to be afraid - some critics don't want to connect popular culture or mass culture with literature or with high intellectual arts. You seem to say that Bradbury is one of those people who brought these two things to the crossroads.

In my academic training, I was inculcated in the tradition of the psychological and social realist novel, the so-called "Great Tradition." This was an extraordinary literary lineage - Austen, Eliot, Dickens, Conrad, James, Cather, Hemingway, not to mention Balzac, Stendhal, Flaubert, Tolstoy, Chekhov, and Dostoyevsky. The realist novel was one of the great achievements of Western literature. It provided a powerful means to articulate and understand personal and social relations of enormous complexity. Three cheers for realism! Maybe even four.

But there are different modes of storytelling. The most primitive is myth, where natural forces become personified in narratives. The next historical development was romance. In romantic narratives, we have the world not as it is but as we wish or fear it to be. This was the mode of medieval and Renaissance narratives. (Centuries later it also became the mode of science fiction, fantasy, horror, Gothic romance, and old-school mysteries.)

Realism is the mode that emerged last. Although the realist novel quickly became the dominant narrative form, its popularity only dates back about 400 years. The realist novel had a particular power that made it very attractive. The realist mode allowed one to see the world simultaneously from the inside and the outside. It compared - usually with a great deal of irony - the subjective experience of characters and the exterior world that surrounds them. Great novels mediate these two realities with tremendous finesse.

But realism is not the only way to tell a story, and the romantic mode never vanished. Even some of the realist masters, such as Dostoyevsky, Dickens, and Balzac, found themselves exploring the mode of romance to represent certain human possibilities. Romance remained very strong in American literature with some of our most original writers - Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne. But it never became academically respectable. It smacked of popular or children's literature. As a senior at Stanford, I had to ask permission to add Mary Shelley to my reading list! (Another student asked to read H. P. Lovecraft and got a stern lecture.)

How do you place Bradbury in this opposition of the realist and romantic traditions of storytelling?

Bradbury never went to college - that's one reason why he was so original. He was not indoctrinated in the mainstream assumption of the superiority of the realist mode. He educated himself. He read the books that he wanted to - from masterpieces to junk. Then he began to write children's literature, which is to say, pulp science fiction and fantasy. But he mixed in elements from the realist tradition.

Then something amazing happened. In a 10-year period, Bradbury wrote seven books that changed both American literature and popular culture. They were mostly collections of short stories. Only two were true novels. In these books, for the first time in American literature, an author brought the subtlety and psychological insight of literary fiction into science fiction without losing the genre's imaginative zest. Bradbury also crafted a particular tone, a mix of bitterness and sweetness that the genre had never seen before. (There had been earlier novels, mostly British and Russian, in which serious writers employed the science fiction mode, but those works showed the difficulty of combining the different traditions of narration. The books always resolved in dystopian prophecy.) Bradbury, for whatever reasons, was able to manage this difficult balancing act - not once but repeatedly.

What books are you thinking about here? What do you consider Bradbury's best period?

Sam, you'll probably disagree with me - but I think Bradbury's best work was mostly done in a 10-year period in the early part of his career. In one remarkable decade he wrote: The Martian Chronicles (1950), The Illustrated Man (1951), The Golden Apples of the Sun (1953), Fahrenheit 451 (1953), The October Country (1955), Dandelion Wine (1957), and A Medicine for the Melancholy (1959). The books came one right after the other, and he created a new mode of speculative fiction.

The culture immediately recognized his achievement. Suddenly, major mainstream journals published his fiction, and producers adapted his work for movies, radio, and TV. Millions of readers, who would not have read pulp fiction, came to his work. He also became the first science fiction author to attract a large female readership.

I don't disagree with you in terms of that period of productivity. I might expand it by a couple of years because in '47 he published Dark Carnival, his first collection of short stories, which is somewhat primitive, but Stephen King called it "Dubliners of American Gothic." Of course, Ray revised it in 1955 into The October Country, so it's a little murky there. But it's interesting that you don't put 1962's Something Wicked This Way Comes into that pantheon of classic Bradbury. Why is that?

You may be right about Something Wicked This Way Comes. It is the transitional book. I chose the books with the best combination of invention and finesse. The books from the early 1960s are good, but one starts to see his imaginative powers gradually weaken. Sentimentality creeps in. You could extend his golden period a few more years to include Something Wicked This Way Comes, along with his collections R Is for Rocket (1962) and The Machineries of Joy (1964). But we can't disguise the fact that his later works taper off.

I agree.

Sam, you and I knew Ray very well. He was one of the most generous, cordial, gracious artists I ever met. I wonder if Bradbury's very goodness didn't eventually temper the paranoia, ferocity, anger, and anxiety that animated his early fiction.

I agree that his character, avuncular kindness, generosity of spirit, and overall positive nature differed greatly from the snarl of early stories or the meanness, inherent in a take such as "All Summer in a Day." So, I actually agree with you that his kindness might have started to take him away from the dark human commentary of his early work.

You wrote a great essay, "Literary L.A., with No Apology," in which you talk about your origin story with Fritz Lang and encountering him at Royce Hall. What is your Bradbury origin story? You said you picked up The Machineries of Joy.

Yes, that was the first hardbound book I ever bought. But I'd already been reading Bradbury for years. I was probably about 10 when I first read his work. I encountered a Bradbury story in some anthology. I searched the wire paperback racks at the local drugstore until I found The Golden Apples of the Sun. I loved it, so I began reading all of his books, mostly borrowed from the Hawthorne library.

My friends read him, too. Little boys read novels back then. Bradbury became one of our foundational writers. Even at 11 or 12, we could sense he was different. He wasn't like Isaac Asimov or A. E. van Vogt - the simple, plot-driven sci-fi we were used to. Bradbury had refined it into something subtler and more humane. We didn't know it yet, but we were reading literature.

How would you describe the nature of Bradbury's literary achievement?

Let me explain my claims for Bradbury. When I talk about his literary quality, I do not mean that The Illustrated Man is equal to Anna Karenina. What I'm saying is that Bradbury created a new kind of fiction, which required enormous mastery and originality. His novels and short stories opened up huge possibilities for later authors and narrative artists in all genres. This is no small thing. And his books are still widely read. Any author who writes one great novel has beaten overwhelming odds. Most writers never write anything that is read 50 years later, even the winners of literary prizes. Look at a list of Pulitzer Prize winners from 50 years ago. How many of those books have survived?

That is why Bradbury's later decline doesn't matter. For 10 years, he was Joe DiMaggio. Every time he went to bat, there was a good chance he would hit the ball, sometimes out of the park. It's significant that Ray's great hitting streak came in the 1950s, a period of national optimism. Despite the anxiety, darkness, and anger in his work, Bradbury always wrote in a spirit of hope and reconciliation. He never believed humanity was beyond redemption. Perhaps as America shifted into the late 1960s and beyond, he lost touch with the culture.

That's all very true. Do you have a favorite book yourself? Ray bristled at that question. He said you can't pick a favorite child, and that all of his books were his "children." For his readers, we all have books we attach to, either sentimentally or nostalgically, creatively, or intellectually. Do you have a favorite work by Bradbury?

Not a single work but a favorite form - the short story. That is where his talents burned most brightly.

Agreed.

It's impossible to pick a single collection. I would select two or three stories from each of the early books. The best stories stick in your imagination. They also ripple through the culture like "A Sound of Thunder," which popularized the notion of the Butterfly Effect. Other favorites are "The Pedestrian," "The Veldt," and "There Will Come Soft Rains."

These stories express human desires and anxieties in ways that expose our naked psyches. I wonder if anyone has noticed that Bradbury was part of a midcentury American version of magical realism that paralleled the Latin American movement. His stories share a visionary style in which fantasy and realism intermingle similar to works such as John Cheever's "The Swimmer," Bernard Malamud's "Angel Levine," or Truman Capote's "Miriam." Bradbury created a cluster of myths and images for the late 20th century - situations, characters, and images that moved beyond the written word to become films, TV, comic books, theater, operas, and visual art.

Can you elaborate on Bradbury's role as a modern mythmaker?

Look at The Martian Chronicles. At the height of American optimism, Bradbury wrote a bittersweet novel about the failures of science, technology, and progress. Humanity makes it to Mars, but the triumph is illusory. Mars becomes a landscape of ghost towns. The novel was an extraordinarily fertile moment in American imagination. He suggested the notion of unlimited positive progress was an illusion. His wasn't the dystopian vision of Orwell or Zamyatin but something gentler and more elegiac. H. G. Wells could write about the end of civilization from a global perspective. Bradbury made the vision personal and lyric.

That's fascinating. You cite The Martian Chronicles. If I were to pick a work that exemplifies him at his best, it might well be that book because, of course, it's a story cycle focusing on different point of view characters in each story. I think it shows Bradbury's incredible range. It's also possibly his finest prose. It's elegant, but not purple. Something Wicked This Way Comes, even Dandelion Wine, can venture into a little bit of flowery language, but he hit his stride with The Martian Chronicles, as well as with his social commentary and his humanist commentary.

Yes, Bradbury began to shift into a more minor mode in Dandelion Wine.

I agree.

Martian Chronicles was his most ambitious work. As you know, Ray patterned it on The Grapes of Wrath. Steinbeck's tragic vision of Depression-era America became Ray's Martian tragedy of human defeat. Mars became a cosmic Dust Bowl. The dispossessed farmers became doomed astronauts and interplanetary immigrants.

You know this history. He bought his copy of The Grapes of Wrath coming back by Greyhound bus from the 1939 World's Fair in New York. The World's First Science Fiction Convention transpired at the same time, and so he was returning to Los Angeles, stopped off, briefly, at his boyhood hometown of Waukegan, which he rechristened "Greentown" in many of his works, most notably Dandelion Wine, and he bought his first copy of The Grapes of Wrath after seeing it in a cigar store window, of all things. Back on the Greyhound, he traveled through America reading it in 1939. It's incredible.

You can't make stuff up like that.

When was the first time you met Ray Bradbury in person?

I never met him until he came to Washington to receive the National Medal of Arts. No science fiction writer had ever won the National Medal. I felt it was important to honor areas of American creativity previously ignored. (We eventually awarded medals to an animator, literary translator, set designer, comic book artist, graphic designer, electrical guitar pioneer, and cartoonist - while never neglecting the traditional fine arts.) Ray was the first of these new honorees. The first time I spoke to him was the phone call informing him about the medal. He was effusively delighted. His doctors told him not to come. Ray came anyway, in his wheelchair, with three of his daughters and yourself. He loved every moment. He was like a kid at Disneyland.

This began a friendship that lasted until the end of his life. I continued to visit Ray when he was on his deathbed. He couldn't read any longer, so I would read to him. We had a long and affectionate relationship.

Do you have a favorite moment or favorite memory of Ray?

My favorite memory of Ray came from a science fiction convention at the University of California at Riverside. Not the convention itself but trying to get to it. Ray was the keynote speaker. He asked if I would introduce him. The speech was scheduled in a huge building at the center of campus. But there was no direct way to get Ray's wheelchair into the building. Every entrance had high steps designed for 18-year-old college students. Our faculty hosts eventually took us around back to the service entrance by the garbage dumpsters. I pushed Ray through a series of underground corridors until we got to a huge elevator, which had been designed to bring trolleys up from the food service kitchen.

We went up a floor or two, and a group of guys from the food service came in with their packed trolleys. They were all young Mexicans speaking Spanish. They noticed this old man in a wheelchair. The professors all froze up. They felt uncomfortable. But these were the sort of guys I grew up with. I turned to them and asked in my lousy Spanish if they knew who this man was. They shook their heads. Then I told them he was " el escritor famoso, Ray Bradbury." My hosts looked at me as if I were crazy. But then the guys shouted, "Ray Bradbury!" Every one of them knew who he was. Then they crowded around to get his autograph.

Wow. Great story.

The moment strikes me as the best measure of Bradbury's fame. Can you imagine the same reaction, indeed any reaction, to Saul Bellow or John Updike? These immigrant workers, whom American intellectuals consider beyond the compass of literature - you know all the social, cultural, and racial barriers that exist - were part of Ray's audience.

And Ray was delighted to meet them. He chuckled and signed napkins and order slips. He had a global audience. He spoke to people novelists don't usually reach. That is something that we should honor. Bradbury had an imagination that invited people in. I'm one of them. I know I'm not the only writer of my generation who feels Bradbury made a fundamental contribution to my intellectual and literary formation.

This topic has been very important in your work for decades. At the NEA you focused on expanding reading and organized The Big Read. Bradbury participated by video in Big Read programs all over the country. I was fortunate to deliver keynote presentations at many of these events. Ray was one of these rare gateway authors for young, reluctant readers, ushering them over to more challenging works of literature. In your estimation, now that Ray is no longer with us, you've written about the impoverishment of American intellectual culture, how are we going to engage reluctant readers as we move forward, and avoid a post-literate society? Or are we already there?

Our academic culture has lost its ability to inspire new readers. The decline in reading has been enormous, even among college students. At its height the Big Read was almost everywhere in the United States - every state, almost every major city plus hundreds of small towns. There were 25,000 organizations working in partnership with us. For the first time in over two decades American literary reading started growing. We made nearly 30 books available in the program, but the most popular novel was Fahrenheit 451. It was the title teachers and librarians most often selected. To Kill a Mockingbird was a close second. They were the gateway books, and they appealed to every age group.

You can't force young people into literature. They need to be led by pleasure and wonder. Creating a new generation of readers is important. When a society loses the capacity to read fiction, it loses one of the most powerful ways by which we grow and refine our inner lives, our understanding of ourselves, and our understanding of other people.

That is a powerful statement, and it echoes the themes addressed in Fahrenheit 451.

One final question for you. When you look over your own vast body of work, essays and poetry, and the incredible anthologies you've edited with these remarkable introductions that I use all the time as a creative writing professor in my classes at Columbia College Chicago, which one did Ray influence the most? Or if there is not one piece he inspired, how did Ray influence your own writing?

My experience with Ray - and other science fiction writers - changed the way I looked at literature, not only as a writer but also as a critic and editor. He helped me understand intuitively (before I could explain it intellectually) that there was no set hierarchy of literary modes. The novel was not superior to the romance as a mode of storytelling. They were just different. What mattered was excellence. One of the main changes in literary taste during my lifetime has been the erasure of the line between realism and fantasy. Likewise there is no longer a hard line between "serious" and "popular" culture.

As an editor of anthologies, I understood that the best way to get 18-year-olds to read was by offering them a variety of good work in different styles. Let them discover and explore their own taste. If you don't have a science fiction story, horror story, or adventure story in that mix, you might as well forget about engaging young readers, especially the boys. This diversity does not represent an abandonment of standards. There are masterpieces in all those genres.

The way we teach literature has failed to engage the imagination of the new generation of readers. Unless we acknowledge and build on their experience in popular culture, nothing will improve.

This blurring of boundaries between popular culture and high culture is exactly what Bradbury did with The Martian Chronicles, and that's why Christopher Isherwood, who was the first critic to review it as a work of literature, pointed that out exactly - this convergence of popular storytelling with high intellectual literary technique at play. You've been really gracious with your time.

Let me ask you a question. What was it like to write the first real biography of Ray while he was still alive?

It was quite the complex situation. I had him gently mentoring me on how to write a life story. Of course, he had never written a biography himself, but this was one of the most important writers of the 20th century. And I don't think that's hyperbole. He instructed me throughout the process to have fun and to not overthink the process but to, through osmosis, study his life and his philosophies and his accomplishments, and let them seep into my thinking and let that come out creatively, not necessarily intellectually. He always thought early drafts should be subconscious, so I really had this great writing mentor - who was also my subject - instructing me how to write a biography of him! To his immense credit, he never wanted to see a draft of the book. Not until I was done. He said, "I've given you this opportunity. I've knighted you with this and I don't want you to feel like you're writing it for me, so I don't want to look at the manuscript. I don't want to peer over your shoulder." I gave it to him when I was finished, and it had already been turned in to the publisher. He read it on his 84th birthday and said, "You have written a beautiful book!"

The kindness and creative wisdom of this man was towering and, as you said, he never went to college and had very little formal writing training. The only training he had was at Los Angeles High School in the late '30s. I don't think I'll ever meet another artist with this level of philosophical and creative insight. I went on to do four books and a graphic novel surrounding Ray and his life. Two of those books won the Bram Stoker Award. My new book, Dark Black, a collection of 20 Gothic short stories, was partially inspired by Bradbury's The October Country, even though it is very much a book that reflects my voice, my ideas, and my ethos. But Bradbury's influence on me is immeasurable.

It is impressive that Ray kept his goodness and generosity, that innocence, while working in and around Hollywood most of his adult life. The cynicism and bitterness of Hollywood never infected him, though he was often treated badly. That's a testament to the quality of his character.

Let me add one more thing. When we ponder Bradbury's particular innovations as a writer, it is important to recognize that he lived and wrote in Los Angeles, which had emerged as the global center of popular culture. That culture shaped him, and he reshaped it. The movies and television also helped disseminate his work to a degree that few writers ever enjoyed in their own lifetime. If Ray had stayed in Waukegan, he still would have been a writer, but neither his books nor their reception would have been the same. Part of Bradbury's importance was how much he changed storytelling on a global scale. Later, when Philip Roth, Margaret Atwood, and Don DeLillo wrote science fiction, we weren't surprised. Bradbury had paved the way. That probably could only have happened in postwar Los Angeles.

¤

Sam Weller (@Sam__Weller) is the two-time Bram Stoker Award-winning biographer of Ray Bradbury. He worked with Bradbury for 12 years. Weller's latest, Dark Black, is a collection of 20 Gothic short stories. He teaches in the English Department at Columbia College Chicago.

Dana Gioia is an award-winning poet. Former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, Gioia is a native Californian of Italian and Mexican descent. In 2015 Gioia was appointed the State Poet Laureate of California by Governor Jerry Brown.

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Ray Bradbury at 100: A Conversation Between Sam Weller and Dana Gioia

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COMMEMORATING THE CENTENNIAL of the great Ray Bradbury, biographer Sam Weller sat down with former California poet laureate and former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts Dana Gioia for a wide-ranging conversation on Bradbury's imprint on arts and culture.

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Along with Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury had written a short story, “August 2026: There Will Come Soft Rains” which helped break the stereotype of the American Dream and further enforce the truth or wants vs needs. Using the article, “The Empty Automated House”, we know the story is about an automated house that appears as a perfect “American Dream” house including a dog, husband, kids, etc. Then, “a tree branch suddenly collapses and breaks a bottle of flammable cleaning solvent over the stove and immediately sets the house ablaze.” By the house going up in flames and everything “representing” the American Dream is gone shows how it isn’t necessarily what you see or the “perfect life” but instead is what is best for you and what you need to be your best self which was not an automated house. The whole point was that you should be aiming for your needs rather than the most appealing or attractive thing and that every person is different and has a different American Dream.

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"August 2026: There Will Come Soft Rains" (1950) by Ray Bradbury is a short story that tells a post apocalyptic future somewhere in Allendale, California where humanity ceases to exist. "The sun came out from behind the rain. The house stood alone in a city of rubble and ashes. This was the one house left standing. At night the ruined city gave off a radioactive glow which could be seen for miles" (Bradbury, 1, 8). The city seems to have been destroyed by radioactive bombs which now leaves California devoid of life except for the house itself.

The house is completely automated and does all manner of house work on its own. The story tell the reader of the multiple chores that the house can do on its own. Things like; cooking breakfast, cleaning the table, washing the dishes, and discarding scraps by means of little cleaning mice. The entire house seems to be an almost sentient being that can think on its own- or at least is programmed to almost be that way.

The story seems to give off a melancholy kind of vibe because of the latent emptiness of the house as all humanity has now been exterminated. Leaving behind the house and a dog who is on its last whim from starvation and most likely radiation poisoning. The description of the contents of the house- the painting and pictures of the family that lived there are only distant memories of what looked like "the American dream" type of life, one with a husband and wife, two children and their dog living in harmony, now all taken by either the explosions or radiation. "Here as in a photograph, a woman bent to pick flowers. Still farther over, their images burned on wood in one titanic instant, a small boy, hands flung into the air; higher up, the image of a thrown ball, and opposite him a girl, hands raised to catch the ball which never came down" (Bradbury 1, 9).

As the story goes on to describe the automation at hand, a tree branch suddenly collapses and breaks a bottle of flammable cleaning solvent over the stove and immediately sets the house ablaze, and in an attempt to put the fire out on its own, the house completely uses whatever water reserves were left in the house, after all the water was being used for baths that no one ever showed up for. "The quenching rain ceased. The reserve water supply which had filled baths and washed dishes for many quiet days were gone" (Bradbury 3, 4). As the house frantically tried to quench the fire, it spread too fast leaving nothing but destruction in its wake just as the outside world had become. The only surviving piece of automation left still working was the voice-clock repeating the time of a new day.

This story was very intriguing because it made me think about how the future was for the people who lived in that house before Armageddon. Everything in the house was automated and their daily lives seemed to be the same everyday, like clock work. The same breakfast every morning, same times for the children and work/play schedule, consistency must have been a very important factor in the family's lives, and even laziness because practically no one had to lift a finger for the majority of tasks the house was able to do on its own.

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"August 2026: There Will Come Soft Rains" (1950) by Ray Bradbury is a short story that tells a post apocalyptic future somewhere in Allendale, California where humanity ceases to exist. "The sun came out from behind the rain. The house stood alone in a city of rubble and ashes.

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The American Dream in Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

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The American Dream in Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

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One Book by Ray Bradbury that supports the American Dream would be “Fahrenheit 451” which is focused on censorship and conformity and utilizes literary devices as well as the dystopian setting. He uses lots of metaphors, similes, and allusions, to show a darker side as well as rebellion against conformity. In the book, Montag, the main character, steals books to read them although they are banned. Fahrenheit 451, “uses censorship to sway their citizens, by removing the possibility of learning new information that could lead to conflicts, “ which was books. To show this through the figurative language he uses the metaphor, “They show the pores in the face of life.” Bradbury uses literary devices to further portray how censorship is prevalent as well as connecting it back to the American Dream. The quotes from the article, “The American Dream in Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury”, is supporting the thesis as well as adds reasoning why books should not be feared and instead people are more afraid of something foreign and unfamiliar. It connects back to the American Dream because it shows how there are smaller rights as well as other goals when referring back to the dream.

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The American Dream In Fahrenheit 451 By Ray Bradbury: Essay Example, 1339 words - Writix.co.uk

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The American Dream: Americans are taught that the typical American dream is where everyone has equal opportunities and no matter what class they are born into, they can still achieve all their dreams; but, this only applies to people who follow the status quo.

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Weller, Sam, and Dana Gioia. “Ray Bradbury at 100: A Conversation between Sam Weller and Dana Gioia.” Los Angeles Review of Books, 28 Dec. 2020, https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/ray-bradbury-at-100-a-conversation-between-sam-weller-and-dana-gioia/

“The American Dream in Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury: Essay Example, 1339 Words.” Writix.co.uk, https://writix.co.uk/essay-examples/the-american-dream-in-fahrenheit-451-by-ray-bradbury#:~:text=The%20American%20Dream%3A%20Americans%20are,who%20follow%20the%20status%20quo.

Gomzina, Jelena. “Рэй Брэдбери.Ру Елена Гомзина. ‘American Dream vs American Dreamers’. Рэй Брэдбери.RU Рей Бредбери.RU.” Рэй Брэдбери.RU, 2006, https://raybradbury.ru/articles/gomzina_dream_vs_dreamers/introduction/.

Neil, Phoenixx. “The Empty Automated House.” OpenLab at City Tech, 10 Oct. 2018, https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/belli-f2018-eng2420/the-empty-automated-house/.